KHALSA. HIND. The Sikh people ; the Sikh theocracy established by the Guru Govind ; the old prominent division into Khalasa, meaning of Nanak, and Khalsa, meaning of d'vind, which is noticed by Forster, is no longer in force ; the former term Khalasa is almost, indeed, unknown in the present day. The word Khalsa, meaning select, is a term equivalent to a state 4)r common wealth, but was supposed by the Sikh to have a mystical meaning, and to imply that theocracy or superior government under the protection of which they lived, and to the established rules and the basis of which, as fixed by Guru Govind, it is their civil and religious duty to conform. The Kbalsa sect of Sikhs believe in the Adi Granth of Nanak, hut do not conform to the institutions of Guru Govind. Tho word Khalsa is from Khalis, pure or select, and taken to mean the purest or the most select ; by others it is derived from Khalas, free, and meaning the freed or exempt, alluding to the sect being exempt from the usages imposed on the other Sikhs.
The principal of the religious institutions of Guru Govind is that of Pahal, the ceremony by which a convert is initiated and made a member of the Sikh Khalsa or commonwealth. The forms which Govind employed are still observed. The neophyte is told by the officiating Granthi or priest that he must allow his hair to grow.
When it has grown a month or two, he dresses himself in blue from head to foot, and is then presented with five weapons, a sword, a firelock, a bow, an arrow, and a pike. The candidate and the initiator wash their feet with water in which sugar is put, and this nectar (called pahal) is stirred with a steel knife or dagger, five quatrains from their scriptures being read. Be tween each quatrain the breath is exhaled with a puff, and the beverage stirred as before. The hands of the convert are then joined, and the Granthi or initiator pours some of the nectar into them, of which he drinks five times, rubbing a little on his head and beard, exclaiming, Wah ! Guru ji ka Khalsa! Wah ! Guru ji ki Fatah!' or Wah ! Govind Singh, ap hi Guru chela!' Govind, who instituted the Pahal, it is said, went through this form with five of his followers, drinking of the water which had washed each other's feet. Women are made Sikhs in the same manner as men, except that the nectar is stirred with the back instead of the edge of the knife. The children of Sikhs go through this ceremony at an early age.—Cunningham's Sikhs, p. 96 ; Malcolm's Sikhs ; Hist, of the Panjab, i. pp. 101, 126 ; Forster's Tr. i, p. 309.