Gurû Nanak

Gurû Nanak - mystical Indian, main founder of the Sikhisme and first of the Ten Gurûs of the sikhism.

The childhood of Nanak

Nanak is born in April 1469, in a village then called Talwandî in Pendjab (today Nankana Sahib in Pakistan), within a well-read woman family resulting from the caste of the Khatrî . The father of Nanak, Kalu, is a well established, countable civil servant or tax collector of the taxes of the local lord. Kalu and his Triptâ wife are already parents of Nanakî, of a few years older than Nanak and which will play an important protective part in the life of little brother.

Very early, Nanak receives an education well-read woman and learns the Sanskrit and the Persan in particular. Early child, it is of a naturalness dreamer, with the great despair of his father who doubts to never manage to make of him his successor to the service of the local authority. Many anecdotes are reported on this subject by its hagiographal, which also describe the fascination of the young man for the ascetics, sannyasins , yogis and fakirs of all kinds, resulting from the various mystical currents hindouists and Moslems of the time and who furrow the area, preaching and begging at the entry for the villages. Nanak likes to spend time in their company, meditating and discussing the various spiritual doctrines. One of the sakhis (or biographical anecdote) tells how Nanak to see itself giving an amount of money by his/her father who wants to inculcate the virtues of the trade to him: it is charged to buy goods downtown to resell them at the village and to make of it a small benefit for its own account. Nanak returns the empty handeds and explains to his/her exceeded father why it gave all the goods acquired downtown to a group of mystics beggars which preached the renouncement, " good a transaction" according to him!

Its youth

Still adolescent, Nanak is promised and married to Sulakhnî , with which it will have two wire, Lakhmî Dâs and Sirî Chand , future Baba Sri Chand , Master of the powerful yoguic community of Udâsis (or " détachés" of this world). But Nanak, if he discharges his duties of father, is not particularly interested by the family life.

To spare their father irritated by the little of professional heat and the mystical melancholy of their son (another sakhi tells how Kalu, persuaded that his/her son is reached of a strange evil, makes come the doctor, and how of the last the house leaves persuaded of its own disease to be far from God), Nanaki and her husband find work with Nanak with the service of the lord Dhaulat Khân Lodî in Sultânpur: Nanak becomes intendant of the attics, charges administrative and countable source with enrichment of more than one corrupted civil servant, the major share of the taxes and remuneration being done in grain.

A sakhis describes how Nanak is shown by its detractors to ruin his lord by distributing grain to all goes, with the poor, the beggars and the ascetics. The lord comes auditer his attics and finds Nanak in extase, distributing itself the grain and saying " Tera" all thirteen measurements ( will tera means thirteen, but also " in Toi": Nanak seeing God in any person, it is with God that he addresses himself by distributing the grain). Nanak having broken with the corruption of its predecessors, the attic is prosperous and the lord sets out again about it favorably impressed.

After some time, Nanak leaves its functions.

The mystical experiment

Since its childhood, Nanak took the practice to only meditate or with others, at the edge of the rivers. One day, it disappears during one from these moments. The local community believes it dead, missing forever in water, and his/her parents cry his disappearance. It reappears three days later, quasi-dumb man, strongly impressed. The history tells that the only words that he manages to pronounce form a mystical poem a rare depth, which will become the Jap Ji (of Japa, repetition), fundamental text of Sikhs. He also says that he understood that there is not " neither Hindus, nor musulmans".

Nanak then decides to devote its life to the division of spiritual teaching. He entrusts his wife and one of his sons to his parents, and its other wire with his/her sister and prepares to leave to discover the world, accompanied by a bard, Mardana . This last, ten years older than Nanak than it attends since childhood, is the son of the bard attached to his family, a Moslem of the caste of the mirasis (carrying news, and kinds of griots). Mardana is musician, player of Rabâb (kind of Luth).

Only or with Mardana, Nanak will make on all four great journeys, called udâsîs (or " détachements"), in particular to what corresponds now to India of North, in Nepal, in Tibet, India of the South and Sri Lanka. Nanak visits the insolated villages as well as the great centers of pilgrimages as to Puri (temple of Jaganath, in Orissa) or on the edges of the Gange, where he does not hesitate to fustigate the pilgrims for their ritualism which moves away them from the true direction of their actions. He also preaches the equality of all: between castes, religions, men and women.

