Guru Nanak Dev (15 April 1469 – 22 September 1539) is the first of the ten Sikh Gurus and the founder of the Sikh tradition. Born in a Khatri Hindu merchant family at Rai Bhoi di Talvandi (renamed Nankana Sahib, in present-day Pakistan), he was raised in a religious environment that drew on both the Sant tradition of the Hindu nirguna bhakti poets and the Sufi tariqas of the western Punjab. After a pivotal spiritual experience at Sultanpur Lodhi in c. 1496-1499, he set out on four extended preaching tours (the udasis) across India and beyond, then founded the township of Kartarpur on the Ravi in 1521 where he settled with his followers until his death. His 974 hymns are preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib, the principal Sikh scripture compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604. The opening prayer of the Granth, the Japji Sahib, is his composition.
A note on framing
The Sikh tradition regards itself as a distinct religion that originated with Guru Nanak and was given its institutional form by the ten Gurus and the codification of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699. The discussion of Nanak’s birth into a Hindu Khatri family is a statement about his social origins, not a claim that Sikhism is a sub-tradition of Hinduism. The Sikh self-understanding is that Nanak’s revelation was new; the Hindu and Sufi influences in the religious environment of 15th-century Punjab are part of the historical context, not the doctrinal source. The discussion below treats Nanak’s relation to the Hindu and Sufi traditions of his time as historical material, not as a confessional claim.
Family and the Sultanpur years
Nanak was the only son of Kalu Mehta, a Patwari (village revenue clerk), and Mata Tripta, in the Khatri Bedi sub-caste of the Hindu merchant community. His sister Nanaki was five years older. The family was Bhakti-leaning Hindu in the standard Punjabi village pattern of the late 15th century. He was educated under the village pandit Gopal in Sanskrit and arithmetic, and under the Muslim teacher Rukn-ud-din in Persian. The Khatri community of his birth was the principal trading and administrative caste of the Punjab and frequently bilingual in Persian for administrative purposes.
Around 1485, Nanak was sent to live with his sister Nanaki at Sultanpur Lodhi on the Bein river in Kapurthala district. He served as accountant (modi-khana) to Daulat Khan Lodhi, the Pathan governor of Sultanpur and a cousin of the Delhi Lodhi sultans. In 1487 he married Sulakhani, daughter of Mool Chand of Batala. They had two sons: Sri Chand (born 1494, who later founded the Udasi sampradaya) and Lakhmi Chand (born 1497).
The Bein experience and the Mool Mantra
The defining event of Nanak’s life is dated by the principal Janam-Sakhi tradition to about 1496-1499, when he was 27-30 years old. He had gone to the Bein river for his morning bath and did not return for three days. On reappearing he is said to have uttered the line that became the opening of the Mool Mantra of Sikh prayer: Na koi Hindu na koi Musalmaan (“there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim”). The statement was understood by his contemporaries as a claim that the religious labels current in Sultanpur Lodhi (Hindu Khatri and Muslim Pathan) were not the categories that ultimate reality recognised.
The Mool Mantra in its full form, opening Japji Sahib, begins: Ek Onkar, Sat Naam, Karta Purakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akaal Murat, Ajooni, Saibhang, Gur Prasaad (“One Being, True Name, Creator, Without Fear, Without Enmity, Beyond Time, Unborn, Self-Existent, by the Guru’s Grace”). The metaphysics is monotheist and rejects the avatar concept of Hindu Vaishnavism; the practice it endorses is internal remembrance (naam japo) rather than ritual or pilgrimage.
The four udasis
Between approximately 1500 and 1521, Nanak undertook four extended preaching journeys, accompanied by Bhai Mardana, a Muslim rabab player of Talvandi who had been with him from his youth:
- First udasi (east): Delhi, Hardwar, Banaras, Gaya, Patna, Puri, Dhaka, Sylhet, Kamrup (Assam). The recorded meeting with the Brahmin priests at Hardwar over the direction of water-offering to the sun is preserved as a teaching anecdote.
- Second udasi (south): Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Visits to Sangaladip in Sri Lanka are recorded in the Bala Janam-Sakhi tradition.
- Third udasi (north): Kashmir, Ladakh, Tibet. The Gurdwara Pathar Sahib near Leh marks one of the sites of this journey.
