Punjab is named for its five rivers, and its religious weight comes from what was founded on that plain in the sixteenth century. Nanak, born at Talwandi in 1469, taught a path centred on one formless God, on remembrance of the divine name, on honest work and on sharing, and he rejected caste distinction and ritual purity as the basis of religious standing. Nine successors followed him, and under them a devotional teaching became an institution: a scripture compiled from the Gurus' own hymns and from Hindu and Muslim devotional poets, a shared kitchen open to anyone regardless of caste, and central sites at Amritsar, Kartarpur and Anandpur.
The pool and temple at Amritsar became the tradition's principal centre, and Guru Arjan installed the compiled scripture there in 1604. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, founded the Khalsa in 1699 and, at his death in 1708, ended the line of human Gurus by vesting authority in the scripture itself, which is why the Guru Granth Sahib is treated as a living Guru rather than as a book about one.
None of this happened in an empty field. Punjab already carried Nath yogic lineages, a strong Sufi presence, and the devotional poetry of figures such as Kabir and Farid, whose verses are in the Sikh scripture itself. The Gurus wrote both with and against that inheritance, and the region's religious life is best read as an argument conducted in shared language.