ਚੌਪਈ ਸਾਹਿਬਚੌਪਈ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Chaupai Sahib, whose full name is Kaviyo Bach Benti Chaupai, is ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਜੀ ਨੇ's prayer for protection, and the most personally urgent voice in the Sikh morning prayers. It opens with a hand held out: Hamri karo hath dai rachha, protect me with Your own hands. Read in the morning as one of the five banis of Nitnem and again in the evening inside Rehras Sahib, it is the bani Sikhs reach for at any hour when they are frightened, ill, travelling or facing something they cannot handle alone.

What is Chaupai Sahib?

Chaupai Sahib is a hymn by Guru Gobind Singh Ji that stands at the close of the Charitropakhyan, the great collection of tales in the Dasam Granth. Its full title unpacks its shape: kaviyo bach means the word of the poet, benti means a plea or humble request, and a chaupai is a verse of four lines, the metre of the prayer's core. It is, in form, an ardas set to verse: a direct, first-person request to God for protection, made not in prose at the end of a service but as scripture itself. It is a short composition, taking less than about five minutes to recite at a slow pace, and it forms part of a Sikh's ਨਿਤਨੇਮ, the daily reading, and of the Amrit Sanchar ceremony.

What does Chaupai Sahib ask for?

The prayer begins at home. Protect me with Your hands, it asks, fulfil the desire of my heart, keep my mind at Your feet and sustain me as Your own. It asks that the speaker's enemies be destroyed and that the household, the servants and Sikhs of the Guru live in comfort, that the speaker never turn to worship any other, and that the fear of death itself be taken away. In Sikh reading, the enemies named so directly are heard on two levels at once: the opponents a Khalsa of 1696 faced in the field, and the inner enemies, fear, anger, greed and despair, that a reader faces now.

The middle of the prayer widens from the speaker to the nature of God. Time itself brought Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu into being, the hymn says, and the whole world is the play of the Timeless One, who knows the inner feeling of every heart and the pain of each creature, from the ant to the elephant, and who feels the suffering of the saints as his own. Only then does the plea return, sharpened: now protect me, save Your Sikhs, and let whoever takes refuge in the Lord of the Sword find their troubles removed. The closing request of the core verses is the one the Rehat Maryada uses to mark the prayer's end: be my helper in every place, and save me from wickedness and pain.

How is Chaupai Sahib put together?

As Sikhs recite it, Chaupai Sahib has four movements. First come the 25 chaupai verses themselves, numbered 377 to 401 in the Dasam Granth's continuous verse numbering, from Hamri karo hath dai rachha to Dusht dokh te leho bachai. Then comes a short arril, promising that pain, suffering and fear stay away from whoever recites this chaupai even once. Then a further chaupai gives the date and place of completion, and the recitation closes with a savaiya, Pae gahe jab te tumre, Since I caught hold of Your feet, and a dohra, Sagal duar ko chhad kai, I have left every other door and taken Yours. Scholars note that this closing savaiya and dohra, as recited, do not stand in the Charitropakhyan at all: they come from the end of the Ram Avtar section of the Chaubis Avtar, gathered into the prayer's ending by the tradition that recites it.

When was Chaupai Sahib completed?

The prayer dates itself. Its closing chaupai says the work was completed in the Vikram Samvat year 1753, on Sunday, the eighth day of the bright half of the month of Bhadon, on the banks of the Sutlej, which places it in 1696. Researchers Gurinder Singh Mann and Kamalroop Singh locate that completion at Gurdwara Bhabour Sahib, at Nangal on the Sutlej, as the closing of the Charitropakhyan. The date matters for how the prayer is heard: it was finished three years before the founding of the Khalsa in 1699, by a Guru whose community was already living between battles, and its plea for protection is not a metaphor borrowed from safer times.

Is Chaupai Sahib a morning or an evening prayer?

Both, and the two answers sit side by side in Sikh practice. In the gutka as most Sikhs use it, Chaupai Sahib is the fourth of the five morning banis of Nitnem, read after ਤਵਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ਸਵੱਯੇ and before Anand Sahib. In the Sikh Rehat Maryada, however, the prescribed morning set is Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib and the ten Savaiye, while Benti Chaupai is prescribed by name inside the evening Sodar Rehras, where its 25 verses are quoted by their first and last lines. Many Sikhs therefore meet the same words twice a day, once by devotion in the morning and once by rule in the evening, and the prayer is also recited by the Panj Pyare at Amrit Sanchar.

How is Chaupai Sahib recited today?

Chaupai Sahib is recited daily in gurdwaras as part of Rehras Sahib at sunset, read from the gutka and on phones in the morning Nitnem, and sung in kirtan in recordings that many families keep close. Beyond the daily round, it is the bani Sikhs turn to in difficulty: before a journey, in illness, at a hospital bedside, in grief and in fear, because its promise is practical and its length is kind, five minutes at a slow pace. Its verses are also among the most memorised lines of the Dasam Granth, and its opening request, protect me with Your own hands, is often the first prayer a Sikh reaches for when words are hard to find.