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Sikhism

Principles

Sikhism (Gurū Granth Sāhib) — Core Principles (core-principle)

Minimal operational principle set synthesized from the Sikh distillation (book-level; Stage A = the Japjī Sāhib + the daily Nitnem banis + Gurū Nanak's vol. I teachings; supplementary = Anand Sāhib, Sukhmani Sāhib, Bawan Akhari, Sloks of Mahalla 9, Jaap Sāhib + Akāl Ustat opening + Tav Prasad Sawaiyas; 13 files, ~120 atomic statements, 60 chapter principles). Sources: Max Arthur Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, vols I–V (Oxford, 1909). Method: 00-methodology.md. This is one structured reading, not authoritative — and emphatically so for Sikhī, whose authority is the Gurū Granth Sāhib itself, the living and eternal Gurū, read in sangat (congregation) by a granthī, never an outsider's distillation of an Edwardian English rendering (no within-tradition reviewer secured; see the binding reverence note in the README). Each principle carries a cross-tradition note — the claim that may converge with other traditions vs the warrant (foundation) that may diverge — to feed the cross-tradition Atlas. All quotes verbatim against the named Macauliffe edition (quote audit pass + structural-completeness Stage-B re-check; the previously-fabricated P4 phrases — caught by R2 — remain durably replaced).

Why 13

13 emerged from clustering the chapter principles by intent across Stage A + supplementary, and after the structural-completeness Phase 2 deep audit surfaced 5 canonical structures missing or under-represented in the Stage-A 12 (Five Thieves enumeration; Five Khands as a coherent map; the Nirbhau / Akāl / religious-liberty register; Bhana as a doctrinal distinct from Hukam; sangat-and-pangat as institutional). The retrofit adds P13 (Five Thieves + Five Khands + Nirbhau/Akāl honest classification), names Bhana explicitly inside P2 (with the Naam/Hukam/Bhana/Karam fourfold interlock), and elevates sangat-and-pangat to a named structural sub-element of P9/P11 with explicit one-sentence structural argument per Learning 6 rubric.

The structural hubs remain Ik Onkār (P1, the one God), Naam / simran (P3, remembrance of the Name), and Hukam (P2, the divine order) — the three concepts that recur across the most compositions and from which the social ethic (equality, honest living, service) flows. The Three Pillars (Naam Japo / Kirat Karo / Vand Chhako) are distributed across P3 (remembering the Name) + P10 (honest livelihood) + P11 (sharing/service); the triadic structure, foundational to Sikh householder ethics, is named here as a distribution rather than promoted to a single triadic principle, per the methodology's Pashaura Singh / McLeod note that the triad is a legitimate pastoral synthesis rather than a single scriptural locus.

The 13 principles

P1 — God is one, true, formless, and eternal (Ik Onkār)

"There is but one God whose name is true, the Creator, devoid of fear and enmity, immortal, unborn, self-existent." One God — beyond form and incarnation, the same in every age, who Himself created and named all things and beholds His work with delight. This is the Mūl Mantar, the Sikh creed that opens the entire Gurū Granth Sāhib. supplementary confirms across the corpus: Gurū Arjan's Bawan Akhari (BA-P2) resolves the nirguna/saguna paradox into the one God who is both; Gurū Gobind Singh's Jaap Sāhib (JS-P1) extends the Mūl Mantar's predicates into a litany of names (Immortal, Fearless, All-steel) while preserving the formless-monotheist core.

  • Covers: MM-P1, J1-P2, J3-P1, AW-P1, RS-P1, RS-P2 (one-God facet); +BA-P2, JS-P1 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī, Mūl Mantar; Japjī III, V, XXI, XXIV–XXV; Āsā kī Vār Pauri I; Rahirās Sodar; +Bawan Akhari I–II, Jaap Sāhib opening
  • Untranslatable: Ik Onkār (the One; glyph ੴ), Waheguru (the Wondrous Lord — the dominant Sikh invocation, post-Nanak, flagged), Sat Naam ("the Name is true"), Akāl (timeless/immortal)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (one true transcendent creator, worthy of worship) converges strongly with the Abrahamic monotheisms; divergence: the predicate "unborn" is a pointed rejection of both Christian incarnation and Hindu avatāra — God takes no form (warrant diverges even where the bare claim converges). Highest lived-centrality (the Mūl Mantar is recited at the head of countless prayers).

