Gur Avtar Suni pukaar daataar Prabb, Gur Nanak jag maah pathaiaa; Charan dhoi Rabras kar, charnaamrit Sikhaa pilajaa; Paarbrahm pooran Brahm, Kaljug andar ik dikhaiaa; Chaaray pair dharm de, chaar yaran ik varan karaiaa; Ranaa rank baraabari, pairi payna jag vartaiaa; Ulta khel piram daa, pairaaoopar sis nivaiaa; Kaljug Babay taryaa, Satnam parh mantra sunaiaa; Kal taaran Gur Nanak aiaa…………….Bhai Gur Das Ji Advent of Guru Nanak , ‘The merciful God listened to the cries of humanity and sent Guru Nanak into this world, He bowed to God in utter humility and offered prayers and then he gave the nectar of the “Holy Name” to his disciples. | The Guru revealed the unity of the Supreme Being in the Dark Age. He established Dharma firmly on its feet, brought together the four castes. ; He initiated the practice of disciples acknowledging one another and treated prince and pauper alike. Look at this wondrous act: he taught the people to bow their heads and to recognize their own humility. Baba Nanak liberated the people of the Dark Age through the mantra of Satnam. Guru Nanak came to the world for the redemption of mankind.
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion was bor in Kshatriya family of the Bedi clan on April 15, 1469.A.D. in Rai Bhoeki Talawandi now known as Nankana Sahib in the Sheikhupura District of the Punjab Province of Pakistan. He was the only son of his parents. His father Mehta Kalu was a Patwari a rank which was fairly high in the revenue department in medieval times. His mother’s name was Tnipata. He hadaelder sister, Nanki, four years senior to him, His father however was 100 involved with work to spare any time to be with his children.
While playing in the company of other children, Nanak was always fair. He made friends with the poor and so called low caste. Muslim boys were as much friends of his as were Hindus. He had a melodious voice and was fond of singing devotional songs. He was used to taking long walks and would venture fare out of his village to explore the land and forest morning and evening, reveling in the company of holy men.
His sister Nanaki was deeply attached to him. She found in her brother an evolved soul, a messenger of God, She was convinced her brother was no ordinary child. But she dared not talk about it to anyone.
The second disciple of Guru Nanak was none other than Rai Bular the Muslim chief of the voltage; Day after day he heard amazing stories about Nanak.
When he grew to be five, like many children, he was sent to an elementary school MN by Pandit Gopal of his village, the teacher found in a short while that he had little to teach Nanak,. Because Nanak Learnt reading and writing very quickly. He even composed on acrostic on the Punjabi alphabet when teacher tried to teach him arithmetic he found him equally proficient in figures. Nanak told his teacher that without knowing God’s reality, all other knowledge was meaningless.
“Burn worldly love grinding it into ashes to make ink. Let your intellect be the fine paper on which should write.
With the pen of divine love, as depicted by the Guru, write that we are limitless and great.
Oh teacher, if you were to learn writing this The truth of it will stand by your Wherever you are called upon to render account…[Sri Rag] Kalu chand, then placed Nanak under the tutorship of Pandit Rajnath, a brilliant Sanskrit scholar, so that he might become a great scholar of Sanskrit and adept in Vedic statutes. But here, too, Nanak was not satisfied. He accepted one God, but not gods and goddesses. He accepted man as brother of man, but rejected the invidious difference of castes and creeds sanctioned in Sanskrit scriptures. After two years, Pandit Rajnath informed the father that Nanak had nothing more to learn from him.
At that stage, he was entrusted to a Mohammedan teacher at the suggestion of Rai Bular who loved Nanak as a young friend and wanted him to learn Persian and Arabic to get good position in some department of the Lodhi kingdom. Even while studying under the Muslim teacher, Nanak was generally busy in simulating religious discussions. He continued to write poems in Punjabi, but now he wrote verses in Persian, the poetic fervor and profundity of which simply delighted his teacher. However, Nanak left school and took private study and meditation. He remained for long periods in the same altitude, whether sleeping or walking and associated continually with religious men.
He rejected the Hindu sacred thread ceremony of “Janeu” at the age of 10, saying that he would rather have a thread that neither breaks, not gets soiled nor be burnt ‘or lost:
“Out of the cotton of compassion Spin the thread of contentment; to knots of continence add the spinning of truth make such a sacred thread for man. Sucha thread once worn will never break nor get soiled, burnt or lost.”
