Mul Mantar

Sikhism's foundational formula is not an invocation of a deity but a description of one, and it is the first thing in the scripture.

It runs through a sequence of terms: Ik Onkar, one being; sat nam, whose name is truth; karta purakh, the creator; nirbhau, without fear; nirvair, without enmity; akal murat, timeless in form; ajuni, unborn; saibhang, self-existent; gur prasad, known by the Guru's grace. The whole is a compressed theology, and each term is doing negative work: without fear rules out the capriciousness of a god who must be placated, without enmity rules out a god with enemies, unborn rules out incarnation.

That last one is pointed. It is a direct rejection of the doctrine of divine descent central to the Vaishnava traditions around Nanak, and it is placed among the first words of the book.

The numeral at the head is not decoration. Writing the figure one before the word makes the assertion of oneness unmistakable and unpronounceable as anything else, and it is the reason the opening is written as a distinctive symbol rather than only spoken.

The vocabulary draws on both Sanskritic and Perso-Arabic stock, which is a feature of the north Indian devotional language of the period rather than evidence of an attempt to combine two religions. The composition is Nanak's, dating within his lifetime of 1469 to 1539, and it stands at the head of the Japji Sahib, which stands at the head of the Guru Granth Sahib.

There is a live internal question about how much of the opening constitutes the formula proper, and it is not merely pedantic.

Some traditions treat it as ending at gur prasad, making it the nine-term statement above. Others continue into the following lines, and the Sikh Rehat Maryada and various lineages differ on where the boundary falls. The disagreement matters for recitation practice and for what is inscribed on buildings and documents, and it is an ordinary example of a community negotiating the edges of its own most-repeated text.

More consequential is what the formula is used for. Its terms are the reference point Sikh writers return to when arguing about the tradition's boundaries, against image worship, against ritual specialists, against the notion that the Gurus were divine incarnations, and against the classification of Sikhism as a variety of Hinduism. The last of those has been a legal as well as a theological argument in India, where certain statutes have grouped Sikhs under a broader heading for particular purposes.

Recording this under a Sanskritic heading requires a note of the same kind made elsewhere in this collection. Sikh usage has its own term, and the tradition would not describe the opening as a mantra in the sense the Hindu tantric material uses. The Punjabi word mantar is used within Sikh writing, and Nanak's own compositions use it, but with the sense of a teaching or a saying rather than of an efficacious sound. The comparative filing here is an organisational choice for this collection, and the tradition's own emphasis is that the words are to be understood, not merely produced.