CHAPTER I
THE fifteenth century of the Christian era was a period of singular
mental and
political activity. Both in Europe and India men shook off
the torpor of ages, and their minds awoke to the consciousness of
intellectual responsibility. For this result, it is true, important
preparations had been made in the fourteenth century, when the
Christian reformers, Walter Lollard and John Huss, preached and
suffered death for their opinions;[1] when the poetical literature of
England assumed a tangible form from the genius of Chaucer and Gower;
when the Musalmans in Europe penetrated into Thrace and Hungary; and
when, after the overthrow and expulsion of Budhism from India by the
astute and powerful Brahmans, there flourished the great exponents of
Indian monotheism, the saint Kabir, and the enlightened Ramanand.
But it was reserved for the fifteenth century to bear the full
fruits of the mental awakening of the fourteenth. In England the
ancient language of Greece began to be studied; a further impulse was
given to the reformation of the Christian religion; and villenage
disappeared as a political institution. In France the Government was
consolidated by the union of the great fiefs to the crown; and the
daring monarch Charles VII made his successful expedition against the
picturesque capital of Southern Italy. In Germany occurred the birth
of Luther, and the revival and development of the invaluable art of
printing in movable types.[2] In Italy there was a marvellous
resuscitation of the fine arts, and
[1. Lollard and Huss were burned for heresy. Wickliffe would have
suffered the same fate had not a paralytic attack anticipated the
executioner.
2. Block printing was known in China before the Christian era.]
then were born the renowned navigators Columbus and Amerigo
Vespucci, the great masters Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da
Vinci, and the illustrious patron of letters Lorenzo di Medici.
In Spain Ferdinand and Isabella, though they organized the
inquisition in their intemperate religious zeal against the Saracens
and Jews, were yet conspicuous for a worldly liberality which deserves
the acknowledgement of posterity. In Portugal was born Vasco da Gama,
who under the enterprising King Emanuel discovered the maritime route
by the Cape of Storms to India. The Musalmans in Europe conquered
Turkey and Greece, and seized on the ancient Italian city of Otranto.
And in Asia, Taimur extended his victorious arms from Siberia on the
north to the Arabian Sea on the south, and from the Ganges on the east
to the Hellespont on the west.
There is a wonderful analogy between the spiritual condition of
Europe and India during the dark ages. In Europe most religious works
were written in Latin, in India they were in Sanskrit. In both
continents all learning was in the hands of the priesthood, and this
admittedly led to serious abuses. A great cyclic wave of reformation
then overspread both continents. During the very period that Luther
and Calvin in Europe were warning men of the errors that had crept
into Christianity, several Indian saints were denouncing priestcraft,
hypocrisy, and idolatry, and with very considerable success. Several
of those great men who led the crusade against superstition, founded
sects which still survive; but the most numerous and powerful of all
is the great Sikh sect founded by Guru Nanak, which already forms a
considerable section of the population of the Panjab, and which is
scattered in greater or less numbers not only throughout the whole of
India but Kabul, Kandahar, China, and Southern Asia.
A cognate cause is frequently assigned for the establishment of new
religions, namely, that they appear at periods of great political or
social depression, when it becomes necessary for men to have recourse
to the superhuman for guidance and consolation. Then when the hour is darkest some
prophet is born, perhaps in a lowly hamlet, to solace the heavy-laden
and lift their thoughts to a brighter and happier world. A signal
instance has been remarked by historians. Judaea was smarting from the
tyranny and cruelty of Herod when he whom the most advanced races of
the world call the Messiah was born.
The Gurus too appear to have been of the opinion that God sends a
divine guide whenever required by the condition of the age and
country. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, wrote:--
When the world is in distress, it heartily prayeth.
The True One attentively listeneth and with His kind disposition
granteth consolation.
He giveth orders to the Cloud and the rain falleth in torrents.
That is, the Guru comes by God's order and gives abundant
instruction to all who may be prepared to receive it.
