Bhakti · Sikhism

Guru Nanak

ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ · گرو نانک · गुरु नानक

1469 – 1539Historically documented person

Spiritual teacher and poet from the Punjab (1469-1539), first of the ten gurus and founder of the Sikh tradition. After an experience in the Bein river he proclaimed that "there is no Hindu, no Muslim", travelled for two decades with the musician Mardana and founded at Kartarpur a community of disciples who worked, sang and ate together. His 974 compositions, among them the Japji, are preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib; the janamsakhis narrating his life are hagiographic.

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works: 27works
editions: 42editions
quotes: 10quotes
videos: 15videos
images: 9images

Guru Nanak en un mural del gurdwara Baba Atal Rai · CC BY-SA 4.0

In their words

«One God. Truth is his name. Creator, without fear, without enmity, of timeless form, unborn, self-existent; attained by the guru's grace.»

Mul Mantar, Guru Granth Sahib, ang 1. Traducción propia.

To begin, one work

Japji (Japu)

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Their central idea

Ik Onkar: one God: The Sikh scripture opens with a sign, the numeral "one" joined to the syllable Onkar, which Nanak made the emblem of his theology: there is a single God, at once transcendent, without form (nirgun), and present throughout creation (sargun).

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Biography

4 min read

Talwandi

Nanak was born in 1469 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, a village in the Punjab some seventy kilometres west of Lahore, now called Nankana Sahib, in Pakistan. Almost all the traditional biographies place his birth in the month of Vaisakh, that is, in April —the 15th, by the usual conversion—, although Sikhs celebrate his anniversary on the full moon of Kattak, in November, following a tradition that prevailed in the nineteenth century. His father, Kalu, of the Khatri mercantile caste and the Bedi lineage, was accountant to the local landowner, Rai Bular, a Muslim; his mother was called Tripta, and his elder sister, Nanaki, would be the first to recognise something exceptional in him. He learned to read, to keep accounts and, the biographies say, some Persian.

The Bein river

Around 1487 he married Sulakhani at Batala, with whom he had two sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das. Through Nanaki's husband he entered the service of Daulat Khan Lodi, governor of the region, as keeper of the granary at Sultanpur. There, according to the janamsakhis —the collections of stories about his life—, he bathed every morning in the Bein river; one day he did not come back. He was given up for drowned. He reappeared on the third day, kept silent and, when he spoke, said: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim." The biographies describe those days as an audience at the divine court in which he received the charge to praise the Name. The traditional date is 1499, when he was about thirty; nothing allows it to be verified.

The roads

He left his post and set out on long journeys, the udasis, accompanied by Mardana, a Muslim musician who played the rebec while Nanak sang. The janamsakhis take him east, as far as Benares, Bengal, Assam and Puri; south, as far as Sri Lanka; north, to the Himalaya and Mount Sumeru, where he debates with the Nath yogis; west, as far as Mecca and Baghdad. W. H. McLeod, who subjected these stories to historical criticism, concluded that he very probably travelled widely, especially to Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage centres, but that the detailed itineraries are later constructions. In Baghdad there is a shrine dedicated to "Baba Nanak" with an inscription whose reading and date are disputed. Nanak's compositions, on the other hand, confirm his interlocutors: brahmins, qadis, ascetics, yogis.

Babur

Around 1520 the army of Babur, who a few years later would found the Mughal empire, sacked Saidpur, today's Eminabad. Nanak was there or close by, and what he saw entered his work: four hymns known as the Babarvani describe the slaughter, the women dragged away, the temples and mosques laid waste, and address God with a question that has no equivalent in the devotional poetry of his time: with so many people beaten and crying out, did you feel no pain? The janamsakhis add that Nanak was taken prisoner, that in jail the millstones turned by themselves and that Babur ended up releasing him; it is legend, but the hymns are direct testimony of a historical event.

