Guru Amar Das

01Service at Khadur

Amar Das was born at Basarke, near Amritsar, in a Bhalla Khatri family. For years he walked to Haridwar to bathe in the Ganga. In his sixties he heard Bibi Amro, Guru Angad’s daughter and his nephew’s wife, singing the bani of Guru Nanak at dawn, and went to Khadur. There he served for twelve years. Tradition says he carried water from the Beas every morning before daylight for the Guru’s bath. In 1552 Guru Angad chose him, an old man of seventy-three, over his own sons.

02Goindwal and the manjis

Guru Amar Das settled at Goindwal on the Beas and had a baoli dug there, a stepwell of eighty-four steps that pilgrims still descend. He ruled that whoever came to see him must first eat in the langar, seated in a row with everyone else: pehle pangat, phir sangat. The Mughal emperor Akbar is said to have eaten there when he visited. To reach the growing sangat he set up twenty-two manjis, seats of teaching, some led by women. He gathered the hymns of the earlier Gurus into the Goindwal pothis, and his own Anand Sahib is sung at every Sikh ceremony.

Place · Settled c. 1552 under Guru Amar Das; the baoli of 84 steps dug in the 1550sGoindwal SahibThe town on the Beas where Guru Amar Das made his seat, dug the baoli of 84 steps and made the langar a rule for every visitor. Guru Arjan was born here in 1563, and Akbar crossed the Beas here and visited him in 1598.Read →