Hukamnamas written by the Gurus to individual sangats survive in some numbers. They are short letters, often asking for specific support, arms, horses, money, or instructing on conduct, signed and sealed.
They are the only Sikh documents of the period that are unambiguously contemporary, unedited and administrative rather than devotional, which makes them the best evidence there is for how the community actually operated.
Ganda Singh published a collection. Others have appeared since. A number are held by families whose ancestors received them, in gurdwaras, and in institutional collections.
Hukamnamas of Mata Sundari Ji, issued from Delhi in the forty years after 1708, are among the most valuable, because they document the community's organisation during the period of worst persecution.
There is no complete register of surviving hukamnamas. Ones held privately surface at intervals, and some have been sold.
Compiling a register would be a straightforward project and would produce the closest thing Sikh history has to an archive of its own eighteenth century.
A hukamnama is a written order from a Guru, or later from a takht, to a sangat or an individual, usually short, often about a specific request for men, money or material.
They are held in gurdwaras, in family custody and in a few institutional collections, and Ganda Singh's published volume is the main scholarly gathering of them.
They matter because they are documents rather than tradition. A dated letter with a seal settles questions that centuries of retelling cannot.