Kartarpur

In the 1520s he settled at Kartarpur, a village he had founded on the banks of the Ravi. There he spent his last fifteen years as a householder and farmer, not as an ascetic: the day began with the singing of his Japji and ended with evening hymns, and the disciples —sikh means precisely "disciple"— worked the land and shared food in a common kitchen. Bhai Gurdas, a writer of the following generation, describes that community as the model of the life Nanak preached: remembering the Name, earning a living honestly and sharing what one has. For historians, the Kartarpur community is the institutional nucleus of what would become the Sikh religion.

The successor

Nanak appointed neither of his sons. Sri Chand, an ascetic, would found the Udasi order; Lakhmi Das led a lay life. The one chosen was a devotee called Lehna, from Khadur, whom Nanak renamed Angad, "limb of my body", and before whom he bowed as a disciple. A poem by the bards Satta and Balvand, included in the Sikh scripture and composed, at least in its final form, in the time of the fifth Guru, Arjan, bears witness to this transmission of authority: the light is the same, only the body has changed. Nanak died at Kartarpur on 22 September 1539. The oldest janamsakhi relates that Hindus and Muslims disputed over the body, that the master asked them to lay flowers on either side and that, in the morning, under the sheet only the flowers remained, still fresh.

The word

Unlike many founders, Nanak left a large and well-transmitted body of work: some 974 compositions —hymns (shabads), stanzas (saloks) and long poems— in Punjabi and in a mixed language of northern India, arranged by the musical modes (ragas) in which they were to be sung. His successors preserved them in manuscript books, and the fifth guru, Arjan, gathered them in 1604 into the Adi Granth together with those of other gurus and of saints such as Kabir, Ravidas and Farid; in 1708 Gobind Singh proclaimed that book the eternal guru of the Sikhs. From it come the Japji, the Asa di Var, the Sidh Gosht and the Barah Maha. The janamsakhis, by contrast, are hagiographic collections composed from the late sixteenth century onwards: the portrait they give of Nanak is that of his followers' memory, which critical history must read with caution. Their centre is clear: a single God, without form, who is reached only by his grace, through the discipline of the Name and an honest life in the midst of the world.

Sources: McLeod, W. H. Gurū Nānak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. ISBN 9780198265214 (ed. india, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976, ISBN 9780195608069). · Macauliffe, Max Arthur. The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Vol. 1 en Wikisource. · Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib (Ādi Granth). Compilado por Guru Arjan en 1604; recensión de Damdama, 1706. Edición estándar de 1.430 páginas (ang). Trad. inglesa de Manmohan Singh, 8 vols. Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1962-1969. · McLeod, W. H. Early Sikh Tradition: A Study of the Janam-sākhīs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. · Grewal, J. S. The Sikhs of the Punjab. The New Cambridge History of India II.3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 (ed. rev. 1998).

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

14691487150415221539

April 15, 1469age 0Rai Bhoi di Talwandi (hoy Nankana Sahib, Pakistán)

Birth

Born in Vaisakh 1469 according to most janamsakhis; the Bala janamsakhi places it in Kattak (November), the date on which the Gurpurab is celebrated today.

ProbableSingh, Harbans (ed.). The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. 4 vols. Patiala: Punjabi University, 1992-1998.

After their death

1604The Adi Granth
1708The book as eternal guru
1968McLeod's critique
November 9, 2019The Kartarpur Corridor

