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Meaning
It literally means "without-death being". The first word
Akal, literally "timeless, immortal, non-temporal," is a term integral to Sikh tradition and philosophy. It is extensively used in the Guru Granth Sahib, and the
Dasam Granth hymns by Guru Gobind Singh, who titled one of his poetic compositions
Akal Ustat, i.e. "In Praise (Ustati) of the Timeless One (Akal)". However, the concept of Akal is not peculiar to the Dasam Granth. It goes back to the very origins of the Sikh faith with Guru Nanak.
The term Kāl refers to "time," with the negative prefix a- added to render the word akal, meaning "timeless" or "eternal."
The word Purakh (ਪੁਰਖ) is the Punjabi form of Purusha (पुरुष).
Akal Purakh does not refer to a personified deity like the Christian conception of God centred around a concept of personal salvation, but rather to a concept of ultimate reality.
Usage
The
Rehat produced by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee proposes to use the term
Akal Purakh as the paramount/formal Sikh term for God, despite there being variations of this name found in the compositions authored by Guru Nanak which were employed far more commonly than Akal Purakh (used only once by Nanak), with variations being Adi Purakh (used twelve times) and Karta Purakh (used three times). Furthermore, other terms for god, sourced from Arabic or Persian, that were used by Nanak were even more commonly used, such as
Sahib (hundred-and-thirty-seven times),
Khasam (seventy-eight times), or
Patishah (twenty-three times).
See also
