Guru Nanak, Born in 1469, Founded the First Sikh Community at Kartarpur and Left 974 Hymns in a 1,430-Page Scripture

Guru Nanak was born in 1469 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, a village near Lahore that is now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, and died at Kartarpur on the Ravi river in 1539. Between those dates he founded the first Sikh community, and his hymns open the Guru Granth Sahib, the 1,430-page scripture of the Sikh faith.

India’s 2011 census counted 2.08 crore Sikhs, 1.7 percent of the population. The sources for the founder’s own life are his hymns, the writings of the early Sikh poet Bhai Gurdas and the Janamsakhis, the traditional life-stories of the Guru. Each account below is credited to the source that gives it, and the points on which the sources differ are stated where they come up.

A village near Lahore and a store in Sultanpur

The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which was formed in 1920 and describes itself as the apex governing body of Sikh gurdwaras, gives his birth date as 15 April 1469. Its page also says the birthday is observed on the full moon of Kartik, which falls in October or November. The month is a long-running question. Britannica traces the Kartik date to the Bala Janamsakhi, while Kirpal Singh, a former head of the Punjab Historical Studies department at Punjabi University, Patiala, notes that the Puratan and Miharban Janamsakhis both give Vaisakh (April to May) and concludes that Vaisakh is right.

His father, Mehta Kalu, was a village revenue official (a patwari) of the Bedi Khatri caste, Kirpal Singh writes, and Britannica describes the Khatris as a mercantile community. His mother was Tripta, and the SGPC names Gurdwara Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib as the shrine of their home. Nanak had an older sister, Nanaki, and after her marriage he lived in her house at Sultanpur Lodhi. Britannica says he worked there in a granary store. Kirpal Singh and the Harvard University Press introduction by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh place the job under the Muslim governor, Daulat Khan Lodhi. He married Sulakhni, and they had two sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das.

Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh adds a detail from the same years: the Gurmukhi script, in which the Gurus’ hymns were later written down, can be traced to the Landa mercantile shorthand that Nanak would have used while working in shops and granaries.

What the sources can carry

Britannica’s entry, by the historian W. H. McLeod and Tamanna Nangia, says what little is known of Nanak’s life came down mainly as anecdotes called sakhis. The anthologies that gather them in rough order are the Janamsakhis, whose compilers concentrated on his childhood and his travels. The Harvard introduction says documentation is largely lacking and names three basic sources: the scripture, the works of Bhai Gurdas, the earliest Sikh theologian, and stories that began to circulate soon after his death.

Kirpal Singh makes two points about the surviving Janamsakhis. All of them were written after the Adi Granth was compiled in 1604, he says, and many of the Guru’s verses they quote come from it. He also calls the first Var (ballad) of Bhai Gurdas the anchor sheet of most of them, and argues that most of their anecdotes “fall within the orbit of history.”

The Janamsakhis survive in several versions. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls the Puratan the oldest. Its Colebrooke manuscript reached the East India House library in London around 1815 or 1816, was rediscovered in 1872 and carries no date. The Encyclopaedia reasons from the language that the text belongs to the sixteenth century, around the time the Adi Granth was compiled, while Kirpal Singh places every surviving Janamsakhi after 1604. The Bala version won general acceptance by the middle of the eighteenth century, and its oldest dated manuscript is from 1658. Bhai Bala’s name, Kirpal Singh points out, appears in no other Janamsakhi. He also draws on the Miharban and Mani Singh versions.

Three days at the Bein, and the first words afterwards

Britannica relays the Janamsakhi account of his call. When Nanak was about 30, a Janamsakhi says, he disappeared while bathing in a river and was presumed drowned. He is believed to have communed with God during his absence, to have been given the nectar of immortality (amrit) and the knowledge of the divine name, and to have been told to teach it. He came back three days later. After a silence he said, “There is no Hindu; there is no Muslim.”

Kirpal Singh’s retelling of the Janamsakhis names the river as the Bein, a stream at Sultanpur, and puts his bathing place about half a mile west of the town. In the Bala version, the governor has fishermen drag the stream and orders the accounts of the Modikhana, the governor’s store, checked; they are found in order. Nanak reappears at a cremation ground about a mile and a half from where he went in. Kirpal Singh notes that the Mani Singh version gives eight days, not three. Gurdwara Sant Ghat marks the place where he is believed to have come out of the water.

Journeys in four directions

What followed was a long absence from Punjab. Britannica says the route and the places cannot be positively identified. The Puratan tradition, as the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism and Britannica summarise it, lists four journeys, to the east, the south, the north and the west, and Britannica counts a fifth within Punjab. In the south, the account reaches Sri Lanka. In the north it goes deep into the Himalayas, where Nanak debates with Siddhas, yogis who were believed to have gained immortality. In the west it reaches Baghdad, Mecca and Medina.

His companion, the Muslim musician Bhai Mardana, played the rabab, a stringed instrument, while Nanak sang, according to the Harvard introduction. Kirpal Singh says Bhai Gurdas wrote that Nanak visited the Hindu pilgrimage centres, and that the Janamsakhi stories of Kurukshetra, Haridwar, Prayag, Benaras and Jagannath Puri grew from that line and from Nanak’s own hymns. He cites an inscription found at Baghdad in 1918 as support for the western journey and notes that the translations of it vary.

Saidpur, 1520, and the four hymns on Babur

One event in Nanak’s life can be dated from his own hymns. Four of them, known as the Babarvani, refer to the invasions of Babur. According to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Babur crossed the Indus in 1520, took Sialkot without a fight and stormed Saidpur, now Eminabad in Pakistan, where the garrison was put to the sword and the townspeople were carried off. He sacked Lahore in 1524 and took Delhi after the battle of Panipat on 21 April 1526.

