Guru Angad Dev

01Lehna becomes Angad

Lehna was born at Matte di Sarai near today’s Muktsar, the son of a trader named Pheru. Every year he led a band of pilgrims to the shrine of the Devi in the hills. On one such pilgrimage he heard a hymn of Guru Nanak, turned aside to Kartarpur on the Ravi, and stayed. The Sikh tradition tells how he did every task the Guru set, carrying wet grass on his head and walking into a muddy pond after a cup, when the Guru’s own sons held back. Nanak called him Angad, part of his own body, and bowed before him as Guru in 1539.

02Khadur and the Gurmukhi letters

After Nanak’s passing Guru Angad moved to Khadur, near the Beas. He gave shape to the Gurmukhi script, out of the Lande and Takri letters used in Punjab, so that the Guru’s bani could be written and read by ordinary people. He kept a free kitchen where all ate seated together, run by his wife Mata Khivi, whom the Guru Granth Sahib praises for her kitchen. He encouraged wrestling and physical training among the young. Before his death in 1552 he passed over his own sons and chose the aged Amar Das, who had served him for years.

Place · Settlement founded by Guru Nanak in the early 16th century; present gurdwara 1925, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of PatialaKartarpur Sahib (Gurdwara Darbar Sahib)The village on the Ravi where Guru Nanak spent his last years farming and keeping langar, and where he passed the Guruship to Guru Angad. Since 1947 it has stood a few kilometres inside Pakistan, reached from India by a corridor opened in 2019.Read →