[473] Har-govind (G. M. p. 213) was a warlike Guru, or priest militant, and wore two swords in his girdle. Being asked why he did so: “The one,” said he, “is to revenge the death of my father; the other to destroy the miracles of Muhammed.” His character appears in the Dabistán less advantageously with respect to the religious customs of his sect, from the austerity of which he is said to have greatly relaxed, and he permitted the promiscuous use of flesh of all animals except that of the cow: his military character however is maintained in all accounts of him.
[474] Gwalior is situated in the province of Agra, eighty miles travelling distance south from the city of Agra.
[475] Foujdar, an officer of the police in Hindostan, and chief magistrate, who takes cognizance of all criminal matters.
[476] Hargovind had five sons, the eldest of whom was Guru daitya, the father of Har ráyi.
[477] Rayi is a title a little inferior to that of Rája, generally applied to the Hindu chief of a village or small district.
[478] सङ्गतिः
[479] The author of the Dabistán does not carry the account of the Sikhs further than to the time of Harrayi, a peaceable Guru, who died in 1664. After a contest between his sons, or, as some Sikh authors relate, between his son, Har Krichna, and his grandson, Ram Ray, the former was chosen. He died in 1664, and was succeeded by his uncle, Tégh Bahader, in spite of the opposition of his nephew, Ram Ray. Tégh Bahader was imprisoned and put to death by the Muhammedans, in 1675. After his death, the sect appeared crushed, but under his son, Gura Govind, the Sikhs rose again, no more as a sect, but as a nation endeavouring to establish their independence. Guru Govind is considered by them as the founder of their national greatness; he is the tenth, that is, their last acknowledged religious ruler; he is the author of the Dasama Pádsháh-ka grantha, or “the book of the tenth king;” he changed the name of his followers from Sikhs to Singhs, “lions,” who distinguished themselves by a blue checkered dress; he first instituted the Guru-mata, or “great council,” among them, and established the Akalis, or “the immortals,” who preserved their name and consideration until our days; in short, he sanctioned, and confirmed by institutions, the doctrine taught by his predecessors, who endeavoured to separate the Sikhs from the mass of the Hindus. Indeed “the admission of proselytes, the abolition of the distinction of casts, the eating all kinds of flesh except that of cows, the form of religious worship, and the general devotion of all Sikhs to arms, are ordinances altogether irreconcileable with Hindu mythology”—(G. M. p. 268).
Guru Govind is supposed to have died in 1708, at Naded in the Deccan. After him, Bandu, a Váiragí, or ascetic, united the Sikhs under his banners: during some time successful and formidable, he fell at last before the power of the Muhammedans. Without pursuing the later history of the Sikhs, I shall content myself with stating that they succeeded in forming in our times, under their late Rája, Ranjet Singh, the kingdom of Lahore, of four millions of inhabitants, dispersed over a surface of 70,000 square miles, exclusively of the province of Kachmir, annexed to their dominions.
See also upon the Sikhs The Sigar-ul-Mutakherin, by Mir Gholain Hussein-Khan, translated from the Persian into English by General John Briggs, London, 1832, vol. I. p. 109, etc.