Britannica reads the hymns as evidence that Nanak was present at the attacks on Saidpur and Lahore and was back in Punjab by 1520. The Janamsakhis say he was taken captive at Saidpur, the Encyclopaedia adds, and a line on page 1412 of the scripture has Lahore under death and fury for about four hours. The hymns sit on pages 360, 417 to 418 and 722 to 723. A mention of guns used against Afghan war-elephants is a likely reference to Panipat, the Encyclopaedia says. Kirpal Singh reads a later stanza of one hymn the same way, concludes that the lines were composed after 1526 and thinks the hymns were given their final shape at Kartarpur.

In one hymn, the Encyclopaedia’s translation shows Nanak asking God whether he felt pity at such killing. The Sikh scholar Harbans Singh is quoted in the Harvard introduction calling the Babur hymns “unexcelled for their power of expression and moral keenness.”

Kartarpur: a farm, a kitchen and the first congregation

Nanak spent the last two decades of his life at Kartarpur with his wife and children, the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says, and the village became the principal seat of the faith. The Cabinet release of 22 November 2018 says eighteen years. Britannica says tradition holds the village was built by a wealthy admirer. In Kirpal Singh’s retelling of the Janamsakhis, a rich man of Lahore, Duni Chand, had a house and an inn built for the Guru, who named the place Kartarpur. The Janamsakhis disagree on when this happened, he adds: after the first long journey in the Vilayatvali text, after Mecca and Medina in the Miharban, and after the south-eastern journey in the Mani Singh.

The men and women who gathered there to hear and sing his poetry formed the first Sikh community, the Harvard introduction says. Bhai Gurdas records that the Japu was recited in the morning and other hymns in the evening. In Kirpal Singh’s retelling, Nanak made a large tract of land fit for farming, the Sikhs who came to him worked the fields beside him, and the harvest fed the langar, the free community kitchen, morning and evening. In a season with no crop, parched gram was served.

Britannica gives the langar an origin story from his boyhood. At about 12 he was sent to the market with money for a “Saccha Sauda” (“Meaningful Bargain”), and spent it feeding saints who had gone hungry for days. Britannica credits him with introducing Guru ka Langar at Kartarpur and says most gurdwaras now run one, open to anyone regardless of religion, caste or gender. Its list of the five principles of his teaching reads: sharing (vand chhako), honest living (kirat karo), repeating the divine name (naam japo), wishing for everyone’s happiness (sarbat da bhala) and service (sewa). A couplet on page 1245 of the scripture, marked as Nanak’s, says that a person who works for a living and gives some of it away knows the way.

Lahina becomes Angad, and the hymns go with him

Before his death, the Harvard introduction says, Nanak chose his disciple Lahina as his successor, gave him his book of verse and named him Angad, a limb of his own body. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says Nanak died at Kartarpur after naming him. Britannica says tradition is divided between 1538 and 1539 and judges 1539 more likely. The day is also reported two ways. Kirpal Singh gives 22 September 1539, the tenth day of the bright half of Assu in the year 1596 of the Bikrami calendar. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism gives 7 September 1539, the tenth day of the dark half of the same month.

The hymns went on. Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, compiled the scripture, and it was installed in 1604 at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, according to the Harvard introduction. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, added the hymns of his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and ended the line of living Gurus by vesting the role in the scripture itself. All the Gurus who contributed signed their hymns “Nanak,” and the book tells them apart by the word mahal and a number, so Mahal 1 marks Nanak. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh counts 974 hymns by him. The scripture also holds verses by Hindu and Muslim holy men, among them Kabir and Shaikh Farid, a shared devotional world described in When Hindus and Muslims Shared the Same Saints.

The opening is Nanak’s. Britannica credits him with the Mool Mantar, the root formula on page 1. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism paraphrases it as “God is one; call Him Eternal truth,” followed by the other attributes of the Creator. His Japji follows and fills the first eight pages, according to SriGranth.org.

The road back to Kartarpur

The Ravi washed away most of Kartarpur, the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says. The Guru’s descendants and followers moved to Dera Baba Nanak, a new town they raised across the river. The three-storey gurdwara later built at Kartarpur can be seen from the high embankment on the Indian side, but the Encyclopaedia says pilgrims from India could not reach it after 1947, when the border drawn from the Radcliffe awards put it in Pakistan. Britannica says the shrine lies less than a kilometre from the border, that devotees had to travel about 125 km to Lahore to reach it, and that an elevated viewing platform was built at Dera Baba Nanak in 2008.

On 22 November 2018 the Union Cabinet approved a corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to the international border, funded by the Government of India, along with a resolution to mark the 550th birth anniversary. The same release set out a heritage town at Sultanpur Lodhi, a centre for inter-faith studies at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, chairs on Nanak in one university each in the United Kingdom and Canada, and a request to UNESCO to publish his writings in world languages. In his address on 9 November 2019, the Prime Minister said UNESCO had accepted that request.

India and Pakistan signed the agreement for the corridor on 24 October 2019. The Prime Minister inaugurated the Indian side on 9 November 2019, the Press Information Bureau reports, with a 4.2 km four-lane highway built for Rs 120 crore and a passenger terminal on 15 acres with more than 50 immigration counters, able to handle about 5,000 pilgrims a day. Pilgrims need only a valid passport, and travel is visa-free. Pakistan’s Foreign Office statement of 24 October 2019 gives the same figure of 5,000 pilgrims a day.

The Tribune reported on 9 November 2025 that passage through the corridor had been closed since May 2025 on security grounds, and that India and Pakistan had extended the agreement to 2029. The birthday itself is marked every year, and the SGPC says Sikhs from all over the world gather at Gurdwara Janam Asthan in Nankana Sahib to celebrate it.