One as of these voyages, longest, takes along Nanak on the ways of Mecque where it accompanies Mardana in its pilgrimage. They embark with Multan and return by the Mésopotamie, the Perse and the Afghanistan, at the time of the invasion of India by Babur, seems it.

Foundation of a community

During its voyages, Nanak touched the heart of many people, the rich person and powerful, of the well-read men, the mystics, the poor and the anonymities. Some give up very to follow its teaching. Of return of one of its voyages, Nanak acquires a ground at the edge of a river. It founded a village named there Kartarpur or " City ( pure ) of the Creator ( kartar ) " where it remains with the community of its disciples. The lifestyle is close to that of many religious congregations, founded on a simple life, agrarian and close to nature. The community meets the mornings before the rising of the sun ( amrit calved or " the hour ambosiale") and the evening after the end of the activities, to contemplate, request and listen to the lesson of the Master. Nanak, of which its disciples requires who they are if they are neither Hindu, nor Moslem, answers them: " you are disciples, you are Sikhs ". The word sikh drift indeed of a Sanskrit term meaning disciple. Nanak also indicates to them by-there they have from now on a Master, a word of reference, and that they are not any more in research. Nanak is them Gurû, their spiritual Master. Gurû Nanak will remain in Kartarpur until the end of its life in 1539. Little before its death, it indicates one of its disciples named Lehna , like successor with the service of the community, and it re-elects it Angad - " of my clean chair" - like affirming the continuity of its teaching from one gurû to another.

A musical teaching

Gurû Nanak is at the origin of the musical tradition of Sikhs, the Shabad Kirtan . The Verb, or shabad , which supports teaching (one speaks then about Shabad Gurû ) is expressed in its most subtle form, in music. Thus, Gurû Nanak answers the questions by composing a rimée mystical ode, accompanied by the sound of the rabâb . The Raag (or Raga) is used to underline the expression of a particular emotion. Gurû Nanak is expressed mainly with the old Pendjabi. This form of teaching will perdurera and develop with the successors of Gurû Nanak, all talented musicians, of which some will not hesitate to create new raags or to invent new instruments for better expressing the Shabad .

Origin of its name

Nanak is probably fore-mentioned thus in reference in the name of his/her sister, Nanaki. Nanaki is a female name meaning " of ( ki ) his/her maternal grandparents ( chick ) " , indicating thus that the sister of Gurû was undoubtedly born with the residence from the parents from Triptâ. But Nanak also means " without ( Na ) nose ( nek ) " , meaning by-there it is not centered on its person, that it does not have ego.

Sources

Several sources make it possible to recall with more or less precision the life of Gurû Nanak.

The first of them is the corpus of its own writings. Those, written, signed and gone back to its hand, use readily the circumstances like support with spiritual teaching. Thus, the places (Gurû Nanak observes nature and sings the Creative Conscience that it perceives through Its work, creation) and the events (the invasion of Babur, for example) allow give precise indications and invaluable of that of which it was pilot.

Other sources still are the Janamsakhis , collections hagiographic posterior with died of Gurû, often illustrated in a style Moghol. These collections content adventures with Gurû, with sometimes a bias, even straightforwardly of the inventions. Thus one to see appearing Gurû in company of Mardana, Moslem, and of another disciple, " Bala" , described like Hindu. It proves that Bala is an invention, or at least a quite posterior character, intended for " équilibrer" entourage of Gurû Nanak, some being moved which it carried out his voyages in company of a musician born and died Moslem!

Another source is that of the Vaar (or poems epic) composed at the end of XVIe century by Bhai Gurdas after a campaign of biographical research undertaken at the request of Gurû Hargobind, 6th Gurû of Sikhs.

Lastly, the oral popular culture of Pendjab preserved in its songs, its stories and its place names of many traces of the passage of Gurû.

Simple: Guru Nanak Dev.

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