Guru Arjan Dev Ji

Guru Arjan Dev Ji, the Fifth Master, took Parkash on 15 April 1563 at Goindwal, the youngest of the three sons of Bhai Jetha Ji, who would become Guru Ram Das Ji, and Bibi Bhani Ji, the daughter of Guru Amar Das Ji. He was thus the first Guru born into the house of the Gurus, and the only one to be a Guru's grandson as well as a Guru's son. His grandfather doted on him; tradition records that when the infant crawled to Guru Amar Das Ji's bed and disturbed his rest, the Guru said, 'Dohita Bani da bohitha', this grandson shall be the ship that carries the Bani across the ocean of the world. The boy grew up in Goindwal amid the sound of Kirtan at the Baoli Sahib and the service of the Langar. He was taught Gurmukhi by Baba Buddha Ji, learned Sanskrit from Pandit Beni and Persian from the Muslim scholars of the town, and from his earliest years showed an extraordinary gift for poetry and music, mastering the ragas in which the Bani was sung.

In 1574 his father became Guru Ram Das Ji and the family moved to the new town of Ramdaspur, where Sahibzada Arjan Dev Ji, then eleven, carried baskets of earth with the Sikhs in the digging of the Amrit Sarovar. As he grew to manhood his elder brother Baba Prithi Chand Ji managed the Guru's household and treasury and hoped for the Guruship, while Baba Mahadev Ji withdrew into a life of seclusion. Around 1579 Guru Ram Das Ji sent the Sahibzada to Lahore to represent the family at the wedding of a cousin and to remain there serving the Sangat until he was recalled. Lahore, his father's birthplace, became the scene of his first great hymn: aching for the Guru's presence, he wrote in Raag Majh, 'Mera man lochai Gur darsan tai, bilap kare chatrik ki niai', my mind longs for the sight of the Guru and cries out like the thirsty song-bird. Prithi Chand Ji intercepted this letter and a second, but the third, marked by the Sahibzada as the third, reached Guru Ram Das Ji through Baba Buddha Ji. The Guru recalled his son, heard the story, and asked him to complete the hymn with a fourth stanza; Sahibzada Arjan Dev Ji sang, 'Bhag hoa Gur sant milaya, Prabh abinasi ghar meh paya', by good fortune I have met the Guru, and found the imperishable Lord within my own home. Guru Ram Das Ji embraced him and named him his heir.

On 1 September 1581 at Goindwal, Guru Ram Das Ji placed the five paise and coconut before his youngest son, bowed to him, and had Baba Buddha Ji apply the tilak, installing Guru Arjan Dev Ji as the Fifth Master at the age of eighteen. Guru Ram Das Ji merged into the Divine Light that day. Prithi Chand Ji did not accept the decision. He claimed the Guruship as the eldest son, persuaded some of the Masands to divert the offerings to himself, and for years made the young Guru's position at Amritsar difficult, so that at times the Guru's Langar depended on what Bhai Gurdas Ji and Baba Buddha Ji could gather directly from the Sikhs. Guru Ji met this hostility with patience and never spoke ill of his brother; Bhai Gurdas Ji, who had returned from Agra to serve the new Guru, became his chief support, and the Sikhs came to call Prithi Chand Ji and his followers the Minas, the dissemblers, though Guru Ji himself refrained from such words.

Guru Arjan Dev Ji's first great task was to complete the work of his father at Ramdaspur. He finished the Santokhsar tank, had the Amrit Sarovar lined with brick, and in the centre of the holy pool raised the Harmandir Sahib, the Temple of God. The foundation stone was laid on 3 January 1588; a cherished tradition records that Guru Ji invited his friend the Sufi saint Sai Mian Mir of Lahore to lay the first brick, a gesture of the brotherhood of faiths. Unlike the Hindu temples built on high plinths, the Harmandir Sahib was built lower than the surrounding land, so that worshippers descended to it in humility, and it was given doors on all four sides to signify that it was open to every caste and every people. The building was completed about 1601. Around the city Guru Ji dug the Ramsar tank for his own meditation and, at Wadali, where he moved for some years to avoid friction with Prithi Chand Ji, he sank a well worked by six Persian wheels, the Chheharta, to water the village fields. On 19 June 1589 Guru Ji had married Mata Ganga Ji, daughter of Bhai Krishan Chand of Mau Sahib; and on 19 June 1595, at Wadali, after the couple had received the blessing of Baba Buddha Ji, Mata Ganga Ji gave birth to their only child, Sahibzada Hargobind Ji.

