The rehatnamas.
The eighteenth-century codes written by men who claimed to have known Guru Gobind Singh, and the raw material every later faction quotes. They disagree with each other about meat, caste, tobacco and the standing of women — which is precisely why a modern committee had to sit down and write the Rehat Maryada.
The rehatnamas are the eighteenth-century documents that the Rehat Maryada was written to replace, and they remain the ammunition dump of Sikh sectarian argument. Texts like the Tankhahnama attributed to Bhai Nand Lal, the Rehatnama of Bhai Chaupa Singh, and Prem Sumarag set out Khalsa conduct in detail and contradict each other and sometimes themselves — on whether meat is permitted, on how far caste rules survive inside the Khalsa, on the treatment of women, on relations with Muslims. Some passages are frankly hostile in ways modern Sikh institutions do not repeat. Their manuscript histories are murky and later interpolation is well documented. Every faction quotes the rehatnama that supports it, which is exactly the situation that made a single agreed code necessary in 1945, and the quoting has not stopped.
The same ground, other faiths
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