Indeed several events occurred during the Muhammadan conquests of
India in the Middle Ages to force the Hindus to consider life in a
serious aspect. Though many of the followers of Vishnu, Shiv, and the
other gods of the Hindu dispensation adopted during that period the
faith of the Arabian prophet, as the result of force or with a view to
worldly advantages, yet others whose minds were powerfully directed to
religious speculation sought safety from persecution and death in the
loneliness of the desert or the retirement of the forest, and lived
single-minded investigators of religious truth as in the primitive
golden age of their country.
We shall here give, from the written accounts of Muhammadan
historians, some examples of the treatment of Hindus by Muhammadan
conquerors of India.
Shahab-ul[1]-Din, King of Ghazni, the virtual founder of the
Muhammadan Empire in India (1170-1206), put Prithwi Raja, King of
Ajmer and Dihli, to death in cold blood.
[1. The l is generally silent in such combinations.]
He massacred thousands of the inhabitants of Ajmer Who had opposed
him, reserving the remainder for slavery. After his victory over the
King of Banaras the slaughter of the Hindus is described as immense.
None were spared except women and children, and the carnage of the men
was carried on until, as it has been said, the earth grew weary of the
monotony.[1]
In the Taj-ul-Ma'asir by Hasan Nizam-i-Naishapuri it is stated that
when Qutb-ul-Din Aibak (A.D. 1194-1210) conquered Merath he demolished
all the Hindu temples of the city and erected mosques on their sites.
In the city of Koil, now called Aligarh, he converted Hindu
inhabitants to Islam by the sword and beheaded all who adhered to
their religion. In the city of Kalinjar he destroyed one hundred and
thirteen Hindu temples, built mosques on their sites, massacred over
one hundred thousand Hindus, and made slaves of about fifty thousand
more. It is said the place became black as pitch with the decomposing
bodies of the Hindus. And in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri by Minhajul-Siraj it
is stated that when Muhammad Bakhtyar Khilji conquered Bihar he put to
the sword about one hundred thousand Brahmans, and burnt a valuable
library of ancient Sanskrit works.
Abdulla Wassaf writes in his Tazjiyal-ul-Amsar wa Tajriyat ul Asar
that when Ala-ul-Din Khilji (1295-1316) captured the city of Kambayat
at the head of the gulf of Cambay, he killed the adult male Hindu
inhabitants for the glory of Islam, set flowing rivers of blood, sent
the women of the country, with all their gold, silver, and jewels, to
his own home, and made about twenty thousand maidens his private
slaves.
Ala-ul-Din once asked his qazi what was the Muhammadan law
prescribed for Hindus. The qazi replied, 'Hindus are like the earth;
if silver is demanded from them, they ought with the greatest humility
to offer gold. And if a Muhammadan desire to spit into a Hindu's
mouth, the Hindu should
[1. The Kâmilu-t Tawârîkh by ibn Asîr. See also Elphinstone's
History of India.]
open it wide for the purpose. God created Hindus to be slaves of
the Muhammadans. The Prophet hath ordained that, if the Hindus do not
accept Islam, they should be imprisoned, tortured, and finally put to
death, and their property confiscated.' At this the monarch smiled and
said he had not been waiting for an interpretation of the sacred law.
He had already issued an order that Hindus should only possess corn
and coarse clothes sufficient to last them for six months.
During the reign of the same monarch men formerly in easy
circumstances were reduced to beggary, and their wives obliged to
resort to menial labour for their maintenance. In front of the palace
were generally seen the corpses of forty or fifty Hindus. Hindus were
punished with merciless severity for the most trifling offences. The
monarch had his own brother and nephew flayed alive on the mere
suspicion of disloyalty. He then had their flesh cooked and forced
their children to eat it. What remained after the repast was thrown to
the elephants to trample on.
The historian, Ibn Batuta, who visited India in the lime of the
Emperor Muhammad Bin Tughlak, wrote of him: 'Such was his inexorable
and impetuous character that on one occasion when the inhabitants of
Dihli revolted against his oppression and wrote him a letter of
remonstrance, he ordered them to quit the place for Daulatabad, a city
in the Dakhan (Deccan), at a distance of forty days' journey. The
order was so literally obeyed that when the Emperor's servants
searched the city after the removal, and found a blind man in one of
the houses and a bedridden one in another, the bedridden man was
projected from a catapult and the blind one dragged by his feet to
Daulatabad. But the latter's limbs dropped off on the way, and at the
end of the journey only one leg was left, which was duly thrown into
the new city, "for the order had been that all should go to this
place." We shall subsequently see how Muhammad bin Tughlak
persecuted the Maratha saint Namdev, an account of whose life and
writings will be given in this work.
