Amritsar is home to the Religious Building
important to Sikhs - The Golden Temple. Amritsar is an institution by itself.
And the Golden Temple is the cradle of Amritsar with the city growing around
it nurtured by its divine sanctity. Amritsar is one of the most sacred sikh
religious sites in India.
HISTORY
Golden Temple, the religious building important to Sikhs has a legacy associated
with it. The Amrit Sarovar or pool of nectar has long been associated with Indian
legends and Lord Rama's twin sons had supposedly been taught the Ramayana here.
How the land was acquired for the construction of the temple has many stories.
Some say the Guru bought it, others say it was granted by emperor Akbar. Whatever
the story, it is certain the religious building important to Sikhs was built
on a revenue free land.
Oral tradition dictates that the Muslim divine Pir Mian Mir of Lahore, at the
request of the fifth Sikh Guru Arjan Dev, laid the temple's foundation stone.
However, there is no record supporting this, not even in the biographies of
Pir. The recorded account says that Guru Arjun Dev laid the foundation in 1588.
The Guru's followers settled down in the neighborhood and a small town called
Ramdaspur quickly came up, deriving its later name, Amritsar, from the holy
tank that encircles the Hari Mandir, or the Darbar Sahib, now known as the Golden
Temple.
The flourishing town that grew around the temple during Guru Arjan Dev's lifetime
grew further in stature as the followers of Sikhism grew in number. Things moved
fast. The first Sikh Maharaja, Ranjit Singh, made Amritsar his spiritual capital
while Lahore was the temporal seat of his newly founded expanding kingdom. Ranjit
Singh oversaw the temple's further development, gilding the embossed plates,
renewing the pietra dura and embellishing the interior with floral designed,
mirrored ceilings.
The Golden Temple is not only a religious building important to Sikhs, it is
an eclectic monument that has grown as much of people's devotion as from the
guild craftsmen's skills to become Sikmost sacred of the sikh religious sites.
Generation after generation has lavished praise on the art and architecture
of the golden temple and it is widely regarded as being amongst the most tastefully
decorated shrines anywhere.
>> GOLDEN
TEMPLE
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