Niranjan

Yes — and I would make one small correction to the way you phrased the previous point. Oṃkāra can be interpreted as “the utterance/expression of Oṃ,” and “doing/making Oṃ” is a useful literal intuition, but it shouldn’t be taken to mean that kāra independently means “to make Oṃ.” It is a grammatical/derivational formation from the root associated with making/doing, and Oṃkāra became the name of the sacred syllable and its utterance.

Your new pair — Jyoti Niranjan and Kal Niranjan — is even more interesting because here a very old Sanskrit adjective has been turned into a technical spiritual name in later Sant traditions.

1. First, “Niranjan” is much older than Sant Mat

The Sanskrit is:

nir-añjana / nir-añjanaḥ — निरञ्जन

Break it roughly into:

nir- = without, free from, devoid of

añjana = anointing substance, collyrium/kohl, black cosmetic applied to the eyes

So the most concrete original image is:

“without añjana” → unstained / unblemished / spotless

That develops naturally into:

pure → stainless → untouched by impurity → unattached to māyā

This isn’t a Sant Mat invention. Sanskrit dictionaries give nir-añjana meanings such as “without collyrium,” “free from falsehood,” and “simple/artless,” and it can also function as an epithet of Śiva.

And in the medieval North Indian devotional vocabulary, Niranjan becomes a name/epithet for the Divine.

The Guru Granth Sahib dictionary, for example, traces the Punjabi/Apabhraṃśa niranjan directly to Sanskrit and gives the important Sant-Bhakti sense:

“without the blemish of Maya; beyond the influence of Maya; immaculate.”

That’s an important clue.

2. “Jot” really is light

Punjabi/Sant vocabulary:

jot / jyot — ਜੋਤ / ज्योति

comes from Sanskrit jyotis / jyoti (ज्योतिस् / ज्योति):

light, radiance, luminosity, flame, illumination.

So:

Jyoti Niranjan

can literally be heard as:

“the Stainless Light”

or

“the Unstained Radiance.”

And this is where the Sant Mat terminology becomes fascinating.

Because Jyoti Niranjan isn’t simply two arbitrary words stuck together. It takes an ancient Indian theological adjective — Niranjan, the stainless/untainted — and combines it with Jyoti, light.

3. But “Kal Niranjan” is a different thing

This is where you have to distinguish historical vocabulary from the particular cosmology of Sant Mat/Radhasoami traditions.

In various Sant Mat traditions, particularly those developing a detailed hierarchy of inner regions and powers, Kal becomes the name of a powerful cosmic principle associated with time, death, dissolution, and the lower creation.

So:

Kal Niranjan

is not simply another translation of “Niranjan.”

It is a technical theological name.

And this creates a fascinating semantic tension:

Niranjan = stainless, untouched, pure

but

Kal = time/death/dissolution

Thus Kal Niranjan becomes a name for a particular cosmic ruler/power that is “Niranjan” within that tradition’s cosmological vocabulary.

That is a sectarian development of the older word, rather than the original Sanskrit meaning of niranjan.

This distinction is crucial if we’re doing the kind of historical/quantitative linguistic analysis you’re asking for.

4. And here is where Jyoti Niranjan and Kal Niranjan can become confusing

Different Sant Mat lineages don’t always use these names identically.

For example, Radhasoami literature explicitly uses Jyoti Niranjan as a name associated with a particular level of the cosmological hierarchy. One Radhasoami source describes Jyoti Niranjan as not having access to the highest Radhasoami region and places him below the higher spiritual regions.

Other Sant traditions, particularly contemporary Kabir-oriented movements, use Jyoti Niranjan/Kal Niranjan within a somewhat different mythological system.

So I would not assume that every occurrence of “Niranjan” in Sant literature refers to the same being.

That’s exactly the kind of mistake that happens when we take a word’s dictionary meaning and assume it has remained semantically fixed for 2,000 years.

5. There is a beautiful historical progression

If we step back, I think this is what you’re really discovering:

Sanskrit level

nir-añjana

unstained / without blemish

↓

Classical Hindu devotional vocabulary

Niranjana / Niranjan

the Stainless One

the Pure One

an epithet of God/Śiva and other divine realities

↓

Medieval Bhakti / Sant vocabulary

Niranjan

the transcendent, stainless Divine

often contrasted with māyā and worldly appearance

↓

Sant Mat cosmological vocabulary

Jyoti Niranjan

Kal Niranjan

technical names for particular spiritual/cosmic principles or levels

That is a semantic evolution, not merely a pronunciation change.

6. And “Jyoti Niranjan” has an especially interesting philosophical structure

You can almost read it as:

Jyoti = that which shines

Niranjan = that which is not stained

So:

“the unstained Light.”

That has an obvious relationship to a huge body of Indian mystical vocabulary involving inner light, jyoti, prakāśa, tejas, etc.

But there’s an important warning:

“Jyoti Niranjan = the inner light experienced in meditation” is a Sant Mat theological interpretation, not the lexical meaning of the Sanskrit words.

The linguistic evidence gets you to “unstained/immaculate light.”

The meditation cosmology is something later traditions build onto that vocabulary.

7. Now compare this with “Nirākār”

There’s another word that makes the whole thing even clearer:

nir-ākāra

without form / formless

This appears in the same broad North Indian devotional vocabulary.

The Guru Granth Sahib dictionary explicitly derives niraṅkār from Sanskrit nirākār, “without form.”

Compare:

nir-añjana

= without stain

nir-ākāra

= without form

nir-guṇa

= without qualities/attributes

They all use nir- in essentially the same grammatical way:

nir- = free from / without

So you are actually seeing a very productive Sanskrit morphological pattern behind a lot of Sant vocabulary.

8. And this connects beautifully with your earlier Oṃkār question

Look at these:

Oṃ-kāra

nir-añjana

nir-ākāra

nir-guṇa

They’re not all grammatically constructed the same way, but they illustrate something important about Indian religious vocabulary:

small Sanskrit grammatical elements became enormously productive theological concepts.

And then, over centuries, those words migrated through:

Sanskrit → Prakrit/Apabhraṃśa → Sant Bhāṣā → Hindi/Punjabi → individual Sant Mat vocabularies.

The Guru Granth Sahib itself preserves this multilingual layer. Its language draws on Sanskrit, Prakrit/Apabhraṃśa, Braj, Old Hindi, Punjabi and other North Indian languages, which is one reason the vocabulary can look simultaneously Sanskritic, Hindi-like and Punjabi.

One particularly important distinction

I would therefore separate three questions whenever we investigate these terms:

Level

Question

Etymology

What did the word originally mean?

Historical semantics

How did Indian religious traditions use it over time?

Sant Mat technical meaning

What does this particular lineage mean by it?

For Niranjan, those give three somewhat different answers:

Etymology:

nir + añjana → without kohl/stain

Broad Indian religious usage:

the stainless, pure, unattached Divine

Certain Sant Mat systems:

a specific cosmic/spiritual power or ruler within a hierarchical cosmology

That last meaning cannot simply be projected backward onto ancient Sanskrit.

And that’s precisely why your idea of doing a “quant linguistic” investigation is useful. We could actually take the next step and trace Jot/Jyoti, Niranjan, Kal, Brahm, Par Brahm, Sat Purush, Anami, Shabd, Naam, Omkar across Sanskrit → medieval Sant poetry → Kabir → Guru Nanak → Radhasoami/Sant Mat, and identify which meanings are demonstrably ancient versus which appear to be later technical developments. That would be a much more revealing map of how the Sant Mat vocabulary actually evolved.