Guru Arjan

The Adi Granth

Arjan's central achievement was the compilation, in 1604, of the Adi Granth. He gathered the compositions of the four preceding Gurus and added his own, and included the verse of fifteen non-Sikh devotional poets — among them the Muslim Sufi Farid and the low-caste Hindu saints Kabir, Namdev and Ravidas.

He organised the whole by musical measure rather than by author or subject, fixed the text, and had it written out by Bhai Gurdas. Installing it in the Harmandir, he placed it above his own seat. The decision to fix a canon in the founder's lifetime-adjacent generation, in the community's own script, is the single most consequential act in Sikh institutional history.

The Harmandir

He completed the tank at Amritsar begun by his father and built the Harmandir at its centre, with entrances on four sides — a form the tradition reads as openness to all castes and directions. Tradition holds that the foundation was laid by the Sufi Mian Mir, though the account is later and disputed.

Execution

Arjan's growing community, its independent revenue and its urban centre made it politically visible. Contemporary sources including Jahangir's own memoir record that the emperor ordered his execution; the memoir gives as reason his influence over Hindus and Muslims alike and his blessing of the rebel prince Khusrau. He died in custody at Lahore in 1606 under torture.

Consequences

The execution changed the community's direction. Arjan is said to have instructed his son Hargobind to sit armed on the throne, and Hargobind's assumption of two swords, temporal and spiritual, followed directly. The turn from a purely devotional movement to one prepared to bear arms dates from this point, and Arjan's death remains among the central events of Sikh memory.