After he returned to Württemberg in 1876, he dedicated most of his energies to translation.
Sikh scriptures
Robert Needham Cust, a British colonial administrator and linguist, suggested Court of Directors of the British East India Company on 12 August 1857 that India office in London should make arrangements for translation of Adi Granth into English language. Later, Robert Needham recommended Ernest Trumpp to the British government as best qualified to translate the Sikh scripture and historic literature. In 1869, Trumpp was sought by the India office of the British government to work in Punjab to translate the Sikh scriptures into English.[1]
Trumpp enthusiastically started studying and translating them in 1870.[13] He sought the help of local Nirmala Sikhs as he considered them more literate than other Sikh preachers. Nirmala Sikhs were students of Sanskrit who followed the vedic traditions and their interpretations of Adi Granth were based on vedic literature. However, after his initial effort, he stated that Sikh scriptures were not worth translating in full, because "the same few ideas, he thought, being endlessly repeated". He found that the Sikh granthis who recited the text in the early 1870s lacked comprehension and its sense of meaning.[13] He stated that "Sikhs had lost all learning" and the granthis were misleading.[13] Even for Sikhs the language of the Guru Granth Sahib is considered archaic and hard to understand without an interpreter.[14] Trumpp never made any attempts to have a meaningful dialogue with Sikh scholars of the time such as Kahn Singh Nabha, who has penned the Mahan Kosh, a dictionary of words used in the Granth Sahib. According to Tony Ballantyne, Ernest Trumpp's insensitive approach such as treating the Sikh scripture as a mere book and blowing cigar smoke over its pages while studying the text, did not endear him to the Sikh granthis who worshipped it as an embodiment of the Guru.[13]
Trumpp, after eight years of study and research of the Sikh scriptures, published his translation and field notes. In the Introduction section, he described the Sikh scripture as "incoherent and shallow in the extreme, and couched at the same time in dark and perplexing language, in order to cover these defects. It is for us Occidentals a most painful and almost stupefying task, to read only a single Rag".[13] Trumpp criticized Adi Granth to be lacking systematic unity, according to Arvind Pal Singh Mandair – a Sikhism scholar.[15]
Trumpp said that Sikhism was "a reform movement in spirit", but "completely failed to achieve anything of real religious significance".[13] He concluded that the most Sikhs do not understand what their scripture's verses mean and any metaphysical speculations therein. The Sikh intelligentsia he met during his years of study, stated Trumpp, only had a "partial understanding" of their own scripture. Most Sikhs neither observe the rahit-nama – the Sikh code of conduct, nor were the popular notions of the Sikhs guided by the teachings in the Adi Granth.[13] It was more of a military brotherhood with a martial spirit, inspired by a "deep fanatical hatred" for the Muslims given the Sikh sense of their history and identity.[13]
According to the Sikh historian Trilochan Singh, Trumpp's colonial era study and remarks were "extremely vulgar attacks" on Sikhism that did not appreciate the Sikh history, culture and religion and it reflected the lack of scientific-analytical method in his approach. His criticism reflected the bias of his missionary agenda, which assumed that ancient Christian scriptures were coherent, had the right answers, and that all other religions must be held in contempt.[16] Trumpp's introduction to his translations of Adi Granth reveal that he had a contempt for the scripture and its theology, states the Sikhism scholar J. S. Grewal.[4] According to Indologist Mark Juergensmeyer, setting aside Ernest Trumpp's nasty remarks, he was a linguist and his years of scholarship, translations, as well as field notes and discussions have been used by contemporary scholars with caution.[17]
Other Sikh texts
In the course of his research, it seems he had discovered the first known manuscript of the Puratan Janamsakhis (also spelt Janam-sakhi), the earliest known biography of Guru Nanak, at the India office Library, London. Trumpp found these manuscripts among the manuscripts forwarded to him from the India office's Library in 1872 with a note saying "in hope that some of them may be useful in the project entrusted to you." [sic][2] He translated Puratan and Bala Janamsakhis, the lives of the later [Sikh] gurus, including an account of their teachings.[2]
He also penned some essays on The Life of Nanak according to the Janam Sakhis, Sketch of the Life of the other Sikh Gurus, Sketch of the Religion of the Sikhs, On the Composition of the Granth, and On the Language and the Metres used in the Granth.[citation needed]