Sukhmani Sahib is a composition of twenty-four ashtpadis, each of eight stanzas, by Guru Arjan Dev Ji, in raga Gauri. The name means the pearl of peace, or the consoler of the mind.
It is the most widely recited long composition in Sikh households after the Japji. It is read at times of illness, bereavement and difficulty, and groups of women in particular hold regular Sukhmani Sahib paths in one another's houses, which is one of the main forms of organised religious life among Sikh women.
Its central section on the brahmgiani, the person who has realised, is among the most quoted passages in the scripture.
It was composed at Amritsar in the 1590s, in the period when the town was being built and the Adi Granth was being assembled.
The Sukhmani Sahib societies in villages and in the diaspora are an entirely lay institution with no clergy and no formal structure, and they are almost undocumented.
It is twenty-four ashtpadis, each of eight stanzas with a shlok before it, and it is the longest sustained composition of its kind in the volume.
It is recited daily in a great many Punjabi households and takes about ninety minutes. Sukhmani groups, mostly of women, meet in houses and gurdwaras to read it together.
Its subject is the state it names, the peace of mind and what produces it, and its method is repetition and accumulation rather than argument.