Guru Arjan
Guru Arjan was born on the 15th of April 1563 in Goindval, in the Punjab, the youngest son of a man who would himself become a Guru. His father, Bhai Jetha, later known as Guru Ram Das, was a Khatri of the Sodhi sub-caste. His mother, Mata Bhani, was the daughter of Guru Amar Das, the third Sikh Guru. Arjan thus arrived into the very heart of Sikhism's founding lineage.
By the time Arjan died on the 30th of May 1606 in Mughal custody, he had reshaped Sikhism in ways that would outlast him by centuries. He compiled the first official Sikh scripture, completed one of the faith's most sacred buildings, reorganized its financial structure, founded multiple towns, and composed more than two thousand hymns. He also became the first of the two Sikh Gurus to be martyred, a death so consequential that it changed the character of the faith itself.
How does the youngest son of a spiritual leader transform a community's scripture, its cities, and its relationship to political power? And what drove a Mughal emperor to order his execution? Those questions are what this documentary sets out to answer.
Guru Ram Das chose Arjan, his youngest son, to succeed him as the fifth Sikh Guru, passing over his eldest son Prithi Chand. That decision fractured the community almost immediately. Prithi Chand became the figurehead of a breakaway faction, and the Sikhs who remained loyal to Arjan gave that faction an unflattering name: the Minas, meaning literally "scoundrels."
The rivalry was not merely theological. Prithi Chand and his followers attempted to assassinate the young Hargobind, Arjan's son, three separate times. Prithi Chand also cultivated relationships with Mughal agents, drawing the political machinery of the empire into what had begun as a family dispute.
The two factions produced competing written texts, each offering its own account of the quarrel. Baba Mohan, a son of Guru Amar Das, added a further challenge by asserting his own authority. These rival claims were backed by rival manuscripts. Prithi Chand possessed the Guru Harsahai pothi, then believed to be the oldest scripture from the time of Guru Nanak. Baba Mohan held the Goindval pothi containing hymns of Nanak and the early Gurus. Scholars suggest that the existence of these competing manuscripts may have been the direct trigger for Arjan's most enduring project: the creation of a single, authoritative Sikh scripture.
Upon the first parkash, or ceremonial installation, of the Adi Granth, Arjan declared to those assembled: "Listen you all to my directive. And believe it as ever true. Accept the Granth as equal with the Guru. And think no distinctions between the two."
Arjan began gathering hymns from across the Sikh tradition, travelling to collect texts and then scrutinizing each one. His approved collection incorporated the hymns of the first four Sikh Gurus, his own compositions, and the work of 17 Hindu bards and 2 Muslim bards, known as Bhagats. Any hymn he judged to be fake or to diverge from the Gurus' teachings was excluded.
The compilation was finished on the 30th of August 1604, and installed in the Harmandir Sahib temple on the 1st of September 1604. Arjan himself was a prolific poet who had composed 2,218 hymns. More than half the volume of what would later become the Guru Granth Sahib consists of his own work, making his collection the largest single contribution to the scripture by any one author.
Scholars Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair have described Arjan's compositions as combining spiritual message with an "encyclopedic linguistic sophistication," drawing on Braj Bhasha forms and learned Sanskrit vocabulary. His literary output was roughly equal to all his predecessors combined. He used the same set of thirty rags, or musical modes, that his father Guru Ram Das had used, and his language leaned toward Sanskritic and Hindi vocabulary. His most celebrated individual work was the Sukhmani Sahib.
When Mughal emperor Akbar was informed that the new scripture contained teachings hostile to Islam, he ordered a copy brought to him. Arjan sent a copy on a thali, a ceremonial plate, with a message that was later added to the expanded text: "In this thali you will find three things - truth, peace and contemplation: in this too the nectar Name which is the support of all humanity." The Akbarnama by Abu'l-Fazl Allami records that Arjan met Akbar and his cortege in 1598, and scholar Louis Fenech has suggested this meeting likely influenced the later development of Sikh manuscriptology.
Guru Arjan's father, Guru Ram Das, had founded the town of Ramdaspur around a large man-made water pool called the Ramdas Sarovar. Arjan inherited that building project and expanded it. Financed by donations and constructed through voluntary labor, the settlement grew around a new temple complex, the Gurdwara Harmandir Sahib, built beside the pool.
Arjan installed the Adi Granth inside the Harmandir Sahib in 1604. The city that grew up around it is now known as Amritsar, and is today the holiest pilgrimage site in Sikhism. Arjan also established two additional water reservoirs there: the Santokhsar, meaning Pond of Contentment, and the Gongsar, meaning Pond of Bells.
Beyond Amritsar, Arjan founded the settlements of Kartarpur in the Jalandhar district, Hargobindpur, and Tarn Taran. Research has since linked the alignment of his Tarn Taran Gurudwara sarovar with the historic Delhi-Lahore Royal Road, traceable through surviving Kos Minars in the region. During tours of Majha and Doaba in the Punjab, the Sikh community attracted especially large numbers of Jat peasants, and the towns Arjan founded became centers of prosperity for them.
To fund all of this, Arjan reorganized the Masand system that Guru Ram Das had introduced. He promoted the practice of dasvandh, encouraging Sikhs to donate, if possible, one-tenth of their income, goods, or service to the Sikh community. The Masands who collected these contributions also taught Sikh tenets and settled civil disputes in their regions, functioning in a role comparable to a vicar or parish priest. The funds raised through dasvandh paid for gurdwaras and langars, the shared communal kitchens central to Sikh practice.
