Hundreds of thousands of Sikhs congregated in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on Tuesday for the 400th anniversary celebration of the installation of the Sikh sacred book at the religion's holiest shrine.
Sikh men in colourful turbans and symbolic daggers hanging from waist belts and women with heads covered in scarves poured out of buses and trains or simply walked into Amritsar, the spiritual capital of the world's fifth largest religion.
About 3.5 million Sikhs, from as far as Vancouver and Birmingham, are expected to visit celebrations that begin on Wednesday, organisers said, making it the largest-ever gathering of the 25-million strong community.
"Boley So Nihaal, Sat Sri Akal" (blessed is the one who says god is eternal) chanted groups of men as they arrived at the railway station at Amritsar, 450 km north of New Delhi.
"I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to be able to come here for these celebrations," said Kartar Singh, a businessman from Punjab, where Amritsar is located. "This is probably the highest spiritual point in my life."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh to occupy India's top office, is due to lead the five-day event to mark 'Parkash Utsav', the anniversary of the compilation and installation in 1604 of the holy book at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs.
The Sikh faith was started in the 16th century by Guru Nanak, a religious teacher who used ideas from Hinduism and Islam, the dominant religions in South Asia at the time.
The religion was based on one god and on the equality of all human beings. It was propagated by nine gurus after Guru Nanak.
Before his death, the 10th Guru Gobind Singh declared that Sikhs did not need a living guru and anointed the Granth Sahib, the holy book, as his spiritual successor, the eternal guru.
Though the original copy of the Guru Granth Sahib is believed to be elsewhere in Punjab -- in the custody of the descendants of a disciple of one of the gurus -- Sikhs revere a copy which is sometimes placed under the golden canopy of the Golden Temple.
The prime attraction of Wednesday's celebrations will be the recreation of a procession by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, who compiled the book and brought it to the temple for its installation in 1604.
The 1,430-page collection contains hymns and poetry in Gurmukhi, a script of the Sikhs. It sings the praise of god, stresses meditation and lists moral and ethical rules for growth of the soul and salvation.