Amir Khusrau writes in his Tawarikh Alai or Khazain-ul-Futuh that
when the Emperor Firoz Shah Tughlak (A.D. 1351-88) took the city of
Bhilsa in Bhopal, he destroyed all its Hindu temples, took away their
idols, placed them in front of his fort, and had them daily bathed
with the blood of a thousand Hindus. Firoz Shah twice plundered the
country of Malwa, and took away everything he could find except
earthen pots.
Farishta relates that a Brahman called Budhan, who dwelt in a place
called Kayathan or Kataen near Lakhnau (Lucknow), was put to death by
Sikandar Khan Lodi for stating that as Islam was true, so also was the
Hindu religion. The saint Kabir lived under Sikandar Khan Lodi, and
was tortured by him.[1]
The Emperor Babar's cruelty to the inhabitants of Saiyidpur we
shall find described by Guru Nanak, who was an eye-witness. Both he
and his attendant were taken prisoners and obliged to work as slaves.
The Guru thus describes the Muhammadan rulers and the state of
India in his time:--
This age is a knife, kings are butchers; justice hath taken
wings and fled.
In this completely dark night of falsehood the moon of truth is
never seen to rise.
I have become perplexed in my search;
In the darkness I find no way.
Devoted to pride, I weep in sorrow;
How shall deliverance be obtained?[2]
There is a glamour of romance cast round the person of the Emperor
Jahangir, partly owing to the poetry of Moore and partly owing to his
possession of Nur Jahan, the most beautiful and gifted woman of the
East; but Jahangir's memory is entitled to no historical
commiseration. His
[1. Farishta elsewhere describes Sikandar Khân Lodi as just,
God-fearing, and religious. He prayed five times a day, bestowed large
sums of money on indigent and religious persons, and was, according to
the historian, a model of a Musalmân prince.
2. Mâjh ki Wâr.]
father Akbar was disposed to free thought in religion, and it was
believed that in this he was encouraged by Abul Fazab the famous
Persian historian. Jahangir caused Abul Fazal to be cruelly
assassinated. After big accession he compassed the death of Nur
Jahan's husband in order to possess her. He tells in his Memoirs how
he disposed of robbers. 'I accomplished about this period the
suppression of a tribe of robbers, who had long infested the roads
about Agra; and whom, getting into my power, I caused to be trampled
to death by elephants.'
Sir Thomas Roe, the British Ambassador at his Court, gives the
following further information regarding Jahangir's method of
dispensing justice: 'A band of one hundred robbers were brought in
chains before the Great Mogul. Without any ceremony of trial, he
ordered them to be carried away for execution, their chief being
ordered to be torn in pieces by dogs. The prisoners were sent for
execution to several quarters of the city, and executed in the
streets. Close by my house the chief was torn in pieces by twelve
dogs; and thirteen of his fellows, having their hands and feet tied
together, had their necks cut by a sword, yet not quite through, and
their naked and bloody bodies were left to corrupt in the streets.'
'The trials are conducted quickly, and the sentences speedily
executed; culprits being hanged, beheaded, impaled, torn by dogs,
destroyed by elephants, bitten by serpents, or other devices,
according to the nature of the crimes; the executions being generally
in the market-place. The governors of provinces and cities administer
justice in a similar manner.'
The following gives Jahangir's treatment of harmless lovers:
'Happening to catch a eunuch kissing one of his women whom he had
relinquished, he sentenced the lady to be put into the earth, with
only her head left above the ground, exposed to the burning rays of
the sun, and the eunuch to be cut in pieces before her face.'
