Friday 29 June 2018

The man who abandoned his priesthood to follow his Heart





Legends of the Second Guru of Sikhs

Not much is known or written about Guru Angad (1504 – 1552), the second Sikh guru who succeeded Guru Nanak.

After writing The Singing Guru, the first book in the Sikh Saga series, I felt the need to write another book to conclude Guru Nanak’s life and legends, and to carry forward the story of Bhai Lehna who later became Guru Angad, and who was introduced briefly in the epilogue of The Singing Guru.

Into the Great Heart is about Bhai Lehna’s journey from being a priest at a Durga temple in Khadur, to becoming Guru Nanak’s disciple, and then his successor as Guru Angad.

Into the Great Heart is also about those legends of Guru Nanak that remained undeveloped in The Singing Guru, and about the many contemporaneous women in Sikh history whose stories remained untold in the first volume.

Here are some accepted brief anecdotes, facts, history of Guru Angad’s life.

Born in Harike in Punjab; married a woman called Khivi; had two sons, Dasu, Datu, and a daughter, Amro; moved to Khadur when the Mughals sacked his hometown.

He was a devoted priest of a Durga temple in Khadur, where he danced to his Goddess, wearing ankle bells; took an annual party of pilgrims to Jwalamukhi, meaning ‘the deity of flaming mouth,’ a temple in the Himalayas built over some natural jets of combustible gas, believed to be the manifestation of the Goddess.

He heard a friend in Khadur, Bhai Jodha, singing one of Guru Nanak’s songs, and was ignited with a desire to meet its author; interrupted his journey to Jwalamukhi to meet him, abandoned his faith and his priesthood, and never left his master, Guru Nanak, again.












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