P2 — All exists within the divine order (Hukam); accepting it (Bhana) dissolves the ego (haumai)

"All are subject to His order; none is exempt from it… He who understandeth God's order is never guilty of egoism." One becomes true not by thinking, silence, or acquisition but by walking according to God's preordained will; rebirth and deliverance alike rest in that will, and grasping it frees one from haumai (I-am-ness, the root malady). The subjective face of Hukam is Bhana — the loving conformity of the soul to the divine will (amor fati but devotional, not Stoic). Folding Bhana into P2 is defensible per Pashaura Singh's reading (Bhana as the subjective response to Hukam rather than a separate doctrine); the term is named here so that an R1 reviewer can confirm or unfold. Anand II makes the devotional shape explicit: "O my soul, ever abide with God; abide with God, O my soul; He will make thee forget all sorrow… Saith Nanak, O my soul, ever abide with God" (Anand II, Macauliffe vol. II p.117). supplementary confirms: Sukhmani XI (SM-P3) — "By His order He supporteth and holdeth the firmament… Say what can be accomplished by man" — restates the Hukam doctrine.

The fourfold theological interlock — Naam / Hukam / Bhana / Karam. The load-bearing centre of Sikh devotion is a four-term system, not three: Naam (P3) is what one remembers; Hukam (P2) is what one understands and obeys; Bhana (P2) is how one accepts it — loving conformity, not Stoic resignation; Karam is doubly loaded — the deed-side (sow-and-reap, P5) and the grace-side (Gur Parsād, P4). The single Punjabi term Karam carries both senses, and the core-principle honestly splits the load across P4 and P5 while naming both faces. A specialist would note: this fourfold interlock is the load-bearing theological-conceptual centre that no single sentence captures whole; the interlock is the thing.

  • Covers: J1-P1, J2-P2 (surrender facet), J3-P1 (will facet), J3-P5 (pride facet), RS-P1 (sovereignty facet); +SM-P3, AN-P3 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī I–II, XII–XIII, XXI, XXV; Rahirās Sodar; +Sukhmani XI, Anand II–III
  • Untranslatable: Hukam (the divine order/command), Bhana (loving acceptance of the divine will — the subjective face of Hukam), haumai (egoism / I-am-ness), Karam (doubly loaded: deed/karma in P5, grace/Gur Parsād in P4)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (accept what is beyond your control; pride is the core obstacle) converges with Stoic amor fati, Muslim tawakkul / islām (submission), and Christian providence; distinctive warrant: Hukam is an order one can understand and thereby shed ego — an impersonal-yet-personal divine law, not blind fate and not merely a command to obey. Bhana sharpens the Sikh voice in the amor fati / tawakkul / providence cluster: the conformity is loving (devotional), distinguishable from Muslim tawakkul (trust-and-submission) and Christian providence (operation-of-grace).

P3 — Remember the Name (Naam / simran); it transforms, purifies, and dignifies

"At the ambrosial hour of morning meditate on the true Name." Hearing, singing, and loving the Name (suniai, simran) confers knowledge, contentment, and truth; cleanses the sin-defiled mind where water cannot; lifts even "the low" to honour; ends the fear of death — and outweighs all pilgrimage and ritual. supplementary confirms with extraordinary repetition: Sukhmani's opening ashtapadi (SM-P1) makes simran the organising claim of the entire bani; Anand IV (AN-P2) names the Name the soul's support; Bawan Akhari XX (BA-P5) names the Name the atonement for the dark age; Teg Bahadur's sloks (TB-P1) make praise the life of life. The Stage-A finding holds: simran is the structural hub of Sikh devotion.

  • Covers: J1-P4, J1-P5, J2-P1, J3-P2, AW-P2; +SM-P1, AN-P2, BA-P5, TB-P1 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī IV–V, VIII, IX–XI, XX–XXI; Āsā kī Vār p.232; +Sukhmani I, XXIV; Anand IV; Bawan Akhari XX; Sloks of Mahalla 9 I, XLII
  • Untranslatable: Naam (the Name — not a label but the immanent divine presence one remembers), simran (loving remembrance), suniai (by hearing), amrit velā (the ambrosial hour), shabad (the Word)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (a remembrance/devotional practice transforms the practitioner; inner devotion outweighs outward rite) is a strong convergence candidate (cf. Christian prayer without ceasing, Sufi dhikr, Buddhist practice-over-recitation); distinctive warrant: Naam is the immanent presence of the formless God, remembered rather than visualised — load-bearing and untranslatable (WEAK-distinctive).

P4 — Deliverance is by grace (Nadar / Gur Parsād), not by works alone

"Then what can we offer Him whereby His court may be seen?… by His favour we shall reach the gate of salvation." God is realised by the gracious glance, not unaided striving; "if the Kind One look with kindness, then is the true Guru obtained," and "by God's grace man obtaineth [divine knowledge]; skill and orders are useless therefor"; the realms of ascent culminate in Sach Khand where God "looketh on its denizens with an eye of favour." Practice is the gurmukh's response, but the fruit is gift.