Sir Thomas Roe describes how Jahangir vented his displeasure on
some of his nobles: 'Some nobles who were near his person he caused for some offence to be whipped in his
presence, receiving 130 stripes with a most terrible instrument of
torture, having, at the ends of four cords irons like spur-rowels, so
that every stroke made four wounds. When they lay for dead, he
commanded the standers-by to spurn them with their feet, and the
doorkeepers to break their staves upon them. Thus, cruelly mangled and
bruised, they were carried away, one of them dying on the spot.'
Jahangir's son Khusrau rose in rebellion against him, and it is not
a matter for surprise that he found many adherents. 'After Khusrau's
arrest he was brought before his father, with a chain fastened from
his left hand to his left foot, according to the laws of Changhez
Khan. On the right hand of the Prince stood Hasan Beg, and on his
left, Abdulrahim. Khusrau trembled and wept. He was ordered into
confinement; but the companions of his rebellion were put to death
with cruel torments. Hasan Beg was sewed up in a raw hide of an ox,
and Abdulrahim in that of an ass, and both were led about the town on
asses, with their faces towards the tail. The ox's hide became so dry
and contracted, that before the evening Hasan Beg was suffocated; but
the ass's hide being continually moistened with water by the friends
of Abdulrahim, he survived the punishment. From the garden of Kamran
to the city of Lahore two rows of stakes were fixed in the ground,
upon which the other rebels were impaled alive; and the unhappy
Khusrau, mounted on an elephant, was conducted between the ranks of
these miserable sufferers.'
Further on we shall see that Jahangir caused Guru Arjan, the fifth
Sikh Guru, to be tortured to death, partly on account of his religion
and partly because he had extended to Prince Khusrau a friendly
reception and hospitality.
Jahangir's grandson the Emperor Aurangzeb was brought up a very
strict Muhammadan. The following, according to the Mirât-i-Alam of
the historian Bakhtawar Khan, shows how he treated Hindus and their
temples for the honour and glory of God and the success of what he
considered the only true religion: 'Hindu writers have been entirely excluded
from holding public offices; and all the worshipping places of the
infidels, and the great temples of these infamous people have been
thrown down and destroyed in a manner which excites astonishment at
the successful completion of so arduous an undertaking.'
The following is from the Maâsir-i-Alamgiri: 'It reached the ears
of His Majesty, the Protector of the Faith, that in the provinces of
Thatha, Multan, and Banaras, but especially in the latter, foolish
Brahmans were in the habit of expounding frivolous books in their
schools, and that students, learned Mussalmans as well as Hindus, went
there even from long distances, led by a desire to become acquainted
with the wicked sciences there taught. The Director of the Faith
consequently issued orders to all the governors of provinces to
destroy with willing hands the temples and schools of the infidels,
and to put an entire stop to the teaching and practice of idolatrous
forms of worship. It was subsequently reported to his religious
Majesty, leader of the Unitarians, that in obedience to his orders,
the Government officers had destroyed the temple of Vishwanath at
Banaras. In the thirteenth year of Aurangzeb's reign this
justice-loving monarch, the constant enemy of tyrants, commanded the
destruction of the Hindu temple of Mathura, and soon that stronghold
of falsehood and den of iniquity was levelled with the ground. On its
site was laid at great expense the foundation of a vast mosque.'
There arose a sect called Satnamis founded by Jagjivan Das, a
native of Awadh (Oude). They appear to have taken many of their
doctrines from the Sikhs. Their moral code is thus described: 'It is
something like that of all Hindu quietists, and enjoins indifference
to the world, its pleasures or its pains, implicit devotion to the
spiritual guide, clemency and gentleness, rigid adherence to truth,
the discharge of all ordinary, social, or religious obligations, and
the hope of final absorption into the one spirit which pervades all
things.'[1]
[1. H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus.]
The Muhammadan historian thus describes this pious sect and their
treatment by the Emperor Aurangzeb: 'A body of bloody miserable
rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble
beings, braggarts and fools of all descriptions became so puffed up
with vainglory as to cast themselves headlong into the pit of
destruction. Aurangzeb sent an army to exterminate and destroy these
unbelievers. The heroes of Islam charged with impetuosity and
crimsoned their sabres with the blood of these desperate men. The
struggle was terrible. At length the Satnamis broke and fled, but were
pursued with great slaughter.
