Guru Har Rai

Har Rai was born in 1630 at Kiratpur, the son of Baba Gurditta, Guru Hargobind's eldest son, and became the seventh Guru at fourteen when his grandfather died in 1644.

He is remembered above all for his gentleness. A story told of his childhood says that his wide robe once brushed a rose bush and broke a flower, and his grandfather told him to carry his robe with care because a life must not harm what it passes. He kept the 2,200 horsemen his grandfather had raised but never fought a battle.

At Kiratpur he kept a herbal dispensary and a zoo, and his medicines were famous. When Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan's eldest son, fell gravely ill, and the court physicians could find no cure, the Guru sent the rare medicine that saved him. Later, when Dara was fleeing his brother Aurangzeb in 1658, he came to the Guru at Goindwal, and the Sikhs are said to have helped delay his pursuers at the Beas crossing.

Aurangzeb summoned the Guru to Delhi to explain himself. The Guru sent his elder son Ram Rai instead. Asked about a line in the Asa di Var that says the clay of a Muslim's grave goes to the potter's wheel, Ram Rai changed the word Musalman to beiman, 'the faithless', to please the emperor. The Guru never saw him again, saying the Guru's word could not be altered, and Ram Rai settled at Dehradun under Mughal patronage.

Before his death in 1661, at only thirty-one, Guru Har Rai named his younger son Har Krishan, then five years old, as the eighth Guru.