  • Covers: MM-P2, J1-P3, J3-P1 (will facet), J4-P3, AW-P4; +SM-P4, AN-P4, JS-P5 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī, Mūl Mantar; Japjī IV, XXV, XXXIV–XXXVII; Āsā kī Vār Pauri IV; +Sukhmani XI.3–4 (grace reverses status, no human power), Anand V/X (passions subdued by God, not cleverness), Jaap Sāhib Sawaiyas I–V (emperors, ascetics, warriors all worthless without God's Nadar)
  • Untranslatable: Nadar / Parsād (the gracious glance/favour), Gur Parsād (by the Gurū's grace), Sach Khand (the realm of Truth)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (final release is unearned divine favour) is a strong convergence candidate with Christian grace and Pure Land tariki ("other-power"); distinctive warrant: grace flows through the Gurū / the Word (shabad) — and is held in deliberate tension with real moral causation (P5), unlike grace-without-karma readings.

P5 — We sow and reap; the earth is a temple where we are judged by our acts

"It is he himself soweth, and he himself eateth… they are judged according to their acts." God set the earth as a place of righteous action (Dharam Khand); moral causation is real and personal, and the day of reckoning weighs deeds — even as final release rests in God's grace (P4).

  • Covers: J3-P4, J4-P2, J2-P2 (consequence facet) · Evidence: Japjī XX, XXXIV, Slok
  • Untranslatable: Dharam Khand (the realm of righteousness)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (you reap what you sow; deeds bear fruit and are judged) converges very widely (Buddhist karma; biblical "whatsoever a man soweth"); distinctive synthesis: Sikhī pairs karmic causation with divine sovereignty and grace — features that diverge sharply elsewhere (karma-without-God in Buddhism; grace-without-karma in some Christian readings).

P6 — Righteousness, born of mercy, upholds the world — not myth

"The bull that is spoken of is righteousness, the offspring of mercy, which supported by patience maintaineth the order of nature." Reality rests on a moral order, not a cosmological tale; Nanak explicitly rejects the Hindu bull-myth. Truth is the very texture of creation: "True are Thy regions and true Thy universes; True Thy worlds and true Thy creation."

  • Covers: J3-P3, AW-P1 (truth facet) · Evidence: Japjī XVI; Āsā kī Vār Slok II
  • Untranslatable: sach / sat (true/truth — the recurrent epithet of God and the goal of conduct)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (a moral order, not myth, undergirds reality) converges with natural-law traditions; divergence: the deliberate demythologising rejection of the surrounding Hindu cosmology marks Sikhī's reformist stance toward its own milieu. Truthful living (foreshadowed here) is a load-bearing Sikh maxim, fuller treatment a Stage-B target.

P7 — True religion is inner virtue and the householder-saint life, not outward garb or withdrawal

"Make contentment and modesty thine earrings… and the conquest of thy heart the conquest of the world." The Jogi's renunciant kit is re-read as interior virtue; the Gurū's Sikhs "live as hermits among their families." Pilgrimage, austerity, and almsgiving win "some little honour," but "there is no devotion without virtue." Holiness is within ordinary married, working life.

  • Covers: J3-P2 (inner-over-outer facet), J4-P1, NT-P4; +AN-P5, BA-P3, TB-P6 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī XX–XXI, XXVIII–XXIX, XXXVIII; vol. I p.195; +Anand XI/XVIII (rightly-ordered attachment; ritual without knowledge is futile), Bawan Akhari V (no religious garb or debate yields divine knowledge), Sloks of Mahalla 9 XLVI (pilgrimage with pride is as fruitless as an elephant's bathing)
  • Untranslatable: gurmukh (one oriented toward the Gurū) vs manmukh (one led by their own egoistic mind), daya (compassion), shabad (the Word coined in the mint of self-discipline)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (sincerity and inner virtue over outward religious form) converges with prophetic anti-formalism and Buddhist practice-over-recitation; sharp divergence: the Sikh affirmation of the married, working householder as the ideal spiritual life diverges from the renunciant ideals of monastic Buddhism and much of Hinduism — a natural anchor for a family compass (WEAK-distinctive).

P8 — A scathing critique of hypocrisy; honour is weighed by virtue, not status or self-regard

"Greed and sin are ruler… falsehood is master of the mint… Fools call themselves pandits and… love to amass wealth." The proud "shall not be honoured… in the next world." True worth is weighed by "the weight of honour" (virtue), not by birth, office, or one's own high opinion of oneself.

  • Covers: J3-P5 (pride facet), AW-P3; +TB-P5 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī XXI; Āsā kī Vār pp.232–233; +Sloks of Mahalla 9 XVI (the person of divine knowledge inspires no fear and has no fear of others — composed by a Gurū martyred for religious liberty)
  • Untranslatable: haumai (egoism), panch (the elect/chosen — honoured not by rank but by devotion)
  • Cross-tradition note: among the strongest convergence candidates — claim (denunciation of hypocrisy; worth by virtue not rank or self-image) closely parallels the Hebrew prophets, Jesus' critique of the Pharisees, and the Buddhist redefinition of the true Brāhmaṇa; distinctive warrant: truth as God's own pervasive attribute, the "seed of the Name" as the antidote to falsehood.

