Guruship passed to Sri Guru Granth Sahib at Nanded

Who: Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru; Bhai Daya Singh, who brought the Granth; Emperor Bahadur Shah, whose camp the Guru had joined; Madho Das, the Bairagi renamed Banda Singh; and two Pathan assassins hired, according to the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, by Wazir Khan of Sirhind.

What: The Guru reached Nanded towards the end of August 1708 on Bahadur Shah's march south, and stayed when the emperor went on towards Golkonda. Here he met Madho Das, a recluse, initiated him into the Khalsa as Banda Singh, gave him five arrows and an escort of five Sikhs, and sent him to Punjab to fight the tyranny of the provincial rulers. The Pathans, who had followed the Guru from Punjab, attended the evening diwan as if interested, found him alone in his tent one day and stabbed him. He killed one and the other fell to the Sikhs. The wound healed, but it reopened when the Guru strained a stiff bow. An entry in the Bhatt vahi of Talauda, in Jind, records that on Wednesday 6 October 1708 (Kartik sudi 4, 1765 Bk) the Guru asked Bhai Daya Singh to bring the Sri Granth Sahib, placed five paise and a coconut before it and bowed his head. He told the sangat to own Sri Granthji in his place. He died on 7 October 1708.

Where: Nanded, on the Godavari in Maharashtra, called Hazur Sahib or Abichal Nagar. Takht Sachkhand Sri Hazur Abichalnagar Sahib, one of the five takhts, stands there.

What is documented and what is tradition: The Encyclopaedia says the Bhatt vahi entry was found by Giani Garja Singh, who names its author as Narbud Singh Bhatt, then with the Guru, and that no archival testimony can be offered unless it counts as such. It adds that other evidence supports it: a letter issued at the instance of Mata Sundari telling Sikhs that no human being after the Ten Gurus may be acknowledged as Guru; the rahitnamas of Bhai Nand Lal and Bhai Prahlad Singh; and Kuir Singh's Gurbilas Patshahi 10, written in 1751.

Why it mattered: The line of personal Gurus ended and the Guru Granth Sahib became the living Guru of the Sikhs, with the Khalsa Panth as its community. The Encyclopaedia says the Guru declared that his spirit would henceforth be in the Granth and the Khalsa. Banda Singh was sent from Nanded to Punjab, and his campaign there is covered in the entry on the fall of Sirhind in 1710.