Carpenter of Saidpur remembered in the traditions of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji
Bhai Lalo
Bhai Lalo is remembered as a carpenter of Saidpur, now Eminabad, who welcomed Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji into his home. He is known largely through later tradition. No record from his lifetime has been confirmed, and scholars disagree on whether he was a historical person.
What the tradition says
The Bala Janamsakhi says Guru Ji stayed with him for three days at Saidpur. At that time Malik Bhago, steward of the local Muslim chief, held a grand feast and took offence that Guru Ji chose a carpenter's table over his own. According to this account, Guru Ji took Bhai Lalo's coarse bread in one hand and Malik Bhago's rich food in the other and squeezed them. Milk came from the first and blood from the second.
The meaning usually drawn is that one meal came from honest labour and the other from extortion. The story has been told in this form by writers such as Macauliffe, and the site does not assert or deny the miracle.[EoS][Macauliffe][McLeod]
What can be confirmed
A hymn of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji in Raag Tilang, on ang 722 of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, has the refrain ਵੇ ਲਾਲੋ (ve laalo) in its first stanza, and it speaks of the suffering caused by Babur's invasion. The word itself is therefore secure. Whether it names a person is the question at issue.
The hymn does not describe a carpenter, a feast or Saidpur. McLeod says that Lalo does not appear in the older Janamsakhis. Bhai Gurdas's lists of early Sikhs in Var 11, pauris 13 and 14, do not name him either.[Src][DB][McLeod][Src]
Memory of him
Eminabad had a Gurdwara Khuhi Bhai Lalo, marking his house and well, and Gurdwara Rori Sahib nearby was linked with a stay at his home after the sack of the town. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records that the gurdwaras were under the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee from 1922 until 1947. McLeod notes that a house shown as his cannot be from that time, since the town was destroyed.[EoS][McLeod]
What the sources disagree on
- Was he a real person?
The Encyclopaedia counts him among the earliest emissaries of the faith, and calls the idea that the hymn addresses him a conjecture. Harbans Singh gives him a chapter as a real disciple, and Gupta also treats him as one. McLeod thinks the words may have meant O beloved, a common poetic address, and that a person grew from them, which makes a carpenter called Lalo very improbable, though he does not rule it out. He also reports a Miharban tradition that reads the word as a Pathan particle of affirmation.[EoS][Singh][Gupta][McLeod][McLeod]
- When Guru Ji stayed with him
The Bala tradition puts the first meeting before the long travels. Gupta and Macauliffe add a further visit at the time of Babur's attack, and the Encyclopaedia links Rori Sahib with the sack of 1521. These accounts have no agreed date.[EoS][Gupta][Macauliffe]