Guru Nanak's Prakash at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi

Who: Guru Nanak (Sri Guru Nanak Dev), founder of the Sikh faith and first of the ten Gurus. His father, Mehta Kalu (Kalyan Chand) of the Bedi clan, was the village accountant in the service of Rai Bular, the Muslim Bhatti Rajput chief of the village. His mother was Mata Tripta. His sister, Bebe Nanaki, and her husband Jai Ram later invited him to Sultanpur Lodhi, where he found work keeping the nawab's storehouse.

What: The Prakash, the appearance of the first Guru, is dated by the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism to Baisakh sudi 3, 1526 Bk, which is 15 April 1469. It says this is what modern research has tended to establish. By custom, Sikhs keep the birthday on the full-moon day of Kartik, in October or November, so the day marked in the gurdwara and the day research favours do not match. The Janam Sakhis, the traditional life-stories, say the birth was attended by prodigies and prophecies, and that the village priest Hardyal, called to cast the horoscope, foretold that the child would bring many to God. These accounts are tradition. The Encyclopaedia describes the Janam Sakhis as mixing myth, legend and history, and treats the miracle stories as the way people of that time said they had met someone who changed their world. The outline of the early years is more modest: a quick child who became proficient in Hindi, Persian and accounts, and who worried his family by giving away money meant for trade.

Where: Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, the village of Rai Bhoe, about 65 km south-west of Lahore. It is now the town of Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab. Nanak spent the first 15 or 16 years of his life here, and his last visit was in 1510. Gurdwara Janam Asthan marks the birthplace. Maharaja Ranjit Singh built the present building and endowed about 20,000 acres for its langar. Udasi priests managed the shrine until the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee took it over after the Nankana Sahib massacre of 20 February 1921.

Why it mattered: Everything the Sikh Panth became begins here. The Encyclopaedia calls Guru Nanak the source of "a powerful current of spiritual and social renewal". He taught the worship of one God beyond the divisions between religions. As the Encyclopaedia tells it, his first words on returning from his experience at the River Bein near Sultanpur were that there is no Hindu and no Musalman. The birthplace is the first of the Panth's sacred sites in time, and it has stood on the Pakistani side of the border since 1947.