Guru Angad

Succession

Born Lehna in 1504, he came to Nanak as a follower and was appointed successor over Nanak's own sons — the tradition records tests of obedience and service by which the choice was made. Nanak renamed him Angad, from ang, limb, indicating continuity of person rather than mere office. He served as Guru from 1539 to 1552 from Khadur Sahib.

That the succession passed outside the family, and was accepted, established the principle that the Guruship was an office conferred on merit. It also produced the first schism, since Nanak's son Sri Chand founded the ascetic Udasi order.

Gurmukhi

Angad is credited with giving the Gurmukhi script its settled form. Derived from Landa, a mercantile shorthand, and related to Sharada, it was standardised as a vehicle for the Guru's compositions in Punjabi.

The consequence was substantial: it gave the community a script of its own, distinct from the Devanagari of brahmanical learning and the Persian of administration, and it made the scripture readable by people outside the learned classes. Punjabi as a written literary language dates effectively from this point.

Collection and institutions

Angad gathered Nanak's hymns, adding compositions of his own, and this collection became the basis of what Guru Arjan later compiled as the Adi Granth. He also commissioned an early account of Nanak's life, extended the langar, and encouraged physical exercise among his followers.

The pattern set here — a Guru who writes, collects, and builds institutions — was followed by his successors and is the mechanism by which a devotional movement acquired a scripture, a script and a structure within three generations.