P9 — All people are equal — caste, gender, and religious tribe are abolished before the one God

"The four castes of the Hindus he reduced to one." "Then was not female, or male, or caste, or birth… No one existed but the One God." Asked his caste, Nanak replied, "I belong not to any of the four castes." There is "but one Bestower on all living beings" — the single Giver of all grounds the dignity of all; hearing the Name lifts the lowliest to honour. Institutionally embodied in sangat-and-pangat (see structural sub-element below P11): sangat (the holy congregation, where all sit and listen as equals) is the devotional face; pangat (the row at langar, where all eat in one line) is the social face — the twin enacting the "one Bestower of all" warrant.

  • Covers: NT-P1, NT-P3, J2-P1 (dignity facet); +SM-P5, JS-P2 (supplementary) · Evidence: vol. I p.195, the casteless-creation hymn, the feast episode, Japjī V–VI, IX–XI; +Sukhmani XXIV.6 ("the power of looking on all men as equal" named as a charism), XI.4 ("every heart is full of God's light"); Jaap Sāhib + Akāl Ustat opening (God "contained in the ant as in the elephant" + "deemeth the rich and the poor alike" — Akāl Ustat, Macauliffe vol. V p.262; God "hath no quoit or marks, no colour, no caste, no lineage, / No form, no complexion, no outline, no costume" — Jap opening, Macauliffe vol. V p.261)
  • Untranslatable: langar (the free communal kitchen where all sit and eat as equals), sangat (the holy congregation), pangat (all in one row)
  • Cross-tradition note: one of the strongest convergence candidates in the corpus and among the most socially distinctive — claim (the equal dignity of every person) converges with the Catholic human dignity principle and prophetic justice; distinctive warrant: one God who is the single Bestower of all beings, made concrete in langar, where all castes eat together (institutionalised equality, WEAK-distinctive).

P10 — Honest livelihood is sacred (kirat karnī); exploitation defiles

Nanak chose the poor Lalo's honestly-earned bread over the rich Malik Bhago's bread "obtained by bribery and oppression" (milk issued from the honest loaf, blood from the bribed). "The worship of God and the necessity of labour for one's livelihood are eminently Sikh principles." Earning by honest work is pure; gain by exploitation is impure.

  • Covers: NT-P2, J4-P4 (honest-toil facet) · Evidence: vol. I, Lalo / Malik Bhago episode; Japjī Slok
  • Untranslatable: kirat karnī (honest livelihood — one of the three pillars, with Naam japnā and vaṇḍ chhaknā)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (the dignity of honest work; condemnation of exploitation) is a strong convergence candidate with the Catholic dignity of work and prophetic justice; distinctive warrant: labour and remembrance of God named together as a single ideal — neither idle renunciation nor godless toil, but worship and honest work.

P11 — Service, compassion, and shared salvation — saved with one's family, lifting others

"Make divine knowledge thy food, compassion thy storekeeper." By obeying God "man is saved with his family… the Gurū is saved, and saveth his disciples"; those who complete their honest toil and ponder the Name depart with bright faces, and "how many shall be emancipated in company with them!" Salvation is communal and relational, expressed in seva (selfless service). Sukhmani XXIV.7 makes the sangat the institutional locus: "Millions of sins are erased in the company of the saints, / And by their favour man escapeth Death" (Macauliffe vol. III p.272).

Sub-element: sangat-and-pangat as the institutional twin (named here per Learning 6 structural-argument rubric — distributed across P9 + P11 with the following structural reason). Sangat (the holy congregation — where Gurbānī is sung and heard) and pangat (the row at langar — where all sit and eat in one line, irrespective of caste, gender, wealth, or religion) are the institutional twin enacting the "one Bestower of all" warrant: sangat is the devotional face (P11's communal soteriology — salvation in the company of saints, Sukhmani XXIV.7), pangat is the social face (P9's casteless equality embodied in the act of eating together). Neither alone captures the structure; each requires the other for the warrant to be both prayed and enacted. The structural argument: a tradition that grounds equal dignity in "one Bestower of all" but practises only individual remembrance, or only individual charity, would fall short of the Sikh distinctive — the embodied institution in which the warrant is daily lived.

