At Anandpur on Vaisakhi 1699 Guru Gobind Singh Ji asked the assembly for a head. Five men came forward, one after another, each taken into a tent from which the Guru emerged with a bloodied sword.
They were Bhai Daya Singh Ji, a Khatri of Lahore; Bhai Dharam Singh Ji, a Jat of Hastinapur; Bhai Himmat Singh Ji, a water carrier of Jagannath Puri; Bhai Mohkam Singh Ji, a calico printer of Dwarka; and Bhai Sahib Singh Ji, a barber of Bidar in the Deccan.
Three of the five were from communities treated as low caste. Two were from outside north India entirely. They were made to eat from one bowl.
The Guru then knelt and asked the five to give him amrit in turn, becoming Gobind Singh. The authority of the Panj Piare over the Guru himself is not a metaphor in Sikh practice: it is the mechanism by which five initiated Sikhs, of any background, acting together, hold authority in the Panth. It was used at Chamkaur in 1704 to order the Guru off the field.
Three of them were killed at Chamkaur in December 1704. The other two carried the Zafarnama south to Aurangzeb in the Deccan and both died at Nanded. All five were dead within nine years of that Vaisakhi.
The amrit was prepared in an iron bowl with a double-edged sword while five banis were recited over it. The same method, the same five compositions and the same five conductors are used at every initiation since.
They came from four provinces and from castes that would not have eaten together, and after receiving amrit they administered it to the Guru himself.
The institution outlived the five. Any five amritdhari Sikhs standing as the Panj Piare carry that authority, which is how a religion without a clergy makes binding decisions.