'General Khan Jahan Bahadur arrived from jodhpur bringing with him
several cartloads of idols taken from the Hindu temples which had been
razed to the ground. Most of these idols, when not made of gold,
silver, brass, or copper, were adorned with precious stones. It was
ordered that some of them should be cast away in out-offices and the
remainder placed beneath the steps of the grand mosque to be trampled
under foot. There they lay a long time until not a vestige of them was
left.
'In 1090 A.H. (A.D. 1680) Prince Muhammad Azam and Khan Jahan
Bahadur obtained permission to visit Udaipur. Two other officers at
the same time proceeded thither to effect the destruction of the
temples of the idolaters, which are described as the wonders of the
age, erected by the infidels to the ruin of their souls. Twenty
Rajputs had resolved to die for their faith. One of them slew many of
his assailants before receiving his death blow. Another followed and
another until all had fallen. Many of the faithful also had been
dispatched when the last of these fanatics had gone to hell.
'Soon after Aurangzeb himself visited the Rana's lake and ordered
all its temples to be levelled with the ground. Hasan Ali Khan then
made his appearance with twenty camels taken from the Rana, and
reported that the temple near the palace and one hundred and
twenty-two more in the neighbouring districts had been destroyed. He was rewarded by the emperor with the title of Bahadur.
'When Aurangzeb went to Chitaur, still one of the most beautiful of
all ancient cities, he caused sixty-three temples there to be
demolished. The Rana had now been driven forth from his country and
his home, the victorious Ghazis had struck many a blow, and the heroes
of Islam had trampled under their chargers' hoofs the land which this
reptile of the forest and his predecessors had possessed for a
thousand years.'
Aurangzeb's iconoclastic fury knew no bounds or moderation. 'Abu
Turab, who had been commissioned by him to effect the destruction of
the idol temples of Amber, the ancient capital of Jaipur, reported in
person that three-score and six of these edifices had been levelled
with the ground.'[1]
We shall further on see that it was Aurangzeb who put Guru Teg
Bahadur, the ninth Guru of the Sikhs, to death in Dihli. According to
the author of the Dabistan the emperor ordered the Guru's body to be
quartered and the parts thereof to be suspended at the four gates of
the city.[2] Aurangzeb also persecuted Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth
and last Guru of the Sikhs, and forced him to fly from the Panjab; and
it was a result of the same monarch's tyranny that Guru Gobind Singh's
four sons lost their lives and that none of his descendants survived.
Many earnest thinkers and reformers lived under the above and other
Muhammadan emperors of India, but they were either executed and none
dared record their teachings and their fate, or accounts of them
belong to Hindu religious history, and lie beyond the scope of the
present work.
[1. On the conduct of the Muhammadan Emperors we have largely
availed ourselves of the translations and narratives in Sir Henry
Elliot's History of India. The original Persian histories are many of
them difficult of access, and could not be consulted.
2. The Sikh chroniclers, as we shall subsequently see, give a
different version of the mode of execution of Guru Teg Bahadur.]
CHAPTER II
The great Pandits and Brahmans of Hinduism communicated their
instructions in Sanskrit, which they deemed the language of the gods.
The Gurus thought it would be of more general advantage to present
their messages in the dialects of their age. When Guru Amar Das was
asked the reason for this, he replied: 'Well-water can only irrigate
adjacent land, but rain-water the whole world. On this account the
Guru hath composed his hymns in the language of the people, and
enshrined them in the Gurumukhi characters, so that men and women of
all castes and classes may read and understand them.' A Brahman urged:
That religious instruction ought not to be communicated to every one,
it being forbidden to instruct Sudars and women in the sacred lore.'
The Guru thus oracularly replied:--
O father, dispel such doubts.
It is God who doeth whatever is done; all who exist shall be
absorbed in Him.
The different forms, O God, which appear are ever Thine, and at
the last they shall all be resolved in Thee.
He who is absorbed in the Guru's word, shall thoroughly know Him
who made this world.
