Ik Onkarਇੱਕ ਓਅੰਕਾਰ

Ik Onkar, written ੴ, is the opening phrase of Sikh scripture and the statement of oneness at the heart of the Sikh faith: there is one supreme reality, one God, who is the source and the goal of all that exists. It is the first phrase of the Mool Mantar, the first words of Guru Granth Sahib Ji, and one of the most recognised symbols of Sikhism, inscribed over gurdwara doors and at the head of Sikh writing everywhere.

What does Ik Onkar mean?

Ik Onkar means that God is one: one and only one, who cannot be compared or contrasted with any other. The phrase is a compound of two parts. Ik is the Punjabi word for one, and Onkar names the supreme reality, the absolute. Scholars describe the whole phrase as the absolute monotheistic unity of God. The scholar Pashaura Singh puts the Sikh reading plainly: by beginning with one, Guru Nanak Dev Ji emphasises the singularity of the Divine, the Supreme Being who is one without a second, the source as well as the goal of all that exists. Guru Nanak Dev Ji states it himself in Guru Granth Sahib Ji: "My Master is the One. He is the One, brother, and He alone exists." The Mool Mantra page on Jugti works through the phrases that follow Ik Onkar one by one.

How is the Ik Onkar symbol written?

In Gurmukhi, Ik Onkar has a distinct written form of its own: the numeral 1 joined to the letter Ura, the first letter of the Gurmukhi alphabet, written in its Oankar form with a long sweeping tail. Written together, the two make the single glyph ੴ, which is so complete a sign that it is encoded in Unicode as one character, U+0A74. Bhai Gurdas Ji, the first scribe of Guru Granth Sahib Ji, explained the figure this way: by writing 1 at the beginning, it has been shown that God, who subsumes all forms in Himself, is only one. In old manuscripts the scribes often drew the glyph with great care, stretching its tail in a calligraphic curve across the page, as the illuminated folio in this page's picture shows. Because the glyph carries the whole opening teaching in one sign, Sikhs place it at the head of letters, books and documents, and over the entrances of gurdwaras.

Where does Ik Onkar appear in the Mool Mantar?

Ik Onkar is the opening phrase of the Mool Mantar, the root formula of Sikh belief, and so it is also the opening of Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself. The Mool Mantar is the first composition of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, and it stands again at the head of Japji Sahib, his morning prayer, which then continues with 38 hymns and a final salok by Guru Angad Dev Ji. After Ik Onkar, the Mool Mantar describes the One it names: truth by name, creator, fearless, without hatred, of timeless form, unborn, self-existent, and known by the Guru's grace, in the widely used English rendering. Every raag section and every composition in Guru Granth Sahib Ji begins from this same opening, so a reader meets Ik Onkar again and again through the scripture, each time returning to the same first truth before any teaching begins.

Is Onkar the same as Om?

The words are related, but Sikhs give Onkar a meaning of its own, and the difference matters. Onkar is a cognate of Om, the sacred sound of the ancient Indian scriptures, and Wazir Singh described it as a variation of Om implying the seed force that evolves as the universe. Guru Nanak Dev Ji himself wrote a long composition entitled Oankar, in Ramkali Dakkhani, in which he attributes the origin and sense of speech itself to the Divinity, the Om maker. Pashaura Singh stresses, however, that the meaning of Oankar in the Sikh tradition is quite different in certain respects from its interpretations in other Indian philosophical traditions: Sikhs view Oankar as pointing to the ineffable quality of God, described as the Person beyond time, the Eternal One, the One without form. Alongside Ik Onkar, the Gurus' own writings use other names for the same one reality, most often Akal Purakh, the Eternal One, and Nirankar, the One without form, and in later Sikh usage Waheguru, the Wonderful Sovereign.

Where will you see Ik Onkar today?

You will see the glyph wherever Sikh life is written down or built. It is inscribed in places of worship, printed at the head of Sikh scriptures and prayer books, and carried on some Sikh flags alongside the Khanda. It opens respectful letters and documents, appears on gurdwara signs, book covers, jewellery and car plates, and in 2019 it travelled further than usual: Air India launched its direct London to Amritsar flight ahead of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji with Ik Onkar printed in gold on a red background on the tail of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. For a Sikh reader, meeting the glyph is a small act of remembrance in itself: before anything else is said, the first word says that God is one.

Why does Ik Onkar matter?

Ik Onkar matters because everything else in the Sikh faith is built on it. If the supreme reality is one, without a second, then no person stands closer to God by birth, and no one is outside the one creation: the oneness of God is the root of the Sikh teaching of the oneness and equality of humanity. It also sets the direction of Sikh spiritual life. The One is not only the source of all that exists but also its goal, so the life of naam japna, remembering the Name, is a return toward the reality the first two words announce. That is why the phrase stands where it stands, at the very opening of the scripture and of the daily prayer: a Sikh begins the day, and begins reading, with oneness. Read together with its companion symbol, the Khanda, Ik Onkar gives the faith its two best known signs: one for the one God, and one for the life lived in balance under that God.