Adi Granth compiled and installed at Sri Harmandir Sahib

Who: Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, with Bhai Gurdas as scribe and Bhai Buddha, who was chosen to take charge of the finished volume.

What: Guru Arjan collected the hymns of the Gurus before him, added his own, and set them down with the compositions of fifteen Bhaktas and Sufis, among them Shaikh Farid, Kabir and Ravidas. Hymns in praise of the Gurus by the Bhatts were also entered. The Guru sent word to disciples for the earlier Gurus' writings. Baba Mohan, a son of Guru Amar Das, held pothis of Guru Amar Das's hymns and at first refused Bhai Gurdas and Bhai Buddha. Guru Arjan then went himself, sat below Mohan's attic and sang a hymn, and Mohan brought the pothis down. The compositions are arranged in about thirty ragas, the Gurus' hymns first in order of succession and the Bhagats' after them. Bhai Gurdas wrote the first copy at the Guru's dictation, in a tent pitched in a wooded spot by the Ramsar tank. It ran to 974 leaves, or 1,948 pages. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism dates the finished transcription to 1 August 1604 and the installation to 16 August 1604; other published accounts give 1 September 1604. Bhai Buddha carried the volume on his head to the Harimandar at dawn, with the Guru walking behind.

Where: Ramsar and the Harimandar (now Sri Harmandir Sahib), Amritsar.

Why it mattered: The Panth now had one authoritative text in the Gurus' own words, and Guru Arjan guarded it against copies he had not approved. Bhai Banno took the volume to Lahore for binding, had a second copy made on the way and added texts to it. The Guru accepted only the volume in Bhai Gurdas's hand. The original went to Kartarpur when Guru Hargobind left Amritsar in 1634 (he reached Kiratpur in 1635) and stayed with the family of Dhir Mal. Guru Gobind Singh later added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur, and at Nanded in 1708 he installed the Granth as Guru. The book compiled in 1604 is the Guru Granth Sahib of today.