The traditional account of the founding at Anandpur in 1699 is stark. Guru Gobind Singh addressed a great gathering and asked for a head. After a silence one man rose and followed him into a tent; the Guru returned alone with a bloodied sword and asked again. Five men in turn offered themselves. All five then emerged alive, and were initiated with amrit, sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword, as the panj piare, the five beloved.
They came from different regions and different castes, which is the point the tradition emphasises hardest. They took the name Singh, lion, and women of the Khalsa took Kaur, and the caste names that had marked them were set aside. The Guru then asked the five to initiate him in turn, placing himself under the discipline he had created rather than above it.
The Khalsa took a code of conduct and the five articles of faith, of which uncut hair is the most visible and the most consequential, since it cannot be put on and taken off. Whether the whole scene at the tent occurred as described is not something the sources can establish, and Sikh writers themselves discuss the question. What is not in doubt is the institution that came out of that Baisakhi gathering, and the fact that it made initiated Sikhs permanently identifiable in public.