Nanak sang passionate songs of the love of God and talked like a sage. Nanak refused to bow before any idol or image, or to pay homage to any Hindu deity. He sang heartrending songs of the one God, who for him was a living presence in association of Hindus and Muslims. He set aside caste prejudices and mixed freely with low caste people.
Nanak appears to have been further entrusted with the duties of a herdsman. While one day herding his buffaloes, he lay down to sleep under a tree during the midday heat. Rai Bahadur passing by in the evening found him in that attitude and observed that the protecting shadow of the tree had remained stationary over him and not veered round like shadows of other tree with the sun’s progress. On another occasion, as Nanak lay asleep in the pasture ground, it was observed that a large cobra watched over him and protected the youthful saint with its hood. Rai Bular congratulated Kalu on being the father of such a son, and often made indulgent inquiries about Nanak: where he spent his time, what he did, and so on, Even if it meant going out of the way, he would do so to drop in at Mehta Kalu’s house and meet Nanak. Every time Rai Bular looked at Nanak, he felt charmed. At night, when everybody slept, many a time Mehta Kalu would observe his young son deeply absorbed in meditation.
At the age of 19 his father Kalu married him to Sulakhni the daughter of Mula, a resident, of Batala in Gurdaspur district. In course of time, he got two sons, Sri Chand and Lakshmi Das.
Nanak’s only sister Nanki had been married to Jai Ram, a Khatri employed as a steward by Daullat Khan Lodi, the Governor of Sultanpur. Kalu decided to send Nanak to Sultanpur. Jai Ram secured a respectable post for Nanak whom he presented as an educated man, Daullat Khan asked Nanak to lake charge of his stores, and it was the most appropriate assignment for a God-fearing man like Nanak. A few days later, Mardana one of Nanak companions from Talwandi also joined him. Mardana was an instrumentalist by profession, he played on the rabab while, during the day, he worked in the Nawab’s commissariat, they got together both in the morning and in the evening to meditate and sing hymns. Their sessions, became longer and longer day by day. More and more people Started joining them, it is said that Nanak remained in the service of the Nawab for about two years.
His inward struggle touched its apex when a charge was leveled against him that he was recklessly giving away the food grain in his charge. The Nawab ordered an inquiry which was conducted with great care. Accounts were scrutinized and grain was reweighed. The Guru’s denigrators were surprised when the stores were found full and the account showed a surplus, Nevertheless, the Guru resigned and decided to reform the people and show them the Divine way which every house holder should follow.
One morning, accompanied by Mardana, he went to the river Bain for his bath. He did this first thing every day, To Mardana’s surprise, when Guru Nanak plunged into the water that morning, he neither did nor surface. Mardana waited and waited. His clothes were found on the river bank. The people concluded that he had drowned. After three days, Nanak reappeared unharmed, but remained silent. When he broke his silence his first utterance was; “There is no Hindu no Mussalman, so whose path shall I follow? I shall follow God’s path, a passage in Guru Granth Sahib is said to be description of His expenence:
“I was a ministerial out of work The Lord gave me employment The mighty one instructed mis Night and day sing my praise The Lord summoned the minstrel To his high court On me he bestowed the robe of honor to proclaim Truth singing his praise.””(SGGS150).
He refused to acknowledge the superiority of one caste or class over the other. He refused to believe that rituals, formulate and symbols deprived of ethical sig nuisance can ever by useful for religious or spiritual life.
Having realized that the age of ignorance and strife requires the message of truth and peace, Nanak took the momentous decision of spreading it. To do so, he undertook arduous and extensive tour in the North, South, East, and West and visited the important centers of the Hindu, Muslims and Buddhists, Jains, Sufis, Jogis, etc. and met people of different races and tribes of diverse cultures. His travels covered an amazing period of nearly 30 years.
In his first Udasi (tour) he traversed in terms of the modem political geography of Haryana, Delhi, UP. Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Madras, Kerala, Mysore, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat. He also visited Sri Lanka from Nagapattinam and returned via Rameshwaram.
The second Udasi took the Guru into the interior of Himalayan region where he visited the Kangra valley, the Spite table land, Western Tibet, Ladakh, Kashmir and North West Frontier.
After this the Guru undertook his third missionary journey to the Muslim countries of West Asia wearing the dress of a Muslim devotee, Some prominent places connected with this tour of the Guru were Multan, Much, Lakhpat, Highly, Mecca and Medina, Baghdad, Mashad, Hera! Gorakh Hatri (Peshawar). A (To be continued in next issue).
Article extracted from this publication >> November 26, 1993
