Guru Amar Das (1479-1574) became the third Guru in 1552 at the age of seventy-three, and lived to a hundred, guiding the community for more than two decades. He had spent much of his life as a devout Vaishnava, making repeated pilgrimages to the Ganges, before hearing his niece-in-law sing a hymn of Nanak and seeking out Guru Angad, whom he served with a famous devotion despite his own advanced age.
As Guru he gave the growing Panth an administrative shape. He divided the community's territory into some twenty-two preaching seats, the manji system, each under an appointed local leader, and is said to have entrusted parallel piri charges to women, an early delegation of religious authority across a wide geography. He made Goindval on the Beas his centre and built there a baoli, a stepwell of eighty-four steps that became a place of pilgrimage.
The reforms turned a devotional following into an ordered institution with its own leadership, its own gathering-places, and its own rhythms, the practical scaffolding on which the later Gurus would build a city and a scripture.