Amar Das was a religious Hindu (Vaishnava, Vishnu focussed), reputed to have gone on some twenty pilgrimages into the Himalayas, to Haridwar on river Ganges. About 1539, on one such Hindu pilgrimage, he met a Hindu monk (sadhu) who asked him why he did not have a guru (teacher, spiritual counsellor) and Amar Das decided to get one. On his return, he heard Bibi Amro, the daughter of the Sikh Guru Angad, singing a hymn by Guru Nanak. He learnt from her about Guru Angad, and with her help met the second Guru of Sikhism and adopted him as his spiritual Guru who was much younger than his own age.
He is famous in the Sikh tradition for his relentless Service to Guru Angad, with legends about waking up in the early hours and fetching water for his Guru's bath, cleaning and cooking for the volunteers with the Guru, as well devoting much time to meditation and prayers in the morning and evening. Guru Angad named Amar Das his successor in 1552, instead of naming of his surviving son Shri Chand. After Amar Das became the third Guru, he continued his pilgrimages to religious sites, one of which is authenticated in a hymn of the Guru Granth Sahib as being to Kurukshetra in January, 1553.
He died in 1574, and like other Sikh Gurus he was cremated, with the "flowers" (remaining bones and ash after the cremation) immersed into harisar (flowing waters). The use of fire being most appropriate way was explained by Guru Nanak in religious terms of god Agni burning the trap of death, and Guru Amar Das was consigned to the same tradition.
Scholars such as Pashaura Singh, Louis E. Fenech and william McLeod state that Guru Amar Das was influential in introducing "distinctive features, pilgrimages, festivals, temples and rituals" that ever since his time have been an integral part of Sikhism. He is also remembered as the innovator who began the collection of hymns now known as Goindwal Pothi or Mohan Pothi, the precursor to what became the Adi Granth – the first edition of Sikh scripture – under the fifth Sikh Master, which finally emerged as the Guru Granth Sahib under the tenth Sikh Master. The nearly 900 hymns composed by Guru Amar Das constitute the third largest part, or about 15%, of the Guru Granth Sahib.
