Place · Sikh pilgrimage town · India
Sultānpur Lodhī
The town of Sultanpur Lodhi in Kapurthala district, Punjab, 36 kilometres from Jalandhar — the place where the young Guru Nanak (1469-1539) spent 14 years (1485-1499) as a steward (modikhana manager) at the court of the Lodi governor Daulat Khan Lodi, before his departure on the four udasis. The famous episode of Nanak's three-day disappearance into the Kali Bein (a Beas tributary) is set here — Nanak went to bathe in the Bein, disappeared under water, and returned on the third day with the first words of his teaching: 'Na ko Hindu, na ko Musalman' ('there is no Hindu, no Muslim'). The incident is dated c.1499 and marks Nanak's spiritual awakening. The Gurdwara Ber Sahib (1934 built on the Bein bank) marks the disappearance site. The 2019 Kartarpur Corridor opened on the 550th anniversary of Nanak's birth, making Sultanpur Lodhi part of the modern pilgrimage network.
- Date
- 1500–1524
- Function
- Travel & migration
- Tradition
- Janamsakhi tradition (Puratan, Bhai Bala, Miharban)
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered — Established as his residence; the Bein episode is narrative
- Location
- 31.216, 75.194
Connections (1)
- Life routeGuru Nanak
Sultānpur Lodhī is where Nanak worked as a granary steward and where he went into the Bein and came out three days later saying there is no Hindu and no Musalman. Everything after — the four long journeys, the fifth within Punjab, Kartārpur — dates from that morning. He had a wife, two sons and a government post at the time, and left all of them to travel for about twenty-five years, returning only at the end to farm.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sultanpur Lodhi”. The Janamsākhī tradition; W.H. McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (1968).
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