April 15, 1469 · age 0
Birth
Born in Vaisakh 1469 according to most janamsakhis; the Bala janamsakhi places it in Kattak (November), the date on which the Gurpurab is celebrated today.
Probable
c. 1487 · age 18
Marriage to Sulakhani
Marries Sulakhani, daughter of Mul Chand; they will have two sons, Sri Chand (1494) and Lakhmi Das (1496 or 1497).
Probable
c. 1495
In Daulat Khan Lodi's service
Through his brother-in-law Jai Ram he manages the governor's granary at Sultanpur. The exact chronology is uncertain.
Probable
c. 1499 · age 30
The Bein river experience
Disappears for three days in the river and reappears saying "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim". Traditional date; some authors propose 1496 or 1507.
Tradition
c. 1500 – 1520 · age 31
The journeys (udasis)
With the musician Mardana he travels to Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage centres. Scholarship accepts extensive travels, not the detailed itineraries.
Tradition
c. 1520 · age 51
Babur's sack of Saidpur
A witness of the sack, he composes the Babarvani hymns. His imprisonment and meeting with Babur belong to legend.
Probable
c. 1522 – 1539 · age 53
Settlement at Kartarpur
Settles as a householder and farmer in the village he has founded; organises the first Sikh community with daily singing and a common kitchen.
Probable
1539 · age 70
Lehna, successor under the name Angad
Appoints his disciple Lehna, whom he calls Angad, as successor, rather than his sons. The transmission is attested by Satta and Balvand's var in the scripture.
Documented
September 22, 1539 · age 70
Death
Dies on the tenth day of Asauj, 1596 of the Bikrami era (22 September 1539), according to Sikh records.
Probable
1604
The Adi Granth
Guru Arjan gathers the compositions of Nanak, of the following gurus and of Hindu and Muslim saints into the Sikh scripture.
Documented
1708
The book as eternal guru
Before dying, Guru Gobind Singh declares that the Granth will be the guru of the Sikhs: Nanak's word becomes their living authority.
Documented
1968
McLeod's critique
Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion applies historical criticism to the janamsakhis and separates the few secure facts from hagiography; it opens a lasting debate in Sikh studies.
Documented
November 9, 2019
The Kartarpur Corridor
On the 550th anniversary of his birth, India and Pakistan open a corridor allowing pilgrims to cross the border to the Kartarpur gurdwara.
Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Written work

Japji (Japu)

ਜਪੁ

It opens the Guru Granth Sahib with the Mul Mantar, the definition of God in one line, followed by thirty-eight stanzas (pauris) and a final salok. It traverses the impossibility of reaching God through ritual purity, silence or learning; obedience to the divine will (hukam); the power of hearing and accepting the Name; the immensity of creation, and the five realms of spiritual ascent up to the "realm of truth". Sikhs recite it every morning. The final salok recurs almost identically in a var by Guru Angad, so some attribute it to the second guru.

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7 editions · amazon.com

Guru Nanak

Asa di Var (Ballad in raga Asa)

The Conscious Library

Written work

Asa di Var (Ballad in raga Asa)

ਆਸਾ ਦੀ ਵਾਰ

A var or heroic ballad in twenty-four stanzas by Nanak, interspersed with saloks by him and by Guru Angad, sung every dawn in gurdwaras. It criticises the religious hypocrisy of brahmins and qadis, the sacred thread, the notion of impurity and the arrogance of power; in one of its saloks it defends the dignity of woman, from whom kings are born. It is one of the central pieces of Sikh liturgy.

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4 editions · amazon.com

Guru Nanak

Sidh Gosht (Dialogue with the Siddhas)

The Conscious Library

Written work

Sidh Gosht (Dialogue with the Siddhas)

ਸਿਧ ਗੋਸਟਿ

A poem of seventy-three stanzas in raga Ramkali, in the form of a dialogue between Nanak and the Nath yogis, whom tradition places at Achal Batala or on Mount Sumeru. The yogis ask who he is, where he comes from, why he does not renounce the world; Nanak replies that true yoga is to live in the world without being stained, through the guru's Word (shabad) and remembrance of the Name. It sets out the Sikh critique of asceticism.

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2 editions · amazon.de

Later compilation · 1604

Hymns and stanzas in the Guru Granth Sahib (the complete corpus)

ਸਬਦ ਅਤੇ ਸਲੋਕ (ਮਹਲਾ ੧)

The whole body of some 974 compositions by Nanak —shabads, ashtapadis, chhants, saloks and vars— spread across nineteen ragas: Sri, Majh, Gauri, Asa, Gujri, Vadhans, Sorath, Dhanasari, Tilang, Suhi, Bilaval, Ramkali, Maru, Tukhari, Bhairo, Basant, Sarang, Malar and Prabhati. The pieces with their own titles are recorded separately; the rest are short hymns exploring the Name, grace, the ego, truth and the critique of ritual religion.

