Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Sikhism Hymns gathers eleven of the atlas's Sikh liturgical compositions, the daily banis that structure a Sikh day and the further hymns that structure Sikh ceremony from initiation to death.

The Nitnem, the daily discipline, supplies most of the group. Japji Sahib opens Sikh scripture and opens the day, recited every morning; Jaap Sahib and the Tav Prasad Savaiye follow it in the morning round, one an enumeration of divine names built for recitation at speed, the other a polemical demolition of ritual externals. Rehras Sahib gathers hymns from four Gurus into a fixed evening office, and the Benti Chaupai, a direct petition for protection, stands within it. Kirtan Sohila closes the day and is also said over the dead, the same five hymns used at both a day's end and a life's end without the tradition treating the two occasions as different in kind.

Beyond the Nitnem, the Ardas is the standing prayer that closes almost every Sikh ceremony, naming the community's martyrs before opening into whatever occasion is at hand. The Anand Sahib closes ceremonies of nearly every kind and gives the Sikh marriage rite its name, the Anand Karaj. The Asa di Var, a dawn ballad turned from praise of warriors to praise of truth, opens the gurdwara day in song, and the Sukhmani Sahib, set in Gauri raga, is recited whole by many Sikhs daily. The Gagan Mai Thaal, composed by tradition at Puri, describes the universe already performing the lamp ceremony it declines to repeat physically, the same refusal Kirtan Sohila's own closing section makes independently.