Guru Ji extended the network of Sikh towns across the Majha and the Doaba. In 1590 he founded Tarn Taran, twenty-four kilometres south of Amritsar on the road to Goindwal, around a Sarovar larger even than that at Amritsar, and built there a home for lepers, whom the Sikhs bathed and nursed in an age when they were cast out of every village. In 1594 he founded Kartarpur in the Jalandhar Doab, which would become the home of a branch of his family and of the original Adi Granth. He established Sri Hargobindpur on the Beas to mark the birth of his son. To finance these works and the growing Langars he gave the Masand system its mature form, asking every Sikh to set aside Dasvandh, one tenth of his earnings, for the Guru's treasury, and he encouraged his Sikhs to take up the horse trade with Central Asia, so that the Panth grew prosperous and the merchants of Amritsar became known throughout northern India. When famine struck the Punjab in 1598 Guru Ji organised relief through the Sangats, and when Akbar came to Goindwal on 24 November of that year on his way to Lahore, Guru Ji persuaded him to remit the land revenue of the province for the year. The emperor, tradition records, ate in the Langar and parted with great regard for the Guru.

The crowning work of Guru Arjan Dev Ji's Guruship was the compilation of the Adi Granth. The Bani of the first four Gurus was dispersed in pothis held by different families, and spurious compositions were beginning to circulate under the name of Nanak, some from Prithi Chand Ji's camp. Guru Ji resolved to fix the canon once and for all. He sent for the Goindwal Pothis, written in Guru Amar Das Ji's time by Bhai Sahansram and now in the keeping of Baba Mohan Ji at Goindwal; when Baba Mohan Ji would not come down from his upper room, Guru Ji went himself, sat in the street below and sang in Raag Gauri, 'Mohan tere uche mandar mahal apara', O Mohan, your temple is lofty and your mansion unequalled, and the pothis were handed over. Guru Ji then withdrew to the secluded Ramsar tank at Amritsar, and there, between about 1601 and 1604, with Bhai Gurdas Ji as his scribe, he dictated and arranged the scripture. He included the hymns of the first five Gurus together with those of fifteen Bhagats of various castes and faiths, among them Kabir Ji, Farid Ji, Namdev Ji and Ravidas Ji, and of the Bhatt bards, Satta and Balwand and Baba Sundar Ji. The hymns were arranged not by author but by raga, thirty in number, each Guru signing himself Nanak and distinguished by the word Mahalla and a number. Guru Ji sealed the volume with his Mundavani: in this platter are placed truth, contentment and contemplation.

On 1 September 1604 (Bhadon Sudi 1, Samvat 1661) the completed Granth, bound in a single volume, was carried in procession to the Harmandir Sahib on the head of Baba Buddha Ji, with Guru Ji walking behind waving the chaur, and installed on a raised seat in the centre of the shrine. Baba Buddha Ji, now almost a hundred years old, was appointed the first Granthi, and the first Hukam he read was in Raag Suhi: 'Santa ke karaj aap khaloia, Har kam karavan aia Ram', the Lord Himself has stood up to accomplish the task of the saints. Guru Ji slept that night on the floor beside the Granth, and the Sikhs understood that the Word had been enthroned above the person of the Guru. Guru Ji's own contribution to the Granth, 2,218 hymns, is the largest of any author; among them the Sukhmani Sahib, the Psalm of Peace in twenty-four ashtpadis, the Barah Maha of Raag Majh, the Bavan Akhri and six Vars have become the daily companions of Sikhs the world over. The original volume, the Kartarpuri Bir, is preserved by the descendants of Baba Dhir Mall Ji at Kartarpur.