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6 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (27)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

One God. Truth is his name. Creator, without fear, without enmity, of timeless form, unborn, self-existent; attained by the guru's grace.

ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥

VerifiedMul Mantar, Guru Granth Sahib, ang 1. Traducción propia.

1 / 10

Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (1)

«"Nam japo, kirat karo, vand chhako" ("remember the Name, work honestly, share"), quoted as a literal saying of Nanak.»
It faithfully sums up Nanak's ethics and the Kartarpur life described by Bhai Gurdas, but it does not appear in that form in his compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib: it is a later formula of the Sikh tradition.

Last words

Traditional attribution

«(Paraphrase) Let the Hindus place flowers on my right and the Muslims on my left: those whose flowers are still fresh in the morning shall dispose of the body.»

There is no direct testimony. The Puratan janamsakhi (B40 manuscript, copied in 1733) relates that, faced with the dispute between Hindus and Muslims over his funeral rites, Nanak gave this instruction in indirect speech, covered himself with a sheet and died; in the morning only the flowers remained, all fresh. It is a hagiographic account and the wording is not fixed.

Source: McLeod, W. H. (trad.). The B40 Janam-sākhī. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1980 (traducción del manuscrito Panjabi B40 de la British Library, copiado en 1733).

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?
One creator God, whose name is Truth, reached through grace
A personal GodStated explicitly
The Mul Mantar that opens the Japji sums up Guru Nanak’s theology: one God, whose name is Truth, creator, without fear or enmity, timeless in form, unborn, self-existent, reached through the grace of the guru. This God creates, orders the world through his hukam (will or command), grants his gracious glance (nadar) and receives the love of those who remember him. Nanak calls him formless (nirankar) and rejects incarnation or confinement in images, but he does not conceive him as a cold principle: the soul seeks him as the bride seeks the bridegroom. The divine is both transcendent and present in the whole creation, which Nanak describes as a great cosmic worship in which the sun and moon are the lamps.
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Who am I? Is there a true self?
The soul is light of the Light, led astray by ego (haumai)
A created, immortal soulStated explicitly
Guru Nanak sees in every being a light (jot) that proceeds from the divine Light: in his Arti he sings that one and the same light shines in all, and that it is God’s. What darkens that light is haumai, the ‘I-I’, the ego that thinks itself separate and appropriates what it receives; living from it is to live as a manmukh, turned towards one’s own mind. Whoever follows the guru’s word becomes gurmukh and recognises the divine order (hukam) in all things. In the Barah Maha the soul appears as a bride who, month after month, yearns for her husband and longs for union. The true self is therefore not the ego, but neither does it simply dissolve: it is a soul seeking to merge with its source, like water into water.
Compare this question with other teachers
Why do we suffer?
Ego separates from God; pain can be a medicine
Separation from GodStated explicitly
For Guru Nanak the root of suffering is haumai, the ego that thinks itself self-sufficient and forgets the Name. Whoever lives this way, as a manmukh, is caught in lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride, and turns on the wheel of births and deaths. The Asa di Var contains a characteristic reversal: suffering can be the medicine and pleasure the disease, because in comfort human beings forget God. Pain, then, is not only punishment: it can break the ego’s self-sufficiency and return the soul to the divine order (hukam). The way out is not to flee the world but to remember the Name and accept God’s will within ordinary life.
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What happens after death?
Karma gives the body; grace opens the door of liberation
Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly
Guru Nanak accepts the Indian framework of rebirth: the soul passes from one body to another according to its actions, and ego keeps it bound to the wheel of births and deaths. In the fourth stanza of the Japji he states his decisive nuance: through karma one obtains the garment, that is, the body; through the glance of grace, the door of liberation. Leaving the cycle is not earned by merit or ritual but received from God, and whoever remembers the Name merges with Him. In his funeral hymns (Alahanian) he recalls that death is universal and comes by divine order, and warns that it should not be called an evil if one knew how to die: dying to the ego and living in the remembrance of God.
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How is liberation or salvation attained?
By the grace of God and guru, through remembering the Name
Through grace and loveStated explicitly
The Mul Mantar ends by saying that God is reached through the grace of the guru (gur prasad), and the Japji specifies that karma gives the body, but the door of liberation opens through the glance of grace (nadar). Guru Nanak does not deny effort: he asks for remembrance of the Name (nam simran), truthful living and submission to the divine order (hukam). But he rejects the idea that rites, ablutions or forced silence suffice; one of the first verses of the Japji says that washing a hundred thousand times does not make one pure. Liberation (mukti) is not escape from the world but merging with God already in this life, as a gurmukh. Grace precedes and crowns the path.