Arjan was arrested on the orders of Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1606, the same year Jahangir had ascended to the throne. The official charge was that Arjan had supported a rebellion led by Khusrau Mirza, Jahangir's own son, whom the emperor suspected of planning a patricidal coup. According to Jahangir's own autobiography, the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, Arjan had blessed Khusrau and too many people were being persuaded by his teachings; Jahangir concluded that if Arjan did not convert to Islam, the Sikh Panth had to be extinguished.
Jahangir's autobiography reveals that he did not fully understand the stature of the Sikh Gurus. He referred to Arjan as a Hindu who had "captured many of the simple-hearted of the Hindus and even of the ignorant and foolish followers of Islam, by his ways and manners... for the three or four generations they had kept this shop warm." The traditional Sikh account states that Jahangir demanded a fine of 200,000 rupees and asked that offensive hymns be removed from the scripture. Arjan refused both demands.
Mian Mir, a Sufi who was Arjan's friend, lobbied on his behalf when Jahangir ordered both the execution and the confiscation of Arjan's property; according to Rishi Singh, Mian Mir succeeded in getting the confiscation order deferred. Bhai Gurdas, a contemporary of Arjan and a noted seventeenth-century Sikh chronicler, left an eyewitness account recording Jahangir's order to torture the Guru to death. Historical records are unclear as to whether Arjan was executed by drowning in the Ravi river or died during the course of torture. Scholar J.S. Grewal notes that Sikh sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contain contradictory reports on this point.
Before his death, Arjan instructed his son Hargobind to take up arms and resist tyranny. Hargobind became the sixth Sikh Guru in 1606. The martyrdom is commemorated as Shaheedi Divas of Guru Arjan in May or June, according to the Nanakshahi calendar released by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 2003.
Arjan's death marked a turning point that the Sikh tradition recognizes as a watershed. His followers who had opposed militarization, including the faction around Prithi Chand, considered themselves the true heirs of Guru Nanak; they rejected the shift toward armed resistance under Hargobind in favor of what they called non-violent interiorization. The mainstream Sikh tradition went in the other direction.
Scholar Michael Barnes has written that the resolve and death of Arjan strengthened the conviction among Sikhs that "personal piety must have a core of moral strength. A virtuous soul must be a courageous soul. Willingness to suffer trial for one's convictions was a religious imperative." Scholar J.F. Richard has noted that Jahangir was persistently hostile to popularly venerated saints generally, not to Sikhism specifically, a context that complicates the narrative of religiously motivated persecution.
The figure of Chandu Shah, described as a Hindu minister of Jahangir, appears in several alternative accounts. One version casts him as seeking revenge on Arjan for refusing to marry Hargobind to Chandu Shah's daughter. A Lahore version inverts this entirely: in that telling, Chandu Shah actually prevents Arjan's torture by paying 200,000 rupees to Jahangir, then keeps Arjan in his own house and torments him there instead. Scholars note that these alternative versions, which tend to absolve Jahangir and the Mughal empire, have no support in the documentary record left by early seventeenth-century sources such as Jerome Xavier's letters or Jahangir's own memoirs.
Arjan's birthplace in Goindval is now memorialized as the Gurdwara Chaubara Sahib, and the scripture he compiled and installed in the Harmandir Sahib in 1604 continued to grow until it became the Guru Granth Sahib, the living scripture that today holds the same spiritual rank as a Guru in the Sikh faith.
Common questions
Who was Guru Arjan and why is he important in Sikhism?
Guru Arjan was the fifth of the ten Sikh Gurus, serving from 1581 until his death in 1606. He compiled the first official edition of the Sikh scripture, the Adi Granth, and is regarded as the first of two Sikh Gurus to be martyred. His death is considered a watershed event in Sikh history.
What is the Adi Granth and when did Guru Arjan compile it?
The Adi Granth was the first official edition of the Sikh scripture, compiled by Guru Arjan and completed on the 30th of August 1604. It included hymns from the first four Sikh Gurus, 2,218 hymns composed by Arjan himself, and contributions from 17 Hindu bards and 2 Muslim bards. It was installed in the Harmandir Sahib on the 1st of September 1604.
Why was Guru Arjan executed by the Mughal emperor Jahangir?
Jahangir ordered Arjan's arrest in 1606, accusing him of supporting a rebellion by his son Khusrau Mirza. According to Jahangir's own autobiography, the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, Arjan's growing influence led Jahangir to conclude that if Arjan did not convert to Islam, the Sikh Panth had to be extinguished. Arjan refused to convert, to pay a fine of 200,000 rupees, or to alter the scripture, and died in Mughal custody.
How did Guru Arjan die, and is the cause of death certain?
Guru Arjan died in 1606 while in Mughal custody at Lahore Fort. Historical records and Sikh tradition are unclear as to whether he was executed by drowning in the Ravi river or died as a result of torture. Scholar J.S. Grewal notes that Sikh sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries contain contradictory accounts of his death.
What city is associated with Guru Arjan's legacy?
Amritsar is the city most closely associated with Guru Arjan. His father Guru Ram Das founded the settlement around a man-made pool, and Arjan completed the Gurdwara Harmandir Sahib temple complex there, installing the Adi Granth inside it in 1604. Amritsar is now the holiest pilgrimage site in Sikhism.
How many hymns did Guru Arjan compose for the Guru Granth Sahib?
Guru Arjan composed 2,218 hymns, making his the largest single contribution to the Guru Granth Sahib. His work accounts for more than half the volume of the scripture. Scholars have described his compositions as combining spiritual depth with encyclopedic linguistic sophistication, drawing on Braj Bhasha forms and Sanskrit vocabulary.
All sources
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