Reform, Rite, and a Calendar of Its Own

Amar Das pressed the social edge of Nanak's teaching harder than any Guru before him. He made the langar a condition of audience: none could see the Guru who had not first sat in its single row and eaten with all castes together. Tradition holds that even the emperor Akbar, visiting Goindval, took his meal in the common line before meeting him, a story that, whatever its literal accuracy, expresses the point exactly.

He spoke against sati, the burning of widows, and against purdah, the veiling and seclusion of women, and permitted the remarriage of widows, positions sharply at odds with the surrounding society. He composed the Anand Sahib, the "song of bliss" still recited at Sikh ceremonies and at the close of worship.

He also began to give the Panth a distinct religious calendar, encouraging the community to gather at its own festivals rather than at Hindu observances, a step toward the institutional separateness that later Gurus would complete. His own hymns entered the Guru Granth Sahib, and with him the succession passed to his son-in-law, Ram Das.