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Is a teacher necessary?
Without the guru there is no path, but the guru is the Word
IndispensableStated explicitly
For Guru Nanak the guru is indispensable: the Mul Mantar ends by saying that God is reached through the guru’s grace, and his hymns repeat that without the guru no one crosses the ocean of the world. But the guru is not, first and foremost, a person. In the Sidh Gosht, his dialogue with the yogis, Nanak replies that his guru is the Word (shabad) and the consciousness that listens to it, its disciple. The true guru is God’s voice made audible in the hymn; a human teacher is guru insofar as he transmits it. This conception explains why, after the tenth guru, authority passed to the scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, and to the assembled community (sangat).
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Is the world real?
True are your worlds: creation is real and God’s work
A good and real creationStated explicitly
Guru Nanak strongly affirms the reality of creation. In the Asa di Var he sings that God’s worlds and universes are true, true his forms and works; the world is not an appearance but the dwelling of the True One, who sustains it through his order (hukam). In his Arti he describes the whole cosmos as a ceremony of worship: the sky is the tray, the sun and moon are the lamps and the stars the pearls. What is false is not the world but attachment to it and forgetting its Creator. Hence he rejects the yogis’ renunciation and proposes living in the world as in a sacred place, fulfilling its duties truthfully.
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What is love?
The soul-bride who, month after month, yearns for her Lord
Longing and unionStated explicitly
Guru Nanak expresses love of God through the image of the bride longing for her husband. In the Barah Maha, composed in raga Tukhari, he goes through the twelve months of the year via the feelings of the separated soul: rain, heat or cold intensify her yearning, until union comes through the Lord’s grace. That love (bhau, prem) is cultivated by remembering the Name and shows itself in conduct: Nanak asks for humility, truthfulness and service. The institutions born of his teaching, the assembled community (sangat) and the common kitchen open to all (langar), translate that love of God into practical equality between castes and sexes. Love seeks union and proves itself in shared life.
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Are we free, or is everything determined?
All lies within the divine order, and each reaps what they sow
Destiny and responsibilityStated explicitly
Guru Nanak sets out two claims that seem opposed. The first is hukam, the divine order or will: in the second stanza of the Japji he says that by it forms are created, greatness or lowliness, pain or joy are received, and no one stands outside it. The second is responsibility: in stanza twenty he states that each one sows and each one eats what was sown. Human beings cannot leave the hukam, but they can recognise it or resist it; whoever understands it, the Japji says, stops speaking from ego. Freedom consists in walking according to the order that is written with us, as one of his recorded verses says.
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Why meditate or pray?
Remember the Name with every breath, in daily life
Friendship with GodStated explicitly
The practice Guru Nanak proposes is remembrance of God’s Name (nam simran), repeated and sung, both alone and in the assembled community. It is not a technique for reaching extraordinary states but a way of keeping the Beloved present amid daily life. In the first stanza of the Japji he warns that neither repeated washing purifies nor forced silence gives inner silence; what transforms is a living relationship with God. In the Sidh Gosht he argues with yogis who practise austerities and bodily techniques and sets the Word (shabad) against them as the means. For Nanak to pray is to be in love with the Lord and live according to his order, remembering him with every breath.
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Can reason know the ultimate?
Thinking a hundred thousand times does not think Him: He is known by grace
The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly
The first stanza of the Japji sets out the mind’s limit through a series of negations: by thinking He is not reached, though one think a hundred thousand times; by keeping silent silence is not attained; by sating oneself hunger is not stilled; and a thousand clevernesses go with no one at the end. For Guru Nanak the True One lies beyond calculation and speculation and is revealed only through the divine order and grace. This does not lead him to despise understanding: his hymns are reflective, argue with yogis, Brahmins and mullahs, and ask one to understand (bujh) the hukam. But decisive knowledge is not a reasoning but recognition of the Word the guru transmits.
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Withdraw from the world or transform it?
Pure amid impurity: honest work, sharing and community
Engage with the worldStated explicitly
Guru Nanak rejects the yogis’ renunciation: in one of his hymns he says that yoga lies not in the patched cloak, the staff or the ashes, but in remaining pure amid impurity. He himself, after his travels, settled at Kartarpur as a farmer and founded a community. Sikh tradition sums up his teaching in three precepts: remember the Name, earn one’s living honestly and share with others. His engagement with the world also had a critical dimension: in the Asa di Var he defends the dignity of woman, from whom kings are born, and in the hymns of Babur he denounces the violence of the Mughal invasion and asks God whether he felt no pain.
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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

