Mul Mantar: the root verse that opens the Guru Granth Sahib and the first salok of Japji

This character is made of three parts: the Gurmukhi numeral one ੧, the letter called oora written in its open form, and a curved stroke extending above. It is read Ik Oankar. The part ik is the number one, and the part oankar is a name for the supreme reality, sharing a root with the sound Om familiar from the religious traditions of the subcontinent.

The point worth pausing on is the number. In the old texts of this region, it was common to place the sound Om or the word Oankar at the head of the page as an invocation. Guru Nanak put the number one in front of it. As Sikh commentators commonly read it, that number locks the meaning in place: the One spoken of is one, not one among many, and neither a trinity nor a member of a pantheon.

Translations differ on the second part. Many render it as One Creator, others as One Reality, and some as There Is Only One. Hardev Singh Virk, in his article on SikhNet, cites D. S. Chahal's proposal to read the character as Ek Oh Beant, meaning that One is infinite, on the argument that the curved stroke above signifies infinity. Most Sikhs still read it as Ik Oankar. A separate section below discusses this character in more detail.

The word sati means true, real, and also carries the sense of being, existing. The word nāmu means name. The small u at the end of nāmu is a grammatical marker for a masculine singular noun in the subject position and is not pronounced as a separate sound.

There are at least three readings. The first reads it as whose Name is Truth, that is, the phrase is an attribute attached to the One named in the preceding character. The second reads it as Truth is Its Name, that is, the One has no personal name as a deity would, and the only true name is the word Truth. The third, put forward by The Sikh Encyclopedia, takes sati in the sense of existence: the One is what truly exists and endures, while everything else changes.

The word naam in Sikhism also carries a wider meaning than a name. Remembering and repeating the Name, naam japna, is one of the three basic practices of Sikh life. So this phrase is at once a description and a pointer to the object of that remembrance.

The word kartā means the one who makes, the maker. The word purakhu shares a root with the Sanskrit purusha, whose root meaning is person, the personal being, and which in religious texts often refers to the essential being, the all pervading spirit. The word does not mean male in the sense of gender.

Commentators stress two points. First, the Supreme Being is the maker of all things, that is, not a principle standing far outside the world. Second, the word purakhu shows that the One is present within what It has made. The Sikh Encyclopedia calls this the belief in the immanent presence of the supreme reality in creation.

Some read the two words as a single phrase, the Creator Being, while others split them into two attributes, the maker and the one present everywhere. The library's translation keeps both senses so that neither is lost.

The prefix nir means without, free from. Bhau is fear, and vair is enmity. The two words stand together as a pair: fearing no one and hating no one.

The logic of this pair comes from the number one at the head of the verse. To fear is to fear something other than oneself, and to hate is to hate something other than oneself. If there is only One, there is no other left to fear or to hate. The Sikh Encyclopedia writes along exactly these lines: the Supreme Being cannot be hostile to anyone, since It alone is supreme.

In the reading of many Sikhs, these two attributes are also taken as a model for human beings: a person who lives close to that One also learns to be without fear and without enmity. This is a doctrinal reading, and the library records it as the words of the faithful about their own faith.

This is the phrase in the Mul Mantar that is translated in the most different ways. The word akāl is made of the prefix a, meaning not, and the word kāl, meaning time and also death, since time is what brings all things to their end. The word mūrati has the root meaning of form, shape, and can also mean an idol.

The difficulty is that Sikhism does not worship images and says the Supreme Being is without form, yet the word mūrati appears here. The interpretations fall into several directions. The first translates it as timeless form, taking mūrati to mean existence, being, not a visible shape. The second translates it as deathless being, stressing the sense of not dying in the word akāl. The third, recorded by SikhiWiki, understands it as a form that does not exist within time, that is, not the kind of form that eyes can see and hands can touch.

The article on Gurparsad.com points out a grammatical detail: the word akāl carries no final vowel marker, so it does not stand alone but leans on the word that follows, and the two words must be read as one phrase. By that logic, it should not be split into two separate attributes, beyond time and having form. The library's translation follows the reading as a single phrase.

