Place · Janamsakhi island · Sri Lanka
Sangladīp
The island of Sangladip (traditionally identified with Sri Lanka) in the Guru Nanak Janamsakhi tradition — the destination of Nanak's second udasi (southern journey, c.1510-1514) during which he is said to have met King Shivnabh of Sangladip. The traditional accounts describe Nanak sailing from Rameswaram to Sri Lanka, where he debated with the Siva-worshipping King Shivnabh and converted him to Sikh principles. The Battikaloa coast of Sri Lanka has local traditions of Nanak's visit, with a shrine at Kurukkalmadam reportedly marking a sacred spot. The Shivnabh conversion story is one of the earliest Sikh narratives of royal patronage. The Sri Lankan Sikh community maintains the Battikaloa site as a pilgrimage. The 1990s Sri Lankan civil war disrupted the Battikaloa pilgrimage; post-2009 reconstruction has restored Sikh access. The Janamsakhi tradition remains the primary source for the southern udasi.
- Date
- 1500–1524
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Tradition
- Janamsakhi tradition (Puratan, Bhai Bala, Miharban)
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — Traditional / narrative attribution — janamsakhi, not independently attested
- Location
- 7.873, 80.772
Disputed. The janamsakhis place Nanak here; no independent record of the visit survives, and scholarship treats the janamsakhi travel accounts as hagiography rather than itinerary. Mapped as what the tradition claims, not as an established fact.
Connections (1)
- Life routeGuru Nanak
Sangladīp is where the janamsākhis end the second udāsi, with a king called Shivnābh converted. Nothing in Sri Lankan sources corresponds, and the identification is argued about. It is in the repository as what the tradition claims, not as what can be shown. The Shivnābh story also appears in a Sikh text said to have been left on the island, the Pran Sangli, whose authenticity Sikh scholarship has disputed for two centuries.
On these journeys
Sources
The Janamsākhī tradition; W.H. McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (1968).
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