Life & Legacy
Born in 1563 in Goindval, Punjab, Guru Arjan was the youngest son of the fourth Guru, Guru Ram Das, and became the fifth Sikh Guru in 1581. Under his guidance the Harmandir Sahib — the Golden Temple of Amritsar — was built, and in 1604 he completed the work that would define Sikh sacred music forever: the compilation of the Adi Granth, the first authorized scripture of the Gurus' hymns, with the scholar Bhai Gurdas as his scribe. He organized the scripture not by theme but by raga — the thirty-one classical melodic frameworks in which each hymn is meant to be sung — and enshrined alongside the Gurus' own compositions the songs of Hindu and Muslim saints, among them Kabir, Farid, Namdev, and Ravidas.
Guru Arjan was himself the most prolific of the Gurus, contributing over two thousand hymns to the scripture, including the beloved Sukhmani Sahib, the "Psalm of Peace," sung daily by devout Sikhs. In 1606 he was tortured and executed at Lahore on the orders of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, becoming the first martyr of the Sikh tradition. The scripture he compiled, expanded into the Guru Granth Sahib and declared the eternal Guru in 1708, is sung as shabad kirtan around the clock in gurdwaras across the world — a scripture that is not merely read, but sung.