Khorana was born to Krishna Devi Khorana and Ganpat Rai Khorana, in Raipur, a village in Multan, Punjab, British India in a Punjabi Hindu family. The exact date of his birth is not certain but he believed that it might have been 9 January 1922; this date was later shown in some documents, and has been widely accepted. He was the youngest of five children. His father was a patwari, a village agricultural taxation clerk in the British Indian government. In his autobiography, Khorana wrote this summary: "Although poor, my father was dedicated to educating his children and we were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people." The first four years of his education were provided under a tree, a spot that was, in effect, the only school in the village.