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A young man named Nanak lived in India
many years ago. He was born in the 1469 to be precise,
in a village in Punjab called Talwandi. His father kept
the accounts of the chief man of the village and trained
Nanak for the same occupation. Nanak was very devout. He spent
long hours in meditation and had little interest in
business matters. His father sent him to live with his
sister Nanaki and her husband some miles away in the
hope that he might improve! There he looked after the
accounts of the village headman, carefully but with
very little interest. He did not feel that this was
to be his life's work. A happy marriage, soon blessed
with two sons, did little to curb his unsettled spirit.
One day Nanak had an experience which
changed his life and the lives of many other people.
Early every morning Nanak bathed in the river near the
village. One day he didn't return home. His family and
friends feared the worst. He must have drowned. The
headman ordered a careful search to be made. The river
was dragged but no trace of Nanak could be found. After
three days he reappeared looking as if nothing had happened
to him. Everyone was still worried, though, because
he spoke to no one, not even his sister. Eventually
he broke his silence but his words bewildered the villagers
and his family even more. He said:
There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim,
so whose path shall I follow? I will follow God's path.
God is neither Hindu not Muslim.
This was a strange thing to say. The
village had Hindu and Muslim inhabitants. He then told
everyone that he had been taken to the heavenly court
where God had commanded him to become God's messenger.
From the day he began teaching he was always called
Guru Nanak.. A Guru is a person who helps people to
know God for themselves. He taught them that God is
present in everyone and that if they meditated they
could discover the truth of this message for themselves.
God was one and was neither male nor female but had
created all life, men and women, animals and plants.
There were no important people who deserved to be honoured
and no people who should be despised. Everyone was equal.
God lived in every heart, in the Hindu and the Muslim.
God was not limited to being the God of any particular
religion.
Guru Nanak had a friend called Mardana.
He was a good musician but was very poor and had no
instrument. Guru Nanak's sister, Nanaki, gave Mardana
a rebeck. It was similar to a lute. It had strings which
Mardana plucked with his fingers.
Guru Nanak and his friend set out on
a number of long journeys which took them even beyond
the frontiers of India. Wherever they went Guru Nanak
would put his message into poetry and Mardana would
play a tune. This way people could easily memorise what
Guru Nanak taught them. Many people followed Guru Nanak,
rich and poor, good and bad. The good, kind people followed
him because they wanted to know God themselves. Other
people followed him because they were discontented with
the kind of lives they had been living.
Eventually, when Guru Nanak and his
friend were too old to continue their journeys they
settled in a small town which Guru Nanak built. He called
it Kartarpur, the city of the Creator. People now came
to him and many lived near him in the town.
These men and women who followed Guru
Nanak's teachings came to be called Sikhs, the word
in Punjabi for Disciple. Today there are sixteen million
Sikhs world-wide.
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