  • Covers: J2-P3, J4-P1 (compassion facet), J4-P4 (lifting-others facet), NT-P3 (philanthropy facet); +SM-P2, SM-P7, AN-P6, TB-P6 (supplementary) · Evidence: Japjī XV, XXIX, Slok; vol. I summary; +Sukhmani I.6 (those who remember God are par-upkārī / "philanthropic"), XXIV.7 ("Millions of sins are erased in the company of the saints"); Anand XVII ("pure with their parents and families, and with all their associates"); Sloks of Mahalla 9 XXII ("shall be saved himself and shall save others")
  • Untranslatable: seva (selfless service), daya (compassion), langar (the institutional expression of shared provision), sangat (the holy congregation — devotional face of the twin), pangat (the row at langar — social face of the twin), sādh saṅgat (the company of saints)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (compassion, service, care for others) converges very widely; notable divergence: communal soteriology ("saved with his family," lifting others) contrasts with the strongly individual soteriology of Theravāda Buddhism ("no one can purify another") — a warrant-level divergence flagged for the Atlas, and a natural anchor for a family compass. Sangat parallels Christian ekklēsia, Jewish minyan / kahal, Muslim ummah / jamā'ah, Buddhist saṅgha; pangat is structurally distinct — institutional egalitarianism enacted in the meal itself, not only the assembly. The Sikh contribution is doubly distinctive (devotional + social).

P12 — The cosmos itself worships the one God; meet mortality with remembrance

"The sun and moon, O Lord, are Thy lamps; the firmament Thy salver… What pleaseth Thee is the real worship." The universe performs the true ārtī; "there is but one God, although His forms are many." "The air is the guru, water our father, and the great earth our mother" — one nurturing household. And the day of death is a summons home: "Remember the Caller; Nanak, the day is approaching."

  • Covers: RS-P2, RS-P3, J4-P4 (universal-household facet) · Evidence: Sohila (Rāg Dhanāsarī, Rāg Āsā, Rāg Gaurī Dīpakī); Japjī Slok
  • Untranslatable: ārtī (the lamp-offering, here reinterpreted as the cosmos itself)
  • Cross-tradition note: claim (creation praises its maker; meet death serenely) converges with creation-praise themes (the Psalms' "the heavens declare the glory of God") and near-universal mortality wisdom; flagged warrant: "one God though His forms are many" resembles Hindu saguna/nirguna pluralism but the warrant is strict monotheism (the forms are God's, not many gods); the mortality stance (return/absorption into the one God) contrasts with the Buddhist cessation-frame.

P13 — The inner enemies and the ladder of ascent: the Five Thieves conquered, the Five Khands climbed, by the fearless God

The Sikh diagnosis of the human condition names the Five Thieves (Panj Chor / Panj Vikār) — kām (lust), krodh (wrath), lobh (greed), moh (worldly attachment), ahaṇkār (pride/ego) — as the inner enemies the gurmukh conquers through simran (P3) and the gurū's grace (P4). Anand V (Gurū Amar Das): "Thou, O God, hast put the five evil passions under subjection, and vanquished Death the torturer" (Macauliffe vol. II p.118) — note: the passions yield not to cleverness (Anand X: "no one hath obtained God by cleverness") but to attunement; P5 / P6 / P11 are the lived-virtue answer. The conquest of the Five Thieves is the practical curriculum that the Five Khands maps in vertical form.

The Five Khands (Dharam / Gyān / Saram / Karam / Sach Khand) are Gurū Nanak's structural map of the soul's ascent (Japjī XXXIV–XXXVII, Macauliffe vol. I pp.215–217): (1) Dharam Khand — the realm of righteousness, the earth as a temple of moral action where beings "are judged according to their acts" (Japjī XXXIV); (2) Gyān Khand — the realm of knowledge, where "the light of divine knowledge is resplendent" (Japjī XXXV); (3) Saram Khand — the realm of effort / beauty, where the soul is refined; (4) Karam Khand — the realm of grace (Macauliffe glosses karam here from the Persian "kindness/grace"), where the heroic devotees dwell; (5) Sach Khand — the realm of Truth, where God dwells: "He looketh on its denizens with an eye of favour, and rendereth them happy" (Japjī XXXVII, vol. I p.217). The ladder is not a self-effort climb culminating in attainment — Saram and Karam together inscribe the effort-and-grace dyad (P5 ⇄ P4) into the ascent itself; Sach Khand is reached by the gracious glance (Nadar) that opens P4. The middle realms (Gyān, Saram, Karam) had been left implicit in the Stage-A 12; named here as the coherent Sikh soteriology.

