Organisation
Amar Das became Guru in 1552 at the age of seventy-three and served until 1574 from Goindval. Faced with a community growing beyond what one centre could serve, he divided it into twenty-two manjis, districts each under an appointed preacher, and established the collection of offerings through them. This is the beginning of Sikh administrative structure.
He also had a baoli, a stepped well, dug at Goindval, giving the community a pilgrimage centre of its own, and fixed the gatherings at Vaisakhi and Diwali as occasions when Sikhs would assemble before the Guru.
Social measures
Amar Das required that anyone seeking an audience with him first eat in the langar, without regard to caste — an enforcement of commensality that made the principle unavoidable rather than optional. The tradition records that the Mughal emperor Akbar complied.
He opposed sati, encouraged the remarriage of widows, discouraged purdah, and appointed women among the preachers of the manjis. He also prescribed distinct Sikh rites for birth, marriage and death, separating the community's life-cycle observance from brahmanical ritual.
Compositions
His hymns, including the Anand Sahib, form a substantial part of the Guru Granth Sahib and are used liturgically, the Anand being recited at the close of Sikh ceremonies. He also gathered the compositions of his predecessors and of earlier devotional poets, which passed to his successor and eventually into the scripture — the beginning of the process that gave the Adi Granth its unusual breadth of authorship.
Further reading
- Fenech, Louis E. The Sikh Zafar-namah of Guru Gobind Singh. Oxford University Press, 2013
- Grewal, J. S. The Sikhs of the Punjab. Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Grewal, J. S. Guru Nanak in History. Panjab University, 1969
- McLeod, W. H. Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford University Press, 1968
- Singh, Khushwant. A History of the Sikhs. Oxford University Press, 2004
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.