Sikhism
Symbol · Symbols of the Religions
Khanda
The Two Sovereignties
Sovereignty held whole: devotion and worldly duty as one obligation, with protection owed to the defenceless.
What it meansTwo curved swords for mīrī and pīrī — worldly authority and spiritual authority, held by one person and never separated. The circle between them is the eternal without beginning or end, and the straight blade at the centre is the truth that divides truth from falsehood.
Book · Indian Traditions · 1604
The Gurū Granth Sāhib
Bound Volume, Living Gurū
Hindu and Muslim voices sing inside it beside the Gurus; anyone may sit before it, level with everyone.
SignificanceGuru Gobind Singh ended the line of human Gurus by declaring the book itself the Guru — so authority passed to a text that cannot be lobbied, cannot found a dynasty and cannot change its mind. The reading is that the word, not the person, was always what taught.
The FindingGuruship passed to the book itself at Nanded in October 1708, so the bedchamber, the palanquin and the chaur are protocol owed to a person rather than devotional symbolism — and Indian law has since recognised an installed Gurū Granth Sāhib as a juristic person able to hold property in its own name.
Thread · Indian Traditions○
The Khalsa and the Ten Gurus
The succession of ten human Gurus from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, and the militant order Gobind Singh founded to protect the faith.
SignificanceThe Khalsa was founded at a specific gathering in 1699, formalising the community's identity through the five articles of faith. Nine years later, Guru Gobind Singh took the unusual step of ending the human succession entirely, transferring the office of Guru to the scripture itself.