The fearless God and the Nirbhau register — honestly classified. The Mūl Mantar's predicate Nirbhau (without fear) is the ontological foundation; Gurū Teg Bahadur's Slok XVI is the human echo: "Call him a person possessed of divine knowledge, who inspireth no fear, and who hath no fear of others" (Macauliffe vol. IV p.416) — composed in prison before his martyrdom in Delhi in 1675 for defending the religious liberty of the Hindu Kashmiri Pandits. Gurū Gobind Singh extends the divine-name register with the Immortal, All-steel, Great-death, Sword-in-hand (Akāl, Sarbloh, Mahānkāl, Asipāni — Jaap Sāhib / Akāl Ustat, Macauliffe vol. V pp.261–262). This is not glorification of violence: the indestructible ontological foundation that makes the defence of the helpless and of religious liberty by armed righteousness, when peaceful means fail, possible. The Sikh position — dharma-yudh (righteous war as last resort, never aggression) — is a sharp warrant-level divergence from Christian non-resistance readings of the Sermon on the Mount and from Buddhist / Jain ahimsa absolutism, and a near-direct convergence (at the claim level) with the Catholic libertas religiosa of Dignitatis Humanae and with just-war reasoning.

Pastoral framing for a family compass (Recommendation 4): for an everyday Sikh family, Nirbhau / Niravair live not as militant invocation but as standing without fear, neither cowing others nor cowed by them, in defence of the weak and of conscience. A family compass should name this register — silence on Teg Bahadur's witness and Gobind Singh's voice would misrepresent a tradition whose ninth Gurū died for another community's religious liberty and whose tenth Gurū founded the Khalsa to protect the helpless.

  • Covers: AN-C4 (Anand V, five passions); J4-P3 (the realms of ascent, Japjī XXXIV–XXXVII); +AN-P4 (supplementary: five passions yield to attunement); +TB-P5 (supplementary: fearlessness, Slok XVI); +JS-P4 (supplementary: Akāl / Sarbloh as foundation of righteous courage)
  • Evidence: Japjī XXXIV–XXXVII (vol. I pp.215–217 — Five Khands); Anand V (vol. II p.118 — five evil passions); Anand X (vol. II p.120 — no cleverness obtains God); Sloks of Mahalla 9 XVI (vol. IV p.416 — Nirbhau slok); Jap opening (vol. V pp.261–262 — Nirbhau in Mūl-Mantar register); Akāl Ustat opening (vol. V pp.261–262 — Akāl / Sarbloh / Mahānkāl names)
  • Untranslatable: Panj Chor / Panj Vikār (the Five Thieves / Five Evils: kām, krodh, lobh, moh, ahaṇkār); the Five Khands (Dharam, Gyān, Saram, Karam, Sach Khand); Nirbhau (without fear — Mūl Mantar predicate, gurmukh's share); Niravair (without enmity — Mūl Mantar predicate); Akāl (Immortal/Timeless), Sarbloh (All-steel), Mahānkāl (Great-death), Asipāni (Sword-in-hand); dharma-yudh (righteous war as last resort)
  • Cross-tradition note: Five Thieves parallel structurally the Buddhist kleshas (greed / hatred / delusion + their derivatives), the Jain four kaṣāya (anger / pride / deceit / greed), and the Christian seven deadly sins — same form (named inner enemies as the path's obstacles), different inventory, an Atlas finding on virtue-and-vice typology. Five Khands parallel structurally Jain guṇasthāna (14 stages), Buddhist jhāna progression, the Ladder of Divine Ascent (John Climacus — post-NT), and Bahá'í Seven Valleys — same form (staged inner ascent culminating in union/realisation), different topology — and Sikhī's distinctive is the effort-and-grace dyad inscribed into the ascent itself (Saram and Karam paired before Sach Khand). Nirbhau* / Akāl / *Sarbloh is the sharpest warrant-divergence in the corpus on the legitimate use of force: Sikhī affirms armed defence of the helpless and of religious liberty as last resort, grounded ontologically in God's own indestructible nature — a load-bearing Atlas contribution distinct from non-resistance and ahimsa absolutism (WEAK-distinctive).

Convergence/divergence summary (Atlas preview)

Likely cross-tradition convergence (claim level) Likely divergence (warrant/foundation)
P1 one creator God · P4 grace · P5 sow-and-reap · P6 moral order upholds reality · P8 anti-hypocrisy / worth-by-virtue · P9 equal human dignity · P10 dignity of honest work · P11 compassion & service · P12 creation praises God / serene mortality · P13 named inner vices (Five Thieves) parallel virtue-and-vice typologies; staged inner ascent (Five Khands) parallel soul-ascent maps; armed defence of religious liberty / the helpless converges with Catholic libertas religiosa + just-war reasoning P1 "unborn" (no incarnation/avatāra) · P2 Hukam (an order one understands to shed ego), Bhana (loving conformity, not Stoic resignation) · P3 Naam/simran (remembrance of the immanent formless God) · P4 grace through the Gurū/Word, held with karma · P7 householder-saint (vs renunciation) · P9 langar / pangat casteless institution · P11 communal salvation + sangat institution · P13 dharma-yudh / Sarbloh sharp divergence from Christian non-resistance & Buddhist/Jain ahimsa absolutism on the legitimate use of force in defence of the helpless

