2. Guru Nanak and his first successors

In Sikh belief, there are ten human Gurus all of whom are physical embodiments of the same Guru. Sikh religious images portray two figures most frequently: Guru Nanak, the first human Guru, and Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth. ‘Guru Nanak and his first successors’ focuses mainly on the first Guru, who lived 1469‐1539, but also looks at the four Gurus who followed him. What do Sikhs today know about Guru Nanak? Most of what they are familiar with comes from religious depictions of the Guru. Narratives of the first Guru’s life exist in the form of the janam-sakhi. Janam means ‘birth’ and sakhi means ‘witness’, ‘testimony’, or ‘evidence’.