- Fourth udasi (west): Multan, Mecca, Medina, Baghdad. The Sikh tradition holds that he visited Mecca during the hajj and debated with the local ulema; the Multan visit and the meeting with Bahauddin (head of the Suhrawardi tariqa at Multan) are firmly attested.
The journeys established Nanak as a teacher recognised across north Indian religious traditions and beyond. The companion Mardana was given the rabab, and most of the hymns Nanak composed in the udasis were sung on the road, with Mardana accompanying.
Kartarpur and the founding of the Sikh community
In 1521 Nanak settled at Kartarpur, a new township he founded on the right bank of the Ravi river in present-day Narowal district of Pakistan. The settlement embodied the practical institutions that became the core of Sikh community life: the sangat (assembly), the langar (community kitchen serving all who came, regardless of caste or religion), the kirtan (devotional singing), and the work-discipline of kirat karo (honest labour) and vand chhako (sharing earnings). Nanak farmed land at Kartarpur and lived as a householder for the next 18 years.
The succession decision is a defining feature of the Nanak tradition. He passed over both his sons (Sri Chand, who had taken to ascetic life, and Lakhmi Chand) and chose Bhai Lehna, his disciple of about ten years, as the next Guru. The renaming of Lehna as Angad (“part of me”) in 1539 established the principle that the Guruship would pass to the most spiritually qualified disciple rather than by hereditary right.
The hymns and the Japji
Nanak’s 974 compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib are preserved with raga attributions. They are in a mixed Punjabi-Hindi register sometimes called Sant Bhasha, the vernacular shared with Kabir, Ravidas and the other Sant poets of the north. The Japji Sahib, the morning prayer of the Sikh tradition, is the central composition: 40 stanzas (pauris) plus a slok at the beginning and end, on the nature of Ek Onkar and the practice of remembrance.
For what it’s worth, reading Nanak’s compositions alongside Kabir’s verses (which Guru Arjan included in the Guru Granth Sahib in 1604) gives the closest available picture of the wider 15th-16th century Sant tradition of north India. Nanak’s voice is more measured and less aphoristic than Kabir’s, more concerned with the practical organisation of a community, but the doctrinal overlap is substantial.
Common questions
Why does the Sikh tradition reject the avatar concept?
Nanak’s metaphysics is monotheist: God is Ek Onkar, the One, without form or birth (ajooni, saibhang). The avatar doctrine of Hindu Vaishnavism, in which Vishnu takes human form as Rama or Krishna, is rejected in Nanak’s compositions, though Rama and Krishna appear in his hymns as names of the formless One. The Sikh position is that the Guru is the teacher, not the deity in human form; the focus of devotion is the formless Naam.
What is the relation of Nanak to the Khalsa?
The Khalsa, the formal community of initiated Sikhs with the five Ks (Kesh, Kara, Kanga, Kachha, Kirpan), was instituted by the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, at Anandpur on Baisakhi day 1699, 160 years after Nanak’s death. Nanak’s institutional contribution was the sangat, the langar, and the practice of naam japo; the militant-fraternal form of the Khalsa was Gobind Singh’s response to the Mughal persecution of his time.
Where can visitors go today?
Nankana Sahib, 75 km west of Lahore in Pakistan, has the Gurdwara Janam Asthan at the birthplace; the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara on the Ravi (also in Pakistan) marks his samadhi-site and is accessible to Indian pilgrims via the Kartarpur Corridor opened in 2019. Sultanpur Lodhi in Indian Punjab has the Gurdwara Ber Sahib at the Bein. Talwandi Sabo (Damdama Sahib) in Bathinda district preserves the literary tradition.
One limitation worth noting
The principal biographical sources for Nanak’s life, the various Janam-Sakhi traditions (Bala, Puratan, Adi Sakhis, and the Bhai Mani Singh version), were compiled between the late 16th and the 19th century. They differ on details of the udasis and incorporate miracle-narrative conventions of their own time. The historian W H McLeod’s Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (Oxford, 1968) is the standard academic treatment of the Janam-Sakhi material. The biographical summary is at the Guru Nanak entry on Wikipedia, and the Adi Granth verses with English translation are at SriGranth.org.
