The Lavan, and a Hereditary Line

Ram Das composed the Lavan, the four-stanza hymn that is the heart of the Sikh wedding rite, the Anand Karaj: the couple circle the Guru Granth Sahib once for each stanza, and the verses read the marriage as a figure of the soul's union with the divine. It remains in use at every Sikh wedding, and his other compositions are woven through the daily liturgy.

With Ram Das the office of Guru also changed character. He was succeeded not by a disciple, as Nanak and his successors had arranged, but by his own youngest son, Arjan, and thereafter the Guruship remained within the Sodhi family. Historians note this as a real institutional development rather than an inevitability: the succession was contested by Arjan's elder brother Prithi Chand, whose rival faction (the Minas) persisted for a generation. The hereditary principle, once settled, carried the line through to the tenth Guru.