Benti Chaupai

Benti Chaupai, also simply called Chaupai Sahib, is a petition for protection composed by Guru Gobind Singh and included in the Dasam Granth; among the daily Sikh prayers it is the one most often on Sikhs' lips in times of difficulty and danger. Its verses ask God for protection, for the removal of enemies and afflictions, and for refuge and support, appealing to the divine as the sole protector in whom the worshipper takes shelter. It is recited as part of the evening prayer Rehras and in the initiation ceremony, and is turned to individually whenever a Sikh seeks strength and safety. The composition gives voice to a confident dependence on God's protection characteristic of the tradition shaped by the tenth Guru, in a period of persecution and struggle, and its use both in the fixed daily office and as a spontaneous prayer in adversity has made it one of the most frequently recited of all Sikh compositions.

Some editions and communities include, and others omit, certain additional verses associated with the Chaupai found in variant manuscripts of the Dasam Granth, a difference that reflects the wider and still unsettled scholarly and community debate over the composition and canonical boundaries of that scripture as a whole. Whatever the manuscript question, the core petition for protection remains constant across versions in use today, and its place in the Rehras and the initiation liturgy is not itself contested.

Benti Chaupai is extracted from the Charitropakhyan, a large narrative section of the Dasam Granth made up of many stories, and this parent section is itself the subject of one of the more significant ongoing controversies in modern Sikh scholarship, with debate continuing over whether the entire Dasam Granth, and the Charitropakhyan specifically, should be attributed to Guru Gobind Singh in full, attributed to him only in part alongside court poets writing in his circle, or treated with more caution regarding its authorship and its appropriate place in Sikh devotional life, a debate touching on serious questions of scriptural authenticity that some Sikh institutions and scholars have addressed very differently from others. This petition, drawn from within that debated larger work, is nonetheless treated with little of that same controversy in ordinary devotional practice, accepted across virtually all strands of Sikh practice as a standard part of daily recitation regardless of where a given community stands on the wider Dasam Granth authorship question.

Its use during the Amrit Sanchar, the ceremony initiating a Sikh into the Khalsa, the baptized Sikh community founded by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, gives it a role beyond ordinary daily recitation, recited as part of the fixed set of compositions read aloud during that initiation ceremony, so alongside its place in the evening Nitnem discipline, it also marks one of the most significant formal transitions in an individual Sikh's religious life.