Guru Arjan

Guru Arjan

In 1606 CE, the Guru was imprisoned in Lahore Fort, where by some accounts he was tortured and executed, and by other accounts, the method of his death remains unresolved. Some Muslim traditional accounts such as of Latif in 19th-century states that Arjan was dictatorial, someone who lived in splendour with "costly attire", who had left aside the rosary and the clothes of a saint (fakir). Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi cheered the punishment and execution of Arjun, calling the Sikh Guru an infidel. In contrast, Mian Mir – the Sufi friend of Arjan, lobbied when Jehangir ordered the execution and the confiscation of Arjan's property, then got the confiscation order deferred, according to Rishi Singh.

Some scholars state that the evidence is unclear whether his death was due to execution, torture or forced drowning in the Ravi river. J.S. Grewal notes that Sikh sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth-century contain contradictory reports of Arjan's death. J. F. Richard states that Jahangir was persistently hostile to popularly venerated saints, not just Sikhism. Bhai Gurdas was a contemporary of Arjan and is a noted 17th-century Sikh chronicler. His eyewitness account recorded Arjan's life, and the order by Emperor Jahangir to torture the Guru to death.

A contemporary Jesuit account, written by Spanish Jesuit missionary Jerome Xavier (1549–1617), who was in Lahore at the time, records that the Sikhs tried to get Jahangir to commute the torture and death sentence to a heavy fine, but this attempt failed. Dabistan-i Mazahib Mobad states Jahangir tortured Arjan in the hopes of extracting the money and public repudiation of his spiritual convictions, but the Guru refused and was executed. Jerome Xavier, in appreciation of the courage of Guru Arjun, wrote back to Lisbon, that Arjan suffered and was tormented. Detail of a depiction of Guru Arjan Dev's martyrdom, from the front-page of the Thursday, 13 April 1933 Vaisakhi edition of 'The Khalsa', published from Lahore. According to the Sikh tradition, before his execution, Arjan instructed his son and successor Hargobind to take up arms, and resist tyranny. His execution led the Sikh Panth to become armed and pursue resistance to persecution under the Mughal rule. Michael Barnes states that the resolve and death of Arjun 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". Recent scholarship have offered alternative analyses, wary of "exaggerating fragmentary traces of documentary evidence in historical analysis". The alternate versions include stories about the role of Arjan in a conflict between the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and his son who Jahangir suspected of trying to organize a patricidal coup. An alternate version highlights the role of a Hindu minister of Jahangir named Chandu Shah. He, in one version, takes revenge on Arjan for not marrying his son Hargobind to Chandu Shah's daughter. In another Lahore version, Chandu Shah actually prevents Arjan from suffering torture and death by Muslims by paying 200,000 rupees (100,000 crusados) to Jahangir, but then keeps him and emotionally torments him to death in his house. Several alternative versions of the story try to absolve Jahangir and the Mughal empire of any responsibility, but have no trace or support in the documentary evidence from early 17th century, such as the records of Jesuit priest Jerome Xavier and the memoirs of Jahangir.

Legacy Amritsar Guru Arjan hunting while mounted on horseback with a hawk. Painting from Faizabad, circa 1760. Guru Arjan's father Guru Ram Das founded the town named after him "Ramdaspur", around a large man-made water pool called "Ramdas Sarovar". Arjan continued the infrastructure-building effort of his father. The town expanded during the time of guru Arjan, financed by donations and constructed by voluntary work. The pool area grew into a temple complex with the Gurdwara Harmandir Sahib near the pool. Guru Arjan installed the scripture of Sikhism inside the new temple in 1604.

Continuing the efforts of Ram Das, guru Arjan established Amritsar as a primary Sikh pilgrimage destination. He wrote a voluminous amount of Sikh scripture including the popular Sukhmani Sahib. Guru Arjan is credited with completing many other infrastructure projects, such as water reservoirs called Santokhsar (Pond of Contentment) and Gongsar (Pond of Bells), founding the towns of Tarn Taran, Kartarpur and Hargobindpur. Research has linked alignment of Guru Arjan's Tarn Taran Gurudwara sarovar with the historic Delhi–Lahore Royal Road through surviving Kos Minars in the region.

Community expansion While having completing the Harmandir Sahib with dasvand donations during the first decade of his guruship between 1581 and 1589, creating a rallying point for the community and a center for Sikh activity, and a place for the installment of the Adi Granth, Guru Arjan had also gone on a tour of Majha and Doaba in Punjab, where he would found the towns. Due to their central location in the Punjab heartland, the ranks of Sikhs would swell, especially among the Jat peasantry, and create a level of prosperity for them; Arjan would serve not only as a spiritual mentor but as a true emperor (sacchā pādshāh) for his followers in his own right. His approved collection included hymns from the first four Gurus of Sikhism, those he composed, as well as 17 Hindu bards and 2 Muslim bards (Bhagats). The compilation was completed on 30 August 1604, according to the Sikh tradition and installed in the Harmandir Sahib temple on 1 September 1604.

Arjan was a prolific poet who composed 2,218 hymns. More than half of the volume of Guru Granth Sahib and the largest collection of hymns has been composed by Arjan. According to Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, Arjan's compositions combined spiritual message in an "encyclopedic linguistic sophistication" with "Braj Bhasha forms and learned Sanskrit vocabulary".

After Arjan completed and installed the Adi Granth in the Harimandir Sahib, Mughal emperor Akbar was informed of the development with the allegation that it contained teachings hostile to Islam. He ordered a copy be brought to him. Arjan sent him a copy on a thali (plate), with the following message that was later added to the expanded text:

The Akbarnama by Abu'l-Fazl Allami mentions that Arjan met the Mughal emperor Akbar and his cortege in 1598. According to Louis Fenech, this meeting likely influenced the development of Sikh manuscriptology and the later martial tradition.

One of the Sikh community disputes following Guru Ram Das was the emergence of new hymns claiming to have been composed by Nanak. According to the faction led by Arjan, these hymns were distorted and fake, with some blaming Prithi Chand and his Sikh faction for having composed and circulated them. The concern and the possibility of wrong propaganda, immoral teachings and inauthentic Gurbani led Arjan to initiate a major effort to collect, study, approve and compile a written official scripture, and this he called Adi Granth, the first edition of the Sikh scripture by 1604.

Literature Guru Arjan produced a large amount of literature, which roughly equals that which had been produced by his predecessors combined. Guru Arjan's written works closely follow and are a continuation of the style of his father, Guru Ram Das. For example, Arjan uses the same set of thirty rāgs that his father had set his hymns to and the language of his compositions are favoured toward Sanskritic/Hindi vocabulary. Whilst his individual poems are not as vivid as those authored by Guru Nanak, his vast reworkings accumulate to create a sense of unity within the Ād Granth. Furthermore, Guru Arjan acted as an editor for the compilation of a Sikh scripture, such as by providing supplementary commentary appended to the saloks of the Bhagat Bani and his adoption of the bhagats' shabad hymns. In-addition, he included the Bhatt Bani into the Sikh corpus. He authored vār compositions and added his own verses to the vār compositions which had been originally authored by his predecessors. His eminent work is the Sukhmani Sahib.

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