Gurgaddi Purab of Sri Guru Angad Dev Ji: how Bhai Lehna became the second Guru

The Gurgaddi Purab of Sri Guru Angad Dev Ji remembers the day in 1539 when Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji passed the Guruship to his devoted Sikh, Bhai Lehna Ji, at Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi. It set the principle that would guide every succession after it: the Guruship goes by devotion and service, not by birth.

The tests of Bhai Lehna

Bhai Lehna Ji had come to Kartarpur as a devotee of the goddess Durga and stayed to serve. Sikh tradition remembers the tests Guru Nanak Dev Ji set for his followers. He asked them to carry bundles of wet grass dripping with mud, which spoiled Bhai Lehna's fine clothes; he asked them to pull a bowl from a muddy drain on a winter night; and once he walked into a forest strewn with coins and then with jewels, and one by one his followers stopped to pick them up. Only Bhai Lehna Ji kept following, obeying each instruction without question. The Guru's own sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, did not.

The Guruship passes

Guru Nanak Dev Ji placed a coconut and five paise before Bhai Lehna Ji, bowed to him, and asked Baba Budha Ji to apply the tilak of Guruship. He named him Angad, from ang, a limb of his own body, saying that the light was the same and only the body had changed. Sri Guru Angad Dev Ji then moved to Khadur Sahib to carry the Guru's work forward, where he shaped the Gurmukhi script and spread the langar.

How the day is observed

Sangats gather for kirtan and Ardas at Khadur Sahib, at Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan and in gurdwaras everywhere. Katha on the day often dwells on humility and obedience as the qualities the Guru looks for.