Wife of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji
Mata Sulakhni
Mata Sulakhni was the wife of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji and the mother of Baba Sri Chand and Baba Lakhmi Das. She kept the family through his long absences, and she lived her last years at Kartarpur on the Ravi. The sources record little of her in her own right.
Family and marriage
She was the daughter of Mul Chand of Batala, and her mother's name is given as Chando Rani. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says her father held a minor revenue post at Pakkhoke Randhawe. Its entry on Batala describes him instead as a caretaker of a landlord's property there. McLeod agrees that the family had moved to Batala from that village.
A local tradition dates the wedding at Batala to 24 September 1487. The Janamsakhis do not agree on the date, as the disputes below show. Gurdwara Kandh Sahib at Batala keeps the memory of the wedding through a story about a crumbling wall.[EoS][EoS][McLeod]
Her life with Guru Ji
Baba Sri Chand was born in 1494 and Baba Lakhmi Das in 1497. The Encyclopaedia gives these years. Harbans Singh places the births at Sultanpur, where the young couple set up a home that welcomed those who came to sing at night.
When Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji left on his travels, she had to manage through long separations. Harbans Singh says she found comfort in Bebe Nanaki's affection, and less in her own parents. This portrait draws on the Janamsakhis, and it cannot be checked against any record from her lifetime.
She joined Guru Ji at Kartarpur for his final years. In the best-known story involving her, she objected when Bhai Lehna came home muddied from carrying a wet bundle from the fields. Guru Ji answered that what she saw as mud was saffron.[EoS][Singh][EoS][Macauliffe]
Her passing
What the sources disagree on
- Her name
The Miharban Janamsakhi calls her Ghumi. McLeod reads this as a corruption of Choni, her family name, by which she would usually have been known. The name Sulakhni appears only later in the record, in the Bala tradition, but no other personal name is offered and McLeod sees no reason to dispute it.[McLeod]
- Date of the marriage
Local tradition gives 24 September 1487. McLeod compares the texts: the Puratan gives Guru Ji's age as twelve, the Gyan Ratnavali fourteen, the Miharban tradition implies 1485, and the Bala tradition places the wedding after the move to Sultanpur. He thinks the wedding probably came before that move, and that the exact year is doubtful.[EoS][EoS][McLeod][Singh]