Thine, O Lord, is the word; there is none but Thee; where is there
room for doubt?[2]
Guru Nanak spoke of himself as neither continent nor learned, and
was in every respect the essence of humility. His advent was heralded
by no prophecies, and consequently he was not obliged to make or
invent incidents in
[1. It is laid down in the twelfth chapter of the Institutes of
Gautam that if a Sûdar even hear the Veds his ears must be stopped
either with molten lead or wax; if he read the Veds, his tongue must
be cut out; and if he possess the Veds, his body must be cut in twain.
In the eighteenth slok of the ninth chapter of the Institutes of
Manu it is laid down that women may not take part in any Vedic rites.
Their doing so, or having any concern with Vedic texts, would be
contrary to dharm. Women were therefore deemed as Sûdars, and beyond
the pale of religion.
2. Gauri 51.]
his life conformable thereto. He preached against idolatry, caste
distinction, and hypocrisy, and gave men a most comprehensive ethical
code; but in so doing he never uttered a word which savoured of
personal ambition or an arrogation of the attributes of the Creator.
He appears to have been on fairly good terms with Muhammadans, but his
disregard of caste prejudices and his uncompromising language led him
into occasional difficulties with the Hindus, though he was never
embroiled in violent scenes. On the whole he was generally beloved
during his life, and at his death Hindus and Muhammadans quarrelled as
to which sect should perform his obsequies.
The Granth Sahib contains the compositions of Guru Nanak, Guru
Angad, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das Guru Arjan, Guru Teg Bahadur (the
ninth Guru), a couplet of Guru Gobind Singh (the tenth Guru),
panegyrics of bards who attended on the Gurus or admired their
characters, and hymns of mediaeval Indian saints, a list of whom will
subsequently be given. The cardinal principle of the Gurus and Bhagats
whose writings find place in the sacred books of the Sikhs was the
unity of God. This is everywhere inculcated in the Sikh sacred
writings with ample and perhaps not unnecessary iteration, considering
the forces Sikhism had to contend with in an age of ignorance and
superstition.
The hymns of the Gurus and saints are not arranged in the holy
volume according to their authors, but according to the thirty-one
rags or musical measures to which they were composed. The first nine
Gurus adopted the name Nanak as their nom de plume, and their
compositions are distinguished by Mahallas or quarters. The Granth
Sahib is likened to a city and the hymns of each Guru to a ward or
division of it. Thus the compositions of Guru Nanak are styled Mahalla
one, that is, the first ward; the compositions of Guru Angad the
second ward, and so on. After the hymns of the Gurus are found the
hymns of the Bhagats under their several musical measures.
The Granth which passes under the name of Guru Gobind Singh, contains his Jâpji, the Akal Ustat or praise of the
Creator, the Vachitar Natak or Wonderful Drama, in which the Guru
gives an account of his parentage, his divine mission, and the battles
in which he had been engaged. Then come three abridged translations 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;
quatrains called sawaiyas, which are religious hymns in praise of God
and reprobation of idolatry and hypocrisy; the Shastar Nam Mala, 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 Zafarnama, containing the tenth Guru's epistle to the
Emperor Aurangzeb; and several metrical tales in the Persian language.
This Granth was compiled by Bhai Mani Singh after the tenth Guru's
death.
There are two great divisions of Sikhs, Sahijdharis and Singhs. The
latter are they who accept the baptism inaugurated by Guru Gobind
Singh, which will be described in the fifth volume of this work. All
other Sikhs are called Sahijdharis. The Singhs, after the time of Guru
Gobind Singh, were all warriors, the Sahijdharis those who lived at
ease, as the word denotes, and practised trade or agriculture.[1] In
the Singhs are included the Nirmalas and Nihangs. The Sahijdharis
include the Udasis founded by Sri Chand, son of Guru Nanak; the
Sewapanthis founded by a water-carrier of Guru Gobind Singh; the
Ramraiyas, followers of Ram Rai, son of Guru Har Rai; the Handalis, to
be subsequently described, and other sects of minor importance.
[1. Some say that the Sahijdharis received their name from the
promises of certain Sikhs in the time of Guru Gobind Singh, that they
would not accept his baptism at the time, but that they would
gradually do so.]