These are hypotheses for the Atlas to test via the claim-vs-warrant method, not settled findings. WEAK-distinctive jewels to preserve: Naam/simran (P3), the householder-saint ideal (P7), institutionalised casteless equality + langar + pangat (P9), Hukam as an understandable divine order + Bhana as loving conformity (P2), the effort-and-grace dyad inscribed into the Five-Khand ladder (Saram-and-Karam paired before Sach Khand, P13), and the sharp warrant-level divergence on legitimate use of force (Akāl / Sarbloh / dharma-yudh, P13). Note the strong structural overlap of P9/P10/P7 with the Christian dignity / dignity-of-work / family-primacy themes — a key Atlas finding for the union compass.

Quality

  • Source coverage: all 13 book-level files / ~60 chapter principles map to ≥1 core-principle principle.
  • Traceability: each core-principle principle lists covered chapter principles + evidence loci.
  • Standalone comprehension: each principle stated to be intelligible to an outsider, with the theistic / Gurū-centred warrant flagged separately.
  • Structural completeness (structural-completeness gate, added 2026-05-30): PASS. All 10 canonical theme-taxonomies in 00-methodology.md are classified per the Learning 6 rubric — standalone / sub-element (with explicit structural argument) / explicit deferral (with documented category + criterion + Future work). Specifically:
    • Standalone: Mūl Mantar (P1) · Householder-vs-renunciation (P7) · Five Thieves enumeration (P13) · Five Khands ladder (P13) · Nirbhau/Akāl register (P13)
    • Standalone-distributed (named in this Quality block + acknowledged in "Why 13" intro): Three Pillars (P3 + P10 + P11) · Naam/Hukam/Karam (P3 + P2 + P4 / P5) · Gurmukh/Manmukh polarity (P2 + P7 — the polarity is the Sikh anthropology, two orientations of the will: ego-dissolution side at P2, gurmukh-as-householder side at P7)
    • Sub-element with explicit structural argument (per Learning 6 rubric): Bhana named inside P2 as the subjective face of Hukam (Pashaura Singh reading) · Five Virtues distributed across P6 (sat) + P7 (santokh, nimratā) + P11 (dayā) + P3 (pyār threaded through simran) · Sangat-and-Pangat named as institutional twin in P11 with the one-sentence structural argument that sangat is the devotional face (P11) and pangat the social face (P9), enacting "one Bestower of all" in both worship and the meal
    • Explicit deferral (category 2, out of textual focus): Five Ks (Panj Kakār — Kesh / Kanga / Kara / Kachera / Kirpan). Khalsa-founded by Gurū Gobind Singh, Vaisakhi 1699; codified in the Rahit Maryada; not in GGS scripture. Denominational scope flag: binding on amritdhari Sikhs only, not on sahajdhari; pre-1699 Sikhī of Nanak through Teg Bahadur does not include them. Future work: a Khalsa-era Rahit Maryada + Dasam Granth expansion would be required for full amritdhari coverage; this exceeds structural-completeness's named scope (GGS scripture, not Dasam Granth + Rahit) and is flagged for a separate future plan.
  • Explicit honest-scope deferrals per structural-completeness v1.4 (category-bound):
    • Wider Gurū Granth Sāhib beyond Macauliffe selections (the full 1,430 aṅgs by rāg / by author): explicit deferral, category 1 (PD source genuinely unavailable in fully-attested machine-readable form). Stages A+B cover the principal compositions of Gurūs Nanak, Amar Das, Arjan, Teg Bahadur, Gobind Singh; remaining coverage (Gurūs Angad, Ram Das, fuller Sukhmani XII–XXIII, Bāramāha, Jaitsari kī War, Sahaskriti Sloks, Gāthā, Punhas, and the bhagat bāṇī — Kabīr, Ravidās, Farīd, Nāmdev, the striking inclusivist feature) is a Stage-C Future work, capped within the structural-completeness ≤4-hour-per-tradition R4-interleave budget. Named PD source target: the Macauliffe 6-volume PD set is selections; full Sri Guru Granth Sahib PD English remains the resolution path.
    • Post-Macauliffe Sikh scholarship (Bhai Vir Singh; Kapur Singh; Khushwant Singh; W.H. McLeod; Pashaura Singh; Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh): explicit deferral, category 2 (out of textual focus) — the distillation is text-focused, not scholarship-focused; R1 reviewer territory.
  • Provenance caveat: several P7/P9/P10 atomic statements derive from Macauliffe's narrative/summary of Gurū Nanak's life (Janamsākhī traditions) rather than verbatim Gurbānī; flagged in books/08-nanak-teachings.md. Stage-C Future work: re-anchor these to specific GGS aṅgs (the casteless-creation hymn NT-C3 to the Solahā in Rāg Mārū, etc.) — within the per-tradition R4-interleave cap.
  • Quotes verbatim against Macauliffe vols I–V (quote audit pass + structural-completeness cross-check of Stage-B additions: the P9 Stage-B composite-paraphrase finding identified at audit Section 4.15 has been corrected — see the audit-deep doc for the Section-4.15 closure). The previously-fabricated P4 phrases caught by R2 ("We have nothing to offer" and "obtained by God's kind glance, not by skill") remain durably replaced with verbatim Macauliffe; the agent-quote-fabrication-caught-by-audit failure mode has not re-emerged in this retrofit pass.

