Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi, Nankana Sahibਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਛੇਵੀਂ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ, ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi stands near Gurdwara Tambu Sahib in Nankana Sahib, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, on the road back towards the Janam Asthan. Chhevin Patshahi means the shrine of the Sixth Sovereign, and it marks the ground where Guru Hargobind Ji, the sixth Guru, rested for three days on a visit to the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, remembered in the detailed shrine accounts as the month of Har in Samvat 1670, the year 1613, on his way back from Kashmir. It does not stand alone. Adjoining it, inside the same boundary wall, is the smaller shrine of the Fifth Sovereign, marking a visit of Guru Arjan Dev Ji. The twin buildings are told apart at a glance: the Sixth Guru's shrine carries a dome, the Fifth Guru's does not.

What is Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi?

Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi is one of the historic gurdwaras of Nankana Sahib, but unlike the childhood cluster around the Janam Asthan it belongs to the town's second chapter: the return of the later Gurus to their founder's birthplace. Guru Nanak Dev Ji was born here, and the Gurus who followed him treated the town as ground to be honoured in person. The shrine accounts list the two buildings together as the gurdwara of Guru Arjan and Guru Hargobind, a pair of small sanctums sharing one wall on the Tambu Sahib road. Inside the dome of the Chhevin Patshahi shrine, visitors are shown a preserved piece of the tree under which Guru Hargobind Ji is said to have rested, kept in a glass case now that the tree itself has withered away. No daily congregation is held in either building; they stand as heritage shrines that yatris visit on the Nankana Sahib round.

History: the sixth Guru comes to Nankana Sahib

The detailed accounts, carried by World Gurudwaras, All About Sikhs and SikhiWiki, agree on the shape of the visit. Guru Hargobind Ji came to Nankana Sahib returning from Kashmir, and rested at this spot for three days. The visit fell in June, at the time of Namani Ekadashi, also called Nirjala Ekadashi, and the Guru joined the traditional fair held here then. SikhiWiki adds that a festival was kept on that day afterwards, and later was observed together with the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Before leaving, the Guru deputed Baba Almast, a disciple of Baba Sri Chand whom he had brought with him from Kashmir, to render care and service at the shrine. The Guru's Sikhs then raised the gurdwara at the place where he had stayed.

One point needs care, because the listings do not all give the same year. The shrine accounts date the visit precisely, to the month of Har in Samvat 1670, which is 1613, and Green Tourism Pakistan's field guide follows that dating. Some directory listings, summarising the same journey, give 1620 instead. Jugti follows the dated shrine accounts and uses 1613, while noting the other figure so that readers who meet it elsewhere are not confused. What no account disputes is the journey itself: Kashmir behind him, a three day halt at Nankana Sahib, and a caretaker left behind from the Guru's own travelling party, which is why this small shrine carries a Kashmir thread in its story as well as a Nankana one.

History: thirteen ghumaon and a tree in a glass case

The accounts record an endowment of 13 ghumaon of land for the shrine, a modest grant for a modest building, raised by the Guru's disciples at the site of his stay and kept alive at first by the fair his visit had blessed. The physical memory of the halt was a tree: the one under which the Guru rested. Trees outlive buildings in such stories only for a while, and this one in time withered. Rather than let the marker vanish altogether, those who kept the shrine preserved a piece of it, and that fragment is what a visitor sees today, set in a glass case inside the dome of the Sixth Guru's shrine. It is a small, deliberate act of keeping, and it explains the character of the place: Chhevin Patshahi preserves not a grand event but a rest, three days of halt on a long road, held in wood and wall.

Architecture: a dome and no dome

The pair of shrines is an architecture lesson in miniature. Both are small sanctums standing side by side within a common boundary wall near Tambu Sahib, on the road leading towards the Janam Asthan. The shrine of Guru Hargobind Ji, the Patshah of Miri Piri as the accounts style him, is built with a dome. The adjoining shrine of Guru Arjan Dev Ji is without one, a plain roofed sanctum. Nothing in the accounts suggests the contrast was a ranking: it is simply how the two buildings were raised at different moments by different hands, and the effect today is that the twins can be identified from the road before a visitor reaches the gate. The World Gurudwaras account records that the building is quite safe, and the Green Tourism field guide agrees that the structures stand sound while regular prakash is no longer held in them.

Significance: why do two small shrines stand together?

The pairing is the significance. The fifth Guru, who compiled the Adi Granth and accepted martyrdom at Lahore, and the sixth Guru, his son, who answered that martyrdom by wearing the two swords of Miri and Piri, lie side by side here in miniature, in the town of the first Guru. Their adjoining shrines say something the big Janam Asthan cannot say on its own: that Nankana Sahib remained a living destination for the Gurus themselves, a place each generation returned to. For pilgrims the stop is also a study in scale. After the marble courts of the Janam Asthan, Chhevin Patshahi offers two small rooms, one wall, one dome and a fragment of wood in glass, and asks to be read slowly. Heritage of this kind survives because visitors keep coming to look at it, and the shrine accounts are frank that looking, now, is most of what happens here.

How do I reach Gurdwara Chhevin Patshahi?

Chhevin Patshahi stands in Nankana Sahib, in the close vicinity of Gurdwara Tambu Sahib on the road towards the Janam Asthan, so it combines naturally with Tambu Sahib and Gurdwara Mal Ji Sahib on the eastern side of the town. Nankana Sahib lies about 65 kilometres from Lahore. As no daily congregation is held, a visit is a quiet heritage call rather than a service: the fullest times are Guru Nanak Gurpurab in November and the Saka Nankana commemoration in February, when pilgrim jathas are in town under the care of the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and the Evacuee Trust Property Board. Cover your head and remove your shoes before entering, as at any gurdwara.