The Sikh religion differs as regards the authenticity of its dogmas from most other great theological systems. Many of the
great teachers the world has known have not left a line of their own
composition, and we only know what they taught through tradition or
second-hand information. If Pythagoras wrote any of his tenets, his
writings have not descended to us. We know the teaching of Sokrates
only through the writings of Plato and Xenophon. Budha has left no
written memorials of his teaching. Kung fu-tze, known to Europeans as
Confucius, left no documents in which he detailed the principles of
his moral and social system. The Founder of Christianity did not
reduce his doctrines to writing, and for them we are obliged to trust
to the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Arabian
Prophet did not himself reduce to writing the chapters of the Quran.
They were written or compiled by his adherents and followers. But the
compositions of the Sikh Gurus are preserved, and we know at first
hand what they taught. They employed the vehicle of verses which is
generally unalterable by copyists, and we even become in time familiar
with their different styles. No spurious compositions or extraneous
dogmas can, therefore, be represented as theirs.
It is not clear, however, that this contributes to the success of
the Sikh religion. It appears that the very authenticity of the sacred
books of a religion may militate against its general or permanent
acceptance. The teachings of which there is no authentic record, are
elastic and capable of alteration and modification to suit foreign
countries and the aspirations and intellectual conditions of ages long
subsequent to those in which they arose. No religion in its entirety
is permanently adopted by a foreign country; and no religion when it
spontaneously migrates can escape the assimilation of local ideas or
superstitions. The followers of all religions are prone to indulge in
the luxury of eclecticism. By a universal law they adhere to the
dogmas most suitable for themselves, and reject what they deem the
least important or the least practicable enjoined by the founders of
their faiths.
It is curious that the greatest religious reforms have been
effected by the laity. The clergy, apart from their vested interests,
are too wedded to ancient systems, and dare not impugn their utility
or authority. Pythagoras, who founded a religio-philosophical school
and taught the transmigration of souls, was the son of a gem-engraver
and not a priest by early training or association. Isaiah, the Hebrew
poet, who gave consistency and splendour to Jewish sentiments, was not
an ecclesiastic by profession, Moses had a brother who was a high
priest, but he was not himself designed for the priesthood. Sokrates
was a profound thinker and moral guide, but still a member of the
laity who had emerged from the schools of the sophists. Budha was a
prince brought up without any sacerdotal instruction. He conceived
ideas of reform by profound contemplation and introspection. Christ
was by trade a carpenter, and was never intended to expound the law,
or play the part of a Jewish Rabbi. Muhammad of Makka was born an
idolater, herded sheep and goats in early life, and appears to have
had no religious instruction whatever until he had met the Hanif
Waraka, his wife's cousin. The renowned Indian teacher Kabir was a
weaver, who was so little of a professional priest that he denounced
the Hindu and Muhammadan preachers of his age. And, as we shall see,
Guru Nanak was not a priest either by birth or education, but a man
who soared to the loftiest heights of divine emotionalism, and exalted
his mental vision to an ethical ideal beyond the conception of Hindu
or Muhammadan.
The illustrious author of the Vie de Jésus asks whether great
originality will again arise or the world be content to follow the
paths opened by the daring creators of ancient ages. Now there is here
presented a religion totally unaffected by Semitic or Christian
influences. Based on the concept of the unity of God, it rejected
Hindu formularies and adopted an independent ethical system, ritual,
and standards which were totally opposed to the theological beliefs of
Guru Nanak's age and country. As we shall see hereafter, it would be difficult to point to a religion of greater
originality or to a more comprehensive ethical system.
CHAPTER III
India contains a population who profess many religions. It would be
a great mistake to put them all on the same footing. Some make for
loyalty and others for what we may call independence. Some religions
appear to require State support, while others have sufficient vitality
to dispense with it. The Jewish religion has survived for many
centuries without a temporal head and in the face of endless
persecutions. Islam has spread in many lands, and does not solicit or
require much support from temporal power. Muhammadans only claim the
free exercise of their religion, and this is allowed them in India.
Many members of other religions, believing that they are direct
emanations from heaven, may not suppose that they require State
countenance or support, but the student of comparative theology must
be allowed to entertain a different opinion.
