The Early Rehatnamas: Reading the Puratan Codes of Khalsa Conduct

A ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮਾ (rehatnama) is a written code of conduct for Sikhs. The word joins ਰਹਿਤ (rehat), meaning the disciplined way of life, with nama, meaning a document or letter. So a rehatnama is, quite simply, a 'rehat document': a text that tells a Sikh how to live, what to do, and what to avoid.

These codes grew up around the ਖਾਲਸਾ (Khalsa), the initiated community founded in 1699. They describe daily prayer, personal discipline, the meaning of ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ (initiation), and the penances or ਤਨਖਾਹ owed for lapses. McLeod treats the whole body of these rules as the evolving 'Khalsa Rahit' (McLeod 2003).

This course is about these texts and the people who wrote and edited them. It explains and describes; it does not reproduce the codes line by line. The aim is to help you read these sources the way a careful scholar does.

Several short codes make up the ਪੁਰਾਤਨ ਰਹਿਤਨਾਮੇ (early rehatnamas). Each is traditionally linked to a particular figure, though as later lessons show, those links are debated. The table below introduces the main ones described by Padam and discussed in critical scholarship (McLeod 2003).

These were not a single planned set. They are separate writings, of different lengths and styles, that later editors gathered together because they share the same purpose: defining proper Sikh conduct.

Each early code carries a name. Tradition presents these names as the authors, and the names matter because they give a code its authority. Bhai Nand Lal is remembered as a Persian-and-Punjabi poet of Guru Gobind Singh's court, which lends the Tanakhah-nama great prestige. Bhai Chaupa Singh is remembered as a tutor close to the Guru's household, which frames his long prose code as inside knowledge.

Bhai Desa Singh and Bhai Prahlad Singh are less fully documented, yet their codes circulated widely and shaped how Sikhs understood the ਰਹਿਤ. The attribution to a respected near-contemporary of the Guru is part of how each text claims to speak with authority.

It is important to hold two things at once. The traditional attributions tell us how the community received and valued these texts. They do not, by themselves, prove who actually composed them. McLeod's careful study of the Chaupa Singh code shows how much can be learned by separating the claim of authorship from the evidence for it (McLeod 1987).

For a long time the rehatnamas existed as scattered manuscripts, copied by hand and varying from copy to copy. The scholar Pyara Singh Padam did the patient work of ਸੰਪਾਦਨ (editing and compilation): he gathered these codes together and published them in his well-known volume Rehatname (Padam 1974).

An editor's job here is more than reprinting. Padam had to compare different handwritten copies, decide which readings to follow, group the texts, and add notes that introduce each code and its supposed author. By bringing the codes into one place, he made it possible for students and scholars to read them side by side and to see how they agree and differ.

A compilation like this is itself a source worth studying. The choices an editor makes, which manuscripts to trust, how to order the texts, what to say about authorship, shape how later readers understand the whole tradition. So when we read 'the rehatnamas' today, we are often reading them through Padam's editorial frame.

The authorship and dating of the early rehatnamas are debated, and this course treats them as genuinely open questions rather than settled facts. We avoid attaching exact years to any code, because the surviving evidence does not support precise dating.

The traditional view holds that each code was written by the figure named in it, in or near the time of Guru Gobind Singh. The critical view, developed by McLeod and others, argues that several of these texts likely grew in layers: an early core may have been expanded, revised, and added to by later hands, so that a manuscript copied generations later may not match what any single original author wrote (McLeod 2003).

This is why scholars speak of dating ranges and of 'redaction' rather than fixed authorship. The Chaupa Singh code, for example, shows signs of such growth, which is why its history is studied so closely (McLeod 1987). None of this denies the texts' religious value; it simply asks us to be honest about what we can and cannot prove.

How should a careful reader use the early rehatnamas? First, read each code for what it is: a devotional and disciplinary text meant to guide conduct, not a neutral report. Its goal is to shape behavior, so it tells us what its compilers thought a good Sikh should do, which is valuable in itself.

Second, separate the layers. Ask which parts may be early and which may be later additions, and resist the urge to assign a single date or a single author where the evidence is thin. Where a related ਹੁਕਮਨਾਮਾ (edict) or other document survives, comparing it can help test a claim.

Third, use good editions and translations, and notice the editor's hand. Reading Padam's compilation alongside critical work such as the Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies and McLeod's studies lets you weigh tradition against evidence (Singh and Fenech 2014; McLeod 2003). The result is a reading that respects the texts' meaning for the community while remaining honest about their history.