[1] President Lincoln was Grant’s most unwavering supporter. Many amusing stories are told of his replies to various deputations which waited upon him to ask for Grant’s removal. On one occasion he asked the critics to ascertain the brand of whisky favoured by Grant, so that he could send kegs of it to the other generals. The question of Grant’s abstemiousness was and is of little importance. The cause at stake over-rode every prejudice and the people of the United States, since the war, have been in general content to leave the question alone, as was evidenced by the outcry raised in 1908, when President Taft reopened it in a speech at Grant’s tomb.
[2] The permanent tomb is of white granite and white marble and is 150 ft. high with a circular cupola topping a square building 90 ft. on the side and 72 ft. high; the sarcophagus, in the centre of the building, is of red Wisconsin porphyry. The cornerstone was laid by President Harrison in 1892, and the tomb was dedicated on the 27th of April 1897 with a splendid parade and addresses by President McKinley and General Horace Porter, president of the Grant Monument Association, which from 90,000 contributions raised the funds for the tomb.
GRANT (from A.-Fr. graunter, O. Fr. greanter for creanter, popular Lat. creantare, for credentare, to entrust, Lat. credere, to believe, trust), originally permission, acknowledgment, hence the gift of privileges, rights, &c., specifically in law, the transfer of property by an instrument in writing, termed a deed of grant. According to the old rule of common law, the immediate freehold in corporeal hereditaments lay in livery (see [Feoffment]), whereas incorporeal hereditaments, such as a reversion, remainder, advowson, &c., lay in grant, that is, passed by the delivery of the deed of conveyance or grant without further ceremony. The distinction between property lying in livery and in grant is now abolished, the Real Property Act 1845 providing that all corporeal tenements and hereditaments shall be transferable as well by grant as by livery (see [Conveyancing]). A grant of personal property is properly termed an assignment or bill of sale.
GRANTH, the holy scriptures of the Sikhs, containing the spiritual and moral teaching of Sikhism (q.v.). The book is called the Adi Granth Sahib by the Sikhs as a title of respect, because it is believed by them to be an embodiment of the gurus. The title is generally applied to the volume compiled by the fifth guru Arjan, which contains the compositions of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion; of his successors, Guru Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das and Arjan; hymns of the Hindu bhagats or saints, Jaidev, Namdev, Trilochan, Sain, Ramanand, Kabir, Rai Das, Pipa, Bhikhan, Beni, Parmanand Das, Sur Das, Sadhna and Dhanna Jat; verses of the Mahommedan saint called Farid; and panegyrics of the gurus by bards who either attended them or admired their characters. The compositions of the ninth guru, Teg Bahadur, were subsequently added to the Adi Granth by Guru Govind Singh. One recension of the sacred volume preserved at Mangat in the Gujrat district contains a hymn composed by Mira Bai, queen of Chitor. The Adi Granth contains passages of great picturesqueness and beauty. The original copy is said to be in Kartarpur in the Jullundur district, but the chief copy in use is now in the Har Mandar or Golden Temple at Amritsar, where it is daily read aloud by the attendant Granthis or scripture readers.
There is also a second Granth which was compiled by the Sikhs in 1734, and popularly known as the Granth of the tenth Guru, but it has not the same authority as the Adi Granth. It contains Guru Govind Singh’s Jāpji, the Akāl Ustit or Praise of the Creator, thirty-three sawaias (quatrains containing some of the main tenets of the guru and strong reprobation of idolatry and hypocrisy), and the Vachitar Natak or wonderful drama, in which the guru gives an account of his parentage, divine mission and the battles in which he was engaged. Then come three abridged translations by different hands of the Devi Mahatamya, an episode in the Markandeya Puran, in praise of Durga, the goddess of war. Then follow the Gyan Parbodh or awakening of knowledge, accounts of twenty-four incarnations of the deity, selected because of their warlike character; the Hazare de Shabd; the Shastar Nam Mala, which is a list of offensive and defensive weapons used in the guru’s time, with special reference to the attributes of the Creator; the Tria Charitar or tales illustrating the qualities, but principally the deceit of women; the Kabit, compositions of a miscellaneous character; the Zafarnama containing the tenth guru’s epistle to the emperor Aurangzeb, and several metrical tales in the Persian language. This Granth is only partially the composition of the tenth guru. The greater portion of it was written by bards in his employ.
The two volumes are written in several different languages and dialects. The Adi Granth is largely in old Punjabi and Hindi, but Prakrit, Persian, Mahratti and Gujrati are also represented. The Granth of the Tenth Guru is written Form of the Granth. in the old and very difficult Hindi affected by literary men in the Patna district in the 16th century. In neither of these sacred volumes is there any separation of words. As there is no separation of words in Sanskrit, the gyanis or interpreters of the guru’s hymns prefer to follow the ancient practice of junction of words. This makes the reading of the Sikh scriptures very difficult, and is one of the causes of the decline of the Sikh religion.
The hymns in the Adi Granth are arranged not according to the gurus or bhagats who compose them, but according to rags or musical measures. There are thirty-one such measures in the Adi Granth, and the hymns are arranged according to the measures to which they are composed. The gurus who composed hymns, namely the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and ninth gurus, all used the name Nanak as their nom-de-plume. Their compositions are distinguished by mahallas or wards. Thus the compositions of Guru Nanak are styled mahalla one, the compositions of Guru Angad are styled mahalla two, and so on. After the hymns of the gurus are found the hymns of the bhagats under their several musical measures. The Sikhs generally dislike any arrangement of the Adi Granth by which the compositions of each guru or bhagat should be separately shown.