supplementary depth expansion — addendum

supplementary added five book-level files covering the principal compositions of the second through tenth Gurūs (Macauliffe vols II–V): Anand Sāhib (Gurū Amar Das), Sukhmani Sāhib and Bawan Akhari (Gurū Arjan), Sloks of Mahalla 9 (Gurū Teg Bahadur), and Jaap Sāhib + Akāl Ustat opening + Tav Prasad Sawaiyas (Gurū Gobind Singh; Dasam Granth with binding canon caveat — included in daily Nitnem by tradition). Total: 49 new atomic statements; 30 new chapter principles, all additive to the core principles above.

Headline Stage-B confirmations: every Stage-A principle is reinforced across multiple Gurūs (especially P1, P3, P4, P7, P9, P11), validating the structural-hub finding that Ik Onkār, Naam/simran, and Hukam are the load-bearing recurrent confessions.

Distinctive Stage-B contributions beyond the original Stage-A 12 — now structurally absorbed in the structural-completeness retrofit:

  • Gurū Teg Bahadur's Nirbhau doctrine (Slok XVI): "Call him a person possessed of divine knowledge, who inspireth no fear, and who hath no fear of others" (Macauliffe vol. IV p.416). Authored in prison before his martyrdom in defence of the Kashmiri Pandits' religious liberty (Delhi, 1675), this slok is the Sikh creedal commitment to religious liberty — a near-direct convergence with the Catholic libertas religiosa of Dignitatis Humanae. Now anchored in P13 (alongside Mūl Mantar's Nirbhau predicate); previously flagged in P8 as a Stage-B contribution.
  • Gurū Gobind Singh's Sarbloh / Akāl names (Jaap Sāhib, Akāl Ustat opening): God as the Immortal, All-steel, Great-death, Sword-in-hand. Not glorification of violence: the indestructible ontological foundation that makes the defence of the helpless possible when peaceful means fail. Sharp warrant-level divergence from Christian non-resistance readings and from Buddhist / Jain ahimsa absolutism — a Sikh signature for the Atlas (continuous with the Khalsa founding, 1699). Promoted to standalone P13 in the structural-completeness retrofit (was deferred-without-category in the prior Stage-A 12; the deferral did not satisfy any of the three legitimate structural-completeness v1.4 categories — see audit-deep Section F1).
  • Gurū Amar Das's Five Passions (Anand V): "Thou, O God, hast put the five evil passions under subjection, and vanquished Death the torturer" (Macauliffe vol. II p.118) — the verbatim source-anchor for the Five Thieves enumeration now structurally named in P13.
  • Gurū Amar Das's sahaj-toned communal sanctification (Anand XVII): "pure with their parents and families, and with all their associates" — strengthens the relational-soteriology anchor for a family compass (folded into P11).
  • Gurū Arjan's par-upkārī synthesis (Sukhmani I.6): "they who remember God are philanthropic" — names the gurmukh's service explicitly as the fruit of simran (folded into P11).
  • Gurū Arjan's sādh-saṅgat doctrine (Sukhmani XXIV.7): "Millions of sins are erased in the company of the saints, / And by their favour man escapeth Death" — the verbatim source-anchor for the sangat-and-pangat institutional twin sub-element now named in P11 with explicit structural argument.
  • Gurū Arjan's inclusivist witness (Sukhmani XXIV.7): "God's name is the sum-total of all faith" — the Name "the Simritis, Shastars, and Veds repeat" — a substantial-but-anti-syncretic universalism for the Atlas to weigh against Christian and Hindu inclusivisms.

The structural-completeness retrofit (structural-completeness) added P13 and elevated Bhana, the Naam/Hukam/Bhana/Karam fourfold interlock, and sangat-and-pangat per the audit-deep recommendations. No principle was removed; P1–P12 are preserved with Bhana-and-sangat-and-pangat additions to P2, P9, P11 prose. P4's R2-fixed quote anchors are preserved verbatim; the P9 Stage-B "no caste, no lineage, no costume" composite-paraphrase issue surfaced at audit Section 4.15 has been corrected to verbatim Jap-opening (Macauliffe vol. V p.261) with honest stringing.