Anecdotes and stories

Hagiographic accountc. 1485

The true bargain (Sacha Sauda)

Worried by his son's lack of ambition, Kalu gave him twenty rupees to go to town and strike a good bargain. On the way Nanak met a group of hungry ascetics and spent all the money feeding them. He came back empty-handed and explained to his furious father that there was no truer bargain than feeding the hungry. The place where tradition locates the episode, near Chuharkana in Pakistan, is today called Gurdwara Sacha Sauda. The story is regarded as a forerunner of the langar, the Sikh common kitchen.

Origin of the story: It comes from the later janamsakhi tradition (in particular the Bala line); it is not in the oldest core of the Puratan.

Source: McLeod, W. H. Early Sikh Tradition: A Study of the Janam-sākhīs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

Hagiographic accountc. 1499

Three days in the Bein river

At Sultanpur, Nanak bathed every dawn in the Bein river before going to work at the governor's granary. One morning he went into the water and did not come out. His servants found his clothes on the bank; the governor had the river dragged; the family mourned him. On the third day he reappeared, said nothing for a while and then uttered the phrase that would become a programme: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim." The Puratan janamsakhi explains that during those days he was taken into God's presence, given a cup of nectar to drink and charged with repeating and teaching the Name. He left his post, gave away his possessions and began his travels.

Origin of the story: Puratan janamsakhi (B40 manuscript) and related traditions; McLeod regards it as a vocation story built on a probable but unverifiable experience.

Source: McLeod, W. H. (trad.). The B40 Janam-sākhī. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1980 (traducción del manuscrito Panjabi B40 de la British Library, copiado en 1733).

Hagiographic accountc. 1518

Feet towards the Kaaba

In Mecca, tired from the journey, Nanak lay down to sleep with his feet towards the Kaaba. An attendant woke him indignantly: how dared he point his feet at the house of God? Nanak asked him to turn his feet towards where God was not. The attendant moved them and, in the most widespread version, the Kaaba turned with them. Bhai Gurdas records the episode in his first var, in the early decades of the seventeenth century; the janamsakhis develop it. Historians doubt that Nanak reached Mecca, but the story expresses his central idea with great clarity: God is everywhere.

Origin of the story: Bhai Gurdas, Var 1, and the Puratan and Bala janamsakhis. No external source; the visit to Mecca is disputed.

Source: Bhāī Gurdās. Vārāṁ Bhāī Gurdās, Vār 1 (primeras décadas del siglo XVII). Texto y trad. en J. S. Grewal y otros; ed. de la SGPC, Amritsar.

Hagiographic accountc. 1520

Lalo's bread and Malik Bhago's

At Saidpur, Nanak lodged with Lalo, a poor carpenter, rather than with the rich official Malik Bhago, who had organised a great feast for holy men. Offended, Malik Bhago summoned him. Nanak asked for a piece of bread from each house: when he squeezed Lalo's, milk came out; when he squeezed Malik Bhago's, blood, because it was kneaded with the exploitation of the poor. The story, very popular, condenses Nanak's ethics: honest work is worth more than ostentatious piety. Lalo is named in an authentic hymn by Nanak about Babur, which makes his existence plausible; the miracle belongs to legend.

