Guru Amar Das: the manji system and the Goindwal baoli

Who: Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, born 5 May 1479 at Basarke near Amritsar. A Vaishnava devotee who, chroniclers record, made twenty pilgrimages to Haridwar, he became a Sikh in 1540. He then served Guru Angad for twelve years and succeeded him in 1552, in old age. Working with him were Bhai Jetha, his son-in-law and the future Guru Ram Das, and Baba Buddha, who helped dig the baoli.

What: Two undertakings stand out. In 1559 Guru Amar Das began digging a baoli, a well with steps down to the water, at Goindwal. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says it drew pilgrims from far and near once finished, and calls Goindwal the first place of Sikh pilgrimage named as such by its founder. The Baoli Sahib today is reached by a covered passage of 84 steps. Second, he set up 22 manjis, preaching districts or dioceses covering different parts of India. Each was placed under a pious Sikh who preached the Guru's message, looked after the sangat and sent the disciples' offerings to Goindwal. The word comes from manji, the raised cot on which such a leader sat to teach. He named the first days of Vaisakh and Magh and the festival of Diwali as times for Sikhs to gather at Goindwal. He also required every visitor to eat in the langar before meeting him: first the row, then the congregation (pahile pangat pachhe sangat). Tradition says Emperor Akbar ate there like any other pilgrim when he visited. The Encyclopaedia adds that he gave women charge of supervising communities of disciples in certain sectors and discouraged the customs of purdah and sati, and that he gathered the hymns of earlier Gurus and some bhagats into books, a step towards the later canon.

Where: Goindwal, on the old Delhi to Lahore road at the head of an important ferry over the River Beas. A Marwaha Khatri trader, Goinda, planned a village here, and at Guru Angad's bidding Amar Das laid its foundation. He moved here after becoming Guru in 1552.

Why it mattered: The Panth was now a network with regular routes for teaching and offerings, not a few centres around one teacher. The manjis are the ancestors of the masands, whom Guru Arjan, according to the Encyclopaedia's entry on masands, appointed with wider powers, and whom Guru Gobind Singh abolished before creating the Khalsa, when he made the sangat his own directly. The Encyclopaedia's entry on miri-piri reads the manjis, the new towns and the tithe system together as signs of a community taking on features of a state.