Ardas ਅਰਦਾਸ
Any time
The formal Sikh supplication offered at the close of most prayers and ceremonies, remembering the Gurus and the community and asking for grace.
What it is
Unlike the other daily prayers, Ardas (from the Persian arz-dasht, a written petition) is not a fixed composition of the Gurus enshrined in scripture: it is the community’s own standing prayer, offered on the feet, palms joined, facing the Guru Granth Sahib. Its wording — standardised in outline by the Rehat Maryada — grew with the community’s history and still admits the occasion’s particular petitions at its close.1,2
How it moves
It opens invoking the ten Gurus in order — the first lines drawn from the tradition of Guru Gobind Singh’s court — then remembers the community’s costliest treasures: the martyrs, the tortured and the unbroken, those who kept the faith “to the last hair and the last breath,” the shrines severed by the border of 1947. It ends asking wellbeing for everyone: Nanak naam chardi kala, tere bhane sarbat da bhala — in the Name, ever-rising spirits; in Your will, the good of all.1,2
When it is offered
Ardas closes congregational worship and nearly every ceremony and rite — naming, marriage, cremation, the opening and settling of the scripture — and Sikhs offer it privately at any undertaking or thanksgiving. The congregation answers each movement with Waheguru.1,2
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