The accession of Jahangir in October 1605 changed everything. Akbar had regarded the Gurus with respect, but his son recorded in his memoirs, the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, that for years he had watched the Guru at Goindwal and Amritsar, whom the simple-hearted Hindus and even foolish Muslims honoured, and had wished to put an end to this false traffic or to bring him into the fold of Islam. In April 1606 Jahangir's eldest son, Prince Khusrau, rose in rebellion and fled toward Lahore through the Punjab. Tradition records that the prince passed through the Guru's territory, was given food from the Langar, as every traveller was, and was comforted by the Guru's words. Jahangir, pursuing and defeating his son near Lahore, treated this as an act of treason, and the hostility of Prithi Chand Ji's party and of Chandu Shah, a Khatri official of the court whose daughter's betrothal to Sahibzada Hargobind Ji the Sikhs had declined, is remembered to have sharpened the emperor's resolve. Jahangir wrote that he ordered the Guru produced before him, handed his houses and children to Murtaza Khan, confiscated his property and commanded that he be put to death with torture according to the Yasa. The pretexts were a fine and a demand that he alter the Granth; the cause was the Guru's growing following.

Before leaving Amritsar, Guru Arjan Dev Ji gathered the Sangat, and in the presence of Baba Buddha Ji and Bhai Gurdas Ji declared his eleven-year-old son Hargobind his successor, with the instruction that he should sit on the Guru's seat fully armed and keep an army; the time had come for the Sikhs to defend the faith with the sword as well as the Word. He then went to Lahore. There, in the last week of May 1606, in the custody of Murtaza Khan, Guru Ji was subjected to five days of torture in the burning heat of the Lahore summer. He was made to sit on a red-hot iron plate while burning sand was poured over his body, and was offered release if he would pay the fine, accept Islam or alter the Granth. Guru Ji refused each offer, saying that his body was perishable but the Bani was the Lord's own and not a word of it could be changed. Sai Mian Mir, who came to see him and wept at his condition, offered to intercede; Guru Ji restrained him, saying that one must accept the Will of the Lord with sweetness, and he recited, 'Tera kia meetha lagai, Har Naam padarath Nanak mangai', whatever You do is sweet to me; Nanak begs only for the treasure of the Name. On the fifth day he was permitted to bathe in the Ravi, and there, on 30 May 1606 (Jeth Sudi 4, Samvat 1663), his blistered body entered the waters and Guru Arjan Dev Ji attained Shaheedi, the first of the Sikh martyrs. Gurdwara Dehra Sahib stands on the bank where he departed, beside the Lahore Fort.

The Sikhs did not mourn their Guru with wailing; they sang the Bani as he had taught. At Amritsar Baba Buddha Ji applied the tilak to Sahibzada Hargobind Ji, who assumed the Guruship wearing two swords, of Miri and Piri, temporal and spiritual authority, as his father had directed. Guru Arjan Dev Ji's Shaheedi transformed the Panth: it demonstrated that the Guru's house would not bend before the throne, and it set the Sikhs on the path that led, through the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji in 1675, to the creation of the Khalsa in 1699. He is honoured as Shaheedan de Sirtaj, the crown of martyrs, and the Sikhs remember him each year in the month of Jeth with the serving of chhabeel, cool sweetened water offered to passers-by in the summer heat, in memory of the burning sand. The Granth he compiled, enlarged by Guru Gobind Singh Ji with the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji and installed as the eternal Guru in 1708, remains the living Guru of the Sikhs, and the Harmandir Sahib he built, rebuilt and gilded by later generations, remains the heart of the Sikh world. Bhai Gurdas Ji wrote of him that he was the ship of the Bani indeed, who carried the Sikhs across the ocean of the world and gave his life so that the Word might live.