Our little systems have their day:
They have their day and cease to be.
To enumerate a few instances. When Constantine, the Roman Emperor
of the West, after his conversion to Christianity, withdrew his
support from the ancient religion of his country, it rapidly declined.
Then vanished, in the words of Coleridge,
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of the old religion,
Its power, its beauty, and its majesty.
Budhism flourished in India, its parent home, many centuries ago,
but the successors of the renowned Asoka, who were not so spiritual or
enlightened as he, allowed their religion to be completely banished
from Indian soil, like an exile, to find in foreign lands the repose
and acceptance it had vainly sought in its own country: The great Emperor Akbar,
by an eclectic process, evolved what he considered a rational religion
from Islam, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism, but it perished when it
received no support but rather opposition from his son Jahangir. The
religion of the Cross was banished from its parent home of Judaea and
supplanted by the religion of the Crescent. Christianity, however, or
the civilization which passes under its name, gained in other
countries much more than it lost in its own. Organization and the
material forces by which it is maintained have obviously contributed
to that result.
The Emperor Akbar's historian, Abul Fazl, very clearly saw the
advantage of State support to a religion. He says in his Ain-i-Akbayi:
'Men of deep insight are of opinion that even spiritual progress among
a people would be impossible, unless emanating from the king, in whom
the light of God dwells.'
As Budhism without State support completely lost its hold in India,
so it is apprehended that without State support Sikhism will also be
lost in the great chaos of Indian religious systems.
The dialects and languages of the Gurus are now largely forgotten.
There are no readable or trustworthy commentaries or translations of
their compositions in any language, and the Sikhs find it difficult or
impossible to understand them. Added to this is the custom of writing
the sacred hymns without any separation of words. As there is no
separation of words in Sanskrit, the gyanis, or interpreters of the
Gurus' hymns, deem it would be a profanation to separate the words of
their sacred writings. It cannot be said that the object of the gyanis
has been to keep all divine knowledge to themselves, but at any rate
the result is, that the Sikh laity have now thrust aside the gyanis
and their learning, and are content to dispense with both.
The sequel is a general relapse to Hinduism, which is principally a
system of domestic ritual. Hinduism has six philosophical systems, two
of which, the Sankhya and Mimansa, if pushed to their legitimate
consequences, are practically atheistical. The followers of the Hindu god Shiv may curse the
followers of the Hindu god Vishnu, and the followers of Vishnu may
retaliate on the followers of Shiv. To be deemed an orthodox Hindu it
is only necessary to be born in Hinduism and to conform to certain
external observances, such as not eating or touching what its
followers believe to be unclean, avoiding contact with persons who are
deemed of lower caste, cooking food in a particular manner, and not
allowing the shadow of strangers to fall on it. The old Levitical Law
of Moses and its accessory regulations were sufficiently strict, but
Hinduism surpasses all the religions that have ever been invented in a
social exclusiveness which professes to be based on divine sanction.
Truly wonderful are the strength and vitality of Hinduism. It is
like the boa constrictor of the Indian forests. When a petty enemy
appears to worry it, it winds round its opponent, crushes it in its
folds, and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior.
In this way, many centuries ago, Hinduism on its own ground disposed
of Budhism, which was largely a Hindu, reformation; in this way, in a
prehistoric. period, it absorbed the religion of the Scythian invaders
of Northern India; in this way it has converted uneducated Islam in
India into a semi-paganism; and in this way it is disposing of the
reformed and once hopeful religion of Baba Nanak. Hinduism has
embraced Sikhism in its folds; the still comparatively young religion
is making a vigorous struggle for life, but its ultimate destruction
is, it is apprehended, inevitable without State support.
Notwithstanding the Sikh Gurus' powerful denunciation of Brahmans,
secular Sikhs now rarely do anything without their assistance.
Brahmans help them to be born, help them to wed, help them to die, and
help their souls after death to obtain a state of bliss. And Brahmans,
with all the deftness of Roman Catholic missionaries in Protestant
countries, have partially succeeded in persuading the Sikhs to restore
to their niches the images of Devi, the Queen of Heaven, and of the
saints and gods of the ancient faith.
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