The word ajūnī is made of the prefix a, meaning not, and the word jūnī, meaning a species or life form, the kind of existence a soul enters through birth from a womb. The most common reading is entering no womb, that is, the Supreme Being is not born in human form or the form of any creature. The Sikh Encyclopedia reads this word as a rejection of the doctrine of incarnation, the belief that a deity descends into the world as a human being. A second, broader reading holds that the One does not belong to the cycle of birth and death and is not bound to any species. The two readings do not contradict each other and differ only in emphasis.

The word saibhaṅ shares a root with the Sanskrit svayambhu, meaning self-existent. The Sikh Encyclopedia compares it with the svayambhu of the Upanishads. Being self-existent should be distinguished from giving birth to oneself: the One was not made by anyone and depends on nothing in order to exist, rather than having at some point created Itself. That is why the library translates it as existing of Itself. The small mark on this word is the tippi, which signals a final nasal sound.

The word gur is Guru, the one who leads from darkness into light. The word prasādi means by grace, with the final i marking the case: by, through. The whole phrase is usually translated as by the Guru's grace.

This phrase stands at the end of the string, and it changes the tone of the whole passage. The earlier phrases say what the Supreme Being is. This phrase says how human beings come to know that One: not by their own effort, not by ritual or austerity, but by grace. The Sikh Encyclopedia writes that knowledge of the Supreme Being comes through the grace of the Guru and not through ritual.

Commentators understand the word Guru here in two ways. The first takes it as the Guru of the faith, that is, the ten Gurus and now the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib. The second, recorded by SikhiWiki, takes the Guru to be the Supreme Being itself in the role of enlightener, so that the phrase is one more of Its attributes: the One who is the Guru and is grace. The word gur carries no final vowel marker, so by the grammatical logic set out on Gurparsad.com it is read together with prasādi as a single phrase.

This word stands between two punctuation marks, like a title. It is the name of the composition: Japu, meaning recitation, silent reading, repetition. Sikhs add the two honorifics ji and Sahib to make Japji Sahib, the familiar name of this composition.

There are two ways of reading the word. The common view treats it as the title of the poem that opens the scripture, not as part of the Mul Mantar. The second, held by the lineages that take the Mul Mantar to run to the end of the salok, reads japu as an instruction: recite. On that reading, after naming the attributes, the text tells the reader to recite, and then says that what is to be recited is the One who is true from beginning to end.

The word ādi means beginning, the primal time. The word jugādi joins jug, meaning age or era, with ādi, meaning beginning, and is usually understood as since the ages began, or throughout the ages. The word sachu means true, sharing a root with the word sati at the opening of the Mul Mantar.

Where translations differ is the subject. Some take the subject to be the Supreme Being: It was true from the very beginning. Others take sachu as a noun: Truth existed from the very beginning. The original has no pronoun, so both readings stand.

This salok is a short poem of two lines placed before the thirty-eight stanzas, called pauri, of the Japji. The Sikh Encyclopedia notes that it appears again in the scripture, at the opening of a section of the Sukhmani composed by Guru Arjan, on page 285. There the word ਭੀ in the second line is written ਭਿ, differing by one vowel sign, with no change in meaning.

The word hai means is, bhī means also, still, and hosī means will be. The second line continues the first to complete all three tenses: true from the beginning, true now, and still true hereafter.

The word Nānak in the middle of the line is the signature of the author. In the religious poetry of this region, the poet often placed his own name in the final line as a seal. In the Guru Granth Sahib, all six Gurus whose compositions appear in the scripture sign with the name Nanak, so the signature marks these words as belonging to the line of Gurus. Translations handle this word differently: some render it as O Nanak, as if the Guru were addressing himself, and some as Nanak says. The library chose says Nanak to stay close to its function as a signature.

The two double bars and the numeral ੧ at the end mark the close of the first salok. Those who follow the long reading of the Mul Mantar regard this very mark as the end of the root verse.