The Source Book On Sikhism

Sajjan The Thug

Travelling further, the Guru reached Talamba, near Multan. Here lived a notorious thug, named Sajjan (meaning friend). He had built a magnificent mansion, on one side of which stood a temple and on the other a mosque. He had two servants who were quick to spot out rich travellers whom, with a show of hospitality and goodwill, they decoyed into the house. The victims were luxuriously feted with food and drink and then strangled to death.

Seeing Nanak enter the town, with Mardana following, the servants took the Guru for a rich merchant travelling in the guise of a Sadhu. They greeted the Guru and escorted him into the presence of their master. Sajjan welcomed them with profuse expressions of hospitality and led them into a luxuriously furnished room. They were offered savoury dishes, but Nanak refused to take them.

Sajjan, then, returned to his room waiting for the moment when the travellers would be sound asleep and be a fit target for his murderous intent.

Meanwhile the Guru asked Mardana to touch the chords of the rebeck. The Guru then raised his voice to a noble song which, when Sajjan heard, he was irresistibly drawn to the Guru’s room. The song was a dissertation on hypocrisy and sham. It said that the true Sajjan (friend) was not one who strangled his innocent victims and robbed them of their wealth but one who stood by them at the hour of reckoning. The rebuke went home and Sajjan was deeply moved. From a friend in name only, he became a real friend of man.

At Gorakhmata

In the forests of Uttar Pradesh, there lived a certain sect of jogis. Through rigours of self-discipline, they had acquired some occult powers which they used, not for the common good, but to beguile the simple and innocent.

Setting out from Hardawar, the Guru reached their haunt called Gorakhmata. The jogis tried to overawe the Guru with their petty tricks but failed to prevail upon him. The Guru, on the other hand, with his impassioned discourse on the right conduct and his soul-inspiring song in praise of the Creator, cleared the long-accumulated dust of vanity from their souls.

After a short sojourn at Gorakhmata, the Guru resumed his onward journey. One of the jogis, Machhandarnath, chose to travel some distance with the Guru and test him further.

As they travelled about a score of miles and were passing through a forest of soap trees, the jogi, pursued by the pangs of hunger, asked the Guru for something to eat. He thought that, finding nothing worth eating thereabout, the Guru would betray his helplessness and feel small. But the Guru asked Mardana to tear off a twig from the very tree under which they happened to be seated at the moment. Mardana did likewise.

The hesitant jogi plucked the fruit and tasted it rather with a suspicious tongue. To his amazement, he found it sweet like honey. His doubts thus resolved, he made obeisance to the Guru and returned to his monastery.