Japji Sahibਜਪੁਜੀ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Japji Sahib is the opening prayer of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, composed by Guru Nanak Dev Ji in the early 16th century. Beginning with the Mool Mantar, the root formula of Sikh belief, it unfolds across 38 pauris (stanzas) and a closing Salok. Sikhs recite it every morning as the first prayer of Nitnem.

The first bani of the scripture

Japji Sahib stands at the very beginning of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, on its opening pages. When Guru Arjan Dev Ji compiled the Adi Granth in 1604, with Bhai Gurdas as his scribe, he placed Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s composition first. It was a deliberate statement: these verses hold the essence of the entire Sikh message, and everything else in the scripture is, in a sense, their expansion.

It is the first composition of Guru Nanak, and the first bani of Nitnem, the Sikh daily prayer. In gurdwaras it is chanted in the morning and evening diwans, and it is recited at Khalsa initiation ceremonies and at cremations, the prayer that opens the day, and the prayer that accompanies the departed.

What the 38 pauris say

The composition opens with the Mool Mantar: Ik Onkar, that there is One God; Satnam, Kartapurakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akal Moorat, Ajooni, Saibhang, Gurparsad. God is truth itself, the creator, without fear or hatred, timeless, unborn, self-existent, realised through the Guru’s grace. Every Sikh prayer begins from this formula.

The first pauri teaches that ritual bathing cannot wash the mind, silence cannot still its restless thoughts, and food or riches cannot satisfy its hunger: purification comes only from abiding in the divine’s love. The pauris that follow meditate on hukam, the divine command by which life’s ups and downs unfold; on suniai, the transformative power of listening to the Guru’s word; and on the nature of a God whom ‘all the words in the world’ cannot fully describe. A closing Salok, composed by Guru Angad, seals the bani.

Nitnem: the morning prayer

Japji Sahib is the first of the five banis of Nitnem, the daily discipline of an initiated Sikh. It is recited at Amrit Vela, the ambrosial hours before dawn, when the mind is most still and receptive. For millions of Sikhs these verses are not merely read but breathed, memorised in childhood, recited daily for a lifetime.

The name itself carries the instruction: ‘Jap’ comes from the Sanskrit japa, the recitation of a mantra in a low voice, repeated internally. It also means to understand, to take wisdom to heart. ‘Ji’ and ‘Sahib’ are marks of love and honour. Japji Sahib is the prayer to be chanted.

Why is it called “Japji Sahib”?

Gurbani itself uses ‘Jap’ in the sense of understanding wisdom: “Aisa Giaan Japo Man Mere, Hovo Chakar Sache Kere” calls the mind to take true wisdom to heart. So the title is both a command and a description, the bani to be chanted and the wisdom to be understood.

What does the Mool Mantar say?

The Mool Mantar is the opening passage of the Japji and the root formula of Sikhism: Ik Onkar, One God; Satnam, whose name is Truth; Kartapurakh, the creator being; Nirbhau, without fear; Nirvair, without hatred; Akal Moorat, timeless in form; Ajooni, unborn; Saibhang, self-existent; Gurparsad, realised by the Guru’s grace. It opens every Sikh Ardas and every new beginning.

What is the difference between Japji Sahib and Jaap Sahib?

Readers often mix up the Japji Sahib with the Jaap Sahib, and the names do sound alike, but they are different banis by different Gurus. The Guru Granth Sahib opens with the Japji Sahib of Guru Nanak Dev Ji; the Dasam Granth opens with the Jaap Sahib, credited to Guru Gobind Singh Ji. The Japji is composed in Gurmukhi Punjabi across 38 pauris. The Jaap Sahib runs to 199 stanzas, written mostly in Braj-Hindi and Sanskrit with Persian and Arabic words, and carries some 950 names of God, moving from Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu through hundreds of names drawn from Hindu tradition, all held to be manifestations of the One, limitless eternal creator. Like the Japji, it praises God as unchanging, loving and unborn, but it also names God as the wielder of weapons, in keeping with the martial spirit of the Dasam Granth.

Manuscripts and print history

The oldest surviving Japji texts sit inside historic manuscripts of the Adi Granth, including the Kartarpur Bir, written in the hand of Bhai Gurdas under Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s supervision around 1604. Lavish 19th-century illuminated folios, like the floral-bordered page shown above, survive in collections across Punjab and beyond.

Printed editions of the Japji began appearing in the second half of the 19th century. The earliest came from Lahore in 1865, followed by many more from Lahore, Amritsar, Karachi and Sialkot through the 1870s and 1880s. Some were printed in Perso-Arabic script and one Karachi edition in Khoja-Sindhi script, and several carried Punjabi commentaries by scholars such as Bihari Lal, Mani Singh, Pandit Salgram Das, and Hariprakash, whose Bodh-arthavali appeared at Rawalpindi in 1889. The German scholar Ernst Trumpp appended the original Gurmukhi text of the Japji to his 1877 translation of the Adi Granth, and Max Arthur Macauliffe carried the bani to English readers with a tentative translation in a circular letter of 1897 and a fuller rendering in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1900.

The bani travelled on iron as well as paper. A plate of the Charaina, the four-mirror body armour worn by Guru Gobind Singh Ji at the battle of Bhangani around 1688, carries the Japji Sahib inscribed on it: the morning prayer as a soldier’s companion.