Origin of the story: Later janamsakhis; Lalo's name appears in the Tilang hymn of the Babarvani ("Jaisi mai avai khasam ki bani").

Source: McLeod, W. H. Early Sikh Tradition: A Study of the Janam-sākhīs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

Hagiographic accountc. 1520

Babur and the millstones

During the sack of Saidpur, the janamsakhis say, Nanak and Mardana were seized with the rest of the population and put to work. Nanak was set to grind grain; the stone turned by itself while he sang. The marvel reached Babur's ears; he came to see him, listened to his words on the cruelty of power and the transience of kingdoms, offered him gifts which Nanak refused, and ended by releasing the captives. All that can be affirmed is that Nanak knew that violence at close range: his Babarvani hymns describe it with a detail only a witness provides.

Origin of the story: Puratan janamsakhi; Gurdwara Chakki Sahib at Eminabad keeps a millstone as a relic. The meeting with Babur is not recorded in his memoirs (Baburnama).

Source: McLeod, W. H. (trad.). The B40 Janam-sākhī. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1980 (traducción del manuscrito Panjabi B40 de la British Library, copiado en 1733).

Hagiographic account1539

Lehna, the one who obeyed

The janamsakhis tell that Nanak tested his sons and disciples to choose a successor. He asked them to fetch a bowl from a muddy pond, to carry wet grass, to climb a tree to bring fruit in midwinter or to eat from a corpse covered with a sheet. His sons refused or raised objections; Lehna obeyed every time, and under the sheet he found consecrated food. Nanak laid his hand on his head, called him Angad, "part of my body", and bowed before him. The tests are hagiographic; the choice of a disciple over his sons, by contrast, is attested by Satta and Balvand's poem in the scripture and was decisive: it made the guru's authority a matter of discipleship, not of blood.

Origin of the story: The tests come from janamsakhis and later traditions; the succession is documented in Satta and Balvand's var (Ramkali), in the Guru Granth Sahib.

Source: Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib (Ādi Granth). Compilado por Guru Arjan en 1604; recensión de Damdama, 1706. Edición estándar de 1.430 páginas (ang). Trad. inglesa de Manmohan Singh, 8 vols. Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, 1962-1969.

Hagiographic account1539

The flowers under the sheet

When it became known at Kartarpur that the master was about to die, Hindus and Muslims began to argue: the former wanted to cremate him, the latter to bury him. Nanak asked them to lay flowers on both sides of the bed, the Hindus on the right and the Muslims on the left, and said the body should go to those whose flowers were still fresh the next morning. He covered himself with a sheet. At dawn they lifted the cloth: the body had vanished and all the flowers were fresh. The Hindus took their half of the sheet and cremated it; the Muslims buried theirs. At Kartarpur, to this day, both a samadhi and a grave are preserved.

Origin of the story: Puratan janamsakhi (B40) and later tradition; the motif of the dispute over the body is also told of Kabir.

Source: McLeod, W. H. (trad.). The B40 Janam-sākhī. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University, 1980 (traducción del manuscrito Panjabi B40 de la British Library, copiado en 1733).

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Ik Onkar: one Godik-onkar

The Sikh scripture opens with a sign, the numeral "one" joined to the syllable Onkar, which Nanak made the emblem of his theology: there is a single God, at once transcendent, without form (nirgun), and present throughout creation (sargun). He does not incarnate, has no image, belongs to no religious community; he is named with Hindu and Muslim epithets alike —Hari, Ram, Allah, Khuda— because none exhausts him. The Mul Mantar unfolds the sign in a series of attributes: truth, creator, without fear, without enmity, timeless, unborn, self-existent, accessible through grace. This affirmation of divine unity underlies Nanak's critique of religious divisions.

The Sant tradition of northern India (nirgun bhakti); comparable to Islamic monotheism, but with an immanent God.