Every other creed in this atlas borrows its category from outside the tradition it describes, a term the atlas applies by comparison. Sikhism does not need the loan. Mantar is the tradition's own word, and the Guru Granth Sahib uses it of itself, so calling the Mul Mantar a creed says something about where the atlas has chosen to place it rather than about how Sikhs classify their own scripture. What justifies the placement is function rather than vocabulary: no council convened to approve these lines, as none did for the Shema, but daily recitation has made them the fixed confession every observant Sikh repeats, in the Japji Sahib each morning and in the Nitnem prayers that structure Sikh daily practice, and their position at the head of the Guru Granth Sahib gives them the same anchoring role a creed plays at the front of a catechism or a liturgy.
The scholarly debate over where the formula ends, at gur prasad or one clause further at jap, is not a dispute about doctrine so much as about the boundary of the text itself, comparable to arguments over which lines belong to the original Nicene Creed of 325 against its expanded successor of 381. What is not disputed is the content: a single, timeless, unborn, self existent reality, named without a proper name, is the first thing Sikh scripture says about the world, and everything that follows in the Guru Granth Sahib is read against that opening claim.