Ardas
The congregational petition that closes every Sikh service and marks every undertaking.
The communal petition, offered standing with folded hands, usually facing the Guru Granth Sahib, at the close of nearly every service and life event. Its opening and ending are fixed and rehearse the Gurus and the community's history; a flexible middle names the matter at hand: a wedding, an illness, a death, a journey, a new undertaking. One voice leads and the congregation assents together.
Ardas is said standing, with hands folded, at the end of every service and at the start and finish of almost any undertaking: a journey, a wedding, a move, a new business.
Its structure is fixed at both ends and open in the middle. It opens by recalling the Gurus in order and closes with a request for the welfare of all, and between those the person leading may name what this particular gathering is asking for.
The closing request is for the wellbeing of everyone without exception, which is why the same prayer is said as readily after a funeral as after a wedding.
Does it have a text?
A fixed text with a variable middle section, in Gurmukhi. It is not published here for the same reason as the rest of the Sikh material, and its own page sets that out: the available public-domain English is a translation the community rejects, and publishing it would be worse than publishing nothing.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Sikh
- Nitnem — The set daily prayers of Sikh practice, recited morning, evening and before sleep.
- Naam simran — Remembrance of the divine name, repeated aloud or in the breath.
- Sikh kirtan — The sung scripture that occupies most of a Sikh service.
- Path — The reading of the Guru Granth Sahib, sometimes continuously from beginning to end.
- Langar and seva — The free kitchen and the service around it, treated as devotional acts.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.