Sikhism

Distillation of Sikhism (Gurū Granth Sāhib) — Decision Record

This README fixes which texts and which translation are distilled, and who reviewed the choices.

A note of reverence (read first)

Sikhs do not regard the Gurū Granth Sāhib (often Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib jī) as a book about a religion; they regard it as the living, eternal Gurū — the tenth Gurū, Gobind Singh, ended the line of human Gurūs and vested guruship permanently in the scripture (1708). It is enthroned, attended, and consulted as a present teacher, not catalogued as literature. This distillation is therefore offered as "one structured reading, not authoritative teaching" — a respectful external attempt to surface load-bearing principles, never a substitute for the Gurū, the sangat (congregation), or a granthī's reading. Where this document analyses, clusters, or paraphrases, it does so as an outsider's instrument; the Gurbānī itself is the only authority.

Tradition

• Slug: sikhism-guru-granth-sahib
• Tradition / family: Sikhī (Sikhism); the scripture of the Gurū Granth Sāhib, the Gurbānī of the Sikh Gurūs and the bhagats.
• Primary frame in one sentence: a devotional monotheism centred on remembrance of the one formless God (Ik Onkār) through the divine Name (Naam), lived as honest work, selfless service, and the equality of all people under the divine order (Hukam).

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

Text	Included?	Rationale
Japjī Sāhib (Gurū Nanak)	yes (first)	The opening composition of the Gurū Granth Sāhib; the daily morning prayer every Sikh is expected to know by heart; "considered by the Sikhs a key to their sacred volume and an epitome of its doctrines" (Macauliffe). Highest lived-centrality — ideal entry point.
The daily Nitnem banis — Āsā kī Vār, Rahirās (Sodar), Sohila	yes (first pass)	The fixed daily liturgy of recitation; lived-central; all available in Macauliffe vol. I.
Selected Gurū Nanak hymns & sloks (vol. I)	yes (first pass)	Macauliffe vol. I includes Nanak's hymns and additional sloks, providing the casteless/honest-living/equality teachings.
Compositions of Gurūs Angad → Gobind Singh; the bhagat bāṇī (Kabīr, Ravidās, Farīd, Nāmdev, etc.)	depth expansion	The full Gurū Granth Sāhib runs to 1,430 aṅgs (pages); per-aṅg / per-rāg coverage is a staged future commitment.

• Full-canon commitment: yes, staged — First pass: Japjī + the Nitnem banis + Gurū Nanak's vol. I hymns (this deliverable) → Depth expansion: the remaining 1,430 aṅgs by rāg / by author, flagged throughout.

Translation policy

• Named translation: Max Arthur Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909). Public domain.
• Access: archive.org item sikhreligionitsg01unse, plain-text OCR: https://archive.org/download/sikhreligionitsg01unse/sikhreligionitsg01unse_djvu.txt. (Macauliffe's 6-volume work is widely mirrored; this volume contains the life of Gurū Nanak, the Japjī, Āsā kī Vār, Rahirās, Sohila, and Nanak's hymns.)
• Why this translation: unambiguously public-domain; produced 1900–1909 with Sikh gyani (scholar) assistants and footnoted with their variant readings; complete for the compositions used here. Caveat: Edwardian diction ("Thou", "saith", "elect", "demigods"), and Macauliffe sometimes Christianises terms (e.g., "recording angels", "salvation") and Hinduises mythic vocabulary in the gloss. Where a word carries interpretive weight, the original (Gurmukhī-romanised) term is preserved.
• A freely-available modern translation (Sant Singh Khalsa's English rendering of the whole Gurū Granth Sāhib, widely mirrored online and used in many gurdwarās) was not used as a quote source here to keep provenance to a single, clearly public-domain edition; its copyright status is less clear (released for non-commercial devotional use). Future depth expansion may cross-check against it for the post-vol.-I material, with provenance noted per quote.
• Numbering / citation form: Japjī cited by paurī (stanza) in Macauliffe's Roman numerals, Japjī I–XXXVIII, plus Mūl Mantar (preamble) and closing Slok. Other banis cited by composition + Macauliffe page (e.g., Āsā kī Vār, p.232). Depth expansion will add aṅg numbers (the standard 1,430-page reference).
• Untranslatable terms to preserve: Ik Onkār, Waheguru, Naam, Hukam, Nadar (grace), seva, simran, gurmukh, manmukh, sangat, langar, haumai (ego), sach/sat (truth). Macauliffe's English renderings are glossed against these.
• Quote accuracy: char-for-char verified against archive.org OCR of Macauliffe vol. I. See quote-audit-sikhism-guru-granth-sahib.md — PASS (~46 anchors after fixes; 2 fabricated quotes caught and corrected in P4).

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" and the reviewer gap is flagged. The reverence note above is binding.

Structure for this tradition

• Atomic unit ("books/"): a composition or section (the Japjī as a whole, then each Nitnem bani / themed hymn group). Japjī cited by paurī.
• Internal convergence layer?: not built in the first pass (single translator, a coherent liturgical set). A convergence pass may apply when the many authors of the Gurū Granth Sāhib (Gurūs + bhagats) are pooled as independent voices in future expansion.
• Sensitivity boundaries: high. Treat the scripture as the living Gurū (above). Do not over-read later Khalsa / Rahit discipline into Nanak-era Gurbānī; do not flatten Sikhī into either Hinduism or Islam (the Gurūs explicitly rejected being absorbed into either — Japjī XXI, the casteless-creation hymn).

Files

File	Status
Methodology	done
Index and traceability	done
First-pass extractions (Japjī + Nitnem + Nanak hymns)	done — 71 atomic statements
Depth-expansion extractions (other Gurūs' compositions)	done — 49 atomic statements
Core principles	done — 13 core principles
Structural analysis	done
Rooted compass	done

First pass (Japjī + Nitnem + Nanak's vol. I hymns): complete. Depth expansion (Macauliffe vols II–V; the other Gurūs' principal compositions): complete — Anand Sāhib (Gurū Amar Das), Sukhmani + Bawan Akhari (Gurū Arjan), Sloks of Mahalla 9 (Gurū Teg Bahadur), Jaap Sāhib (Gurū Gobind Singh, Dasam Granth, included by Nitnem tradition with binding canon caveat). Full aṅg coverage (per-aṅg coverage of remaining 1,430 aṅgs, the bhagat bāṇī in vol. VI, fuller Dasam Granth): not started.