History
Guru Nanak Dev (1469–1538),
the founder of Sikhism, was born in the village of Rāi Bhōi dī
Talvaṇḍī, now called Nankana Sahib, near Lahore (in what is
present-day Pakistan).[14] His father,
Mehta
Kalu was a Patwari:
an accountant of land revenue
in the government. Nanak's mother was Tripta Devi and he had one
older sister, Nanaki. His parents were Khatri Hindus of the Bedi clan. As a boy, Nanak
was fascinated by religion, and his desire to explore the mysteries
of life eventually led him to leave home. It was during this period
that Nanak was said to have met Kabir (1440–1518), a saint revered
by people of different faiths.
Sikh tradition states that at the age of
thirty, Nanak went missing and was presumed to have drowned after going
for one of his morning baths to a local stream called the Kali Bein.
Three days later he reappeared and would give the same answer to any
question posed to him: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim" (in Punjabi,
"nā kō hindū nā kō musalmān"). It was from this moment
that Nanak would begin to spread the teachings of what was then the
beginning of Sikhism.[15] Although the
exact account of his itinerary is disputed, he is widely acknowledged
to have made four major journeys, spanning thousands of kilometres.
The first tour being east towards Bengal and Assam, the second south towards
Ceylon via Tamil Nadu,
the third north towards Kashmir, Ladakh and Tibet, and the final tour west towards
Baghdad
and Mecca.[16]".
Nanak was married to Sulakhni, the daughter of Moolchand Chona, a rice trader from the town
of Batala. They
had two sons. The elder son, Sri Chand, was an ascetic, and
he came to have a considerable following of his own, known as the Udasis. The younger son, Lakshmi
Das, on the other hand, was totally immersed in worldly life. To Nanak, who
believed in the ideal of rāj maiṁ jōg
(detachment in civic life), both his sons were unfit to carry on the
Guruship.