Author

Guru Arjan

Fifth Sikh Guru, compiler of the Adi Granth and first Sikh martyr.

1563–1606

Also known as Guru Arjan Dev

Biography

Guru Arjan was born in 1563 at Goindval, the son of Guru Rām Dās, the fourth Guru, whom he succeeded in 1581. He completed the building of the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, at Amritsar, the city his father had founded, and made it the centre of Sikh life.

His greatest work was the compilation of the Adi Granth, the “first book”, completed in 1604. With the scribe Bhai Gurdas, he gathered the hymns of the first four Gurus and his own, and included hymns of Hindu and Muslim saints, among them Kabīr, Nāmdev, Ravidās and the Sufi Shaikh Farīd. The book was installed in the Harmandir Sahib. Guru Arjan was himself the most prolific of the contributors; his long hymn Sukhmanī, “the jewel of peace”, is widely recited.

After the death of the emperor Akbar, Arjan fell foul of his successor Jahangir, who had him arrested and tortured. He died in Lahore in 1606, and is honoured by Sikhs as the first of their martyrs. In 1708 the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, declared the scripture, with his father’s hymns added, to be the Guru after him: the Guru Granth Sahib.

Major works

The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and AuthorsTranslation, tr. Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909Macauliffe’s six volumes of lives of the Sikh Gurus and the bhagats, with translations of many of their hymns, including the Japjī, prepared with the help of Sikh scholars. For decades the main English source for the Sikh scriptures.

Philosophical ideas

Scholarship

Peace is found in the remembrance of the Name; the Sukhmanī describes the one who has realized God as living in the world without being stained, like a lotus in water.

The scripture gathers the voices of saints from different communities, since the one God is beyond the boundaries of religions.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “Guru Arjan.” Author. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/guru-arjan.
Chicago (note): “Guru Arjan,” author, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/guru-arjan.
MLA: “Guru Arjan.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/guru-arjan.
BibTeX: @misc{authors-guru-arjan, title = {{Guru Arjan}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Author. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/guru-arjan} }

Related authors

Influenced by: Guru Nānak
Kabīr

Related concepts

Related traditions

SikhismReligionThe religion founded by Guru Nānak in the Punjab, devoted to the one God and the Guru’s word.