enlightened Buddhist, Muhammadan, Pantheist, and the religious-minded white man who does not go to church, might all subscribe without feeling that there is any need to enter the lists about it. Guru Nanak insisted on his human origin and weakness. He tried to unite Hindus and Muhammadans in a simple attitude of reverence to the one God, stripping off ritual, idols, perverted asceticism, caste, all kinds of bigotry and dogma, and boasts of revealed truth and the intercessions of the Prophet. His spiritual policy was tolerance, which of all the religious cries that have ever been raised might well seem the least likely to inspire a Church and State militant. One must look further for the secret of Sikhism. The Khalsa love the faith because it is of the brotherhood, not the brotherhood because it is of the faith. Religion is only one link in the chain that has welded them together. Sikhism was a quiet growth. Guru Nanak never drew sword, neither did the second, nor the third, nor the fourth, nor the fifth Guru. When Har Govind, the sixth Guru, armed his followers, it was to avenge his father, who was killed by the Muhammadans. That was the beginning of the struggle between the Sikhs and Islam. A peculiar creed, even if it is a negative one, must always breed a spirit of clannishness, which in time becomes stronger than the motive that gave birth to it. Even tolerance becomes a contempt for intoler ance, and is only another name for intolerance itself. So in Har Govind's time we find the quietists that Nanak founded mounted and armed with a very urgent temporal cause. Religion received more support from the cause than it lent it. Nanak has been compared to Luther, but his followers did not fight on Lutheran principles. Thousands of Jat yeomen joined the banner under the sixth Guru to throw off the Muhammadan yoke, but it would be misleading to say that they were inspired with the spirit of the Reformation. Rather, they accepted the book with the sword. Under the seventh and eighth Gurus the Sikhs made little progress. The ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, who seems to have been a religious freebooter, was put to death by the Moghul Emperor at Delhi, and his assassination gave an extraordinary impetus to the cause. His son, Guru Govind, the tenth and last of the line, was a born leader of men. The bearded martial Sikh whom we know to-day, and who has endeared himself to us on the field, was Govind's creation. Good old Nanak could not have foreseen him even in his most adventurous dreams. Yet, if the old man could rise from his grave, now inundated by the Ravi at Dehra Nanak, and be confronted by his own spiritual descendant, the Govindi Sikh, he could not but admire the breed, remote as the idea of it must have been from his own mind, and shocking as it would have been in certain respects to his sense of fitness. When Tegh Bahadur was murdered Govind nursed his own rage and diverted the resentment of his followers into channels where it gathered force. He bided his time, and expanded his faith to meet the political conditions of the age, and in the process refined rather than degraded it. Before he struck at Islam he had inspired his cause with the glamour of a crusade. He had an eye, or a heart rather, for those emblems which strengthen a people because they minister most to prestige. So he instituted the Khalsa, or the commonwealth of the chosen, into which his disciples were initiated by the ceremony of pâhal, or baptism by steel and "the waters of life." He abolished caste, and ordained that every Sikh should bear the old Rajput title of Singh, or Lion, as every Govindi Sikh does to this day. He also gave national and distinctive traits to the dress of his people, ordaining that they should carry a sword and a dagger, don breeches instead of the loin - cloth, and wear their hair long and secured in a knot by a comb. He wrote the 'Dasama Padshah Ka Granth,' or the 'Granth of the Tenth King,' in which he grafted the principles of valour, devotion, and chivalry on the humble gospel of Nanak, and he introduced the national salutation, "Wah Guru ji ka Khalsa! Wah Guru ji ka Futteh," which is chanted by the Sikhs now as they meet in the street, or as they step out on a day's march, or enter the battlefield. All these things gave the Sikhs cohesion and a separate nationality, and were the beginning of traditions that are still strong. When Guru Govind inaugurated the sacrament of steel he proved himself a wise and far-sighted leader. For of all material things which genius has inspired with spiritual significance steel is the truest and most uncompromising. Let humanitarians prate as they will, there never has been a race who have not been purged and refined by it. In some it is the only combater of grossness and the monster of self. To the Khalsa it gave a cause and welded them into a nation; and in the dark days of Muhammadan rule in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Sikh was slain at sight and no quarter was given, it drove them on those gallant crusades in which they rode to Amritsar in the dead of night, leapt into the sacred tank and out again, and galloped back through the enemies' lines purified. Hundreds were slain, but not one abjured his faith or perjured his soul to preserve "his muddy vesture of decay." Compare as emblems the steel bracelet of the Sikhs and the Lingam Yoni of Siva, and you have a standard of ideals, a fair gauge of how Sikhism has tempered the Jat. Govind Singh died in 1708. A hundred years afterwards "Hail to the Khalsa of God! Victory to God!" "If there is a position to be taken give me a Rajput—he has more dash. But if there is a position to defend give me a Sikh-he has more backbone." his followers, under Ranjit the Sikh from men who have Singh, held the North of commanded mixed troops on India from the Sutlej to the frontier. Peshawur. Upon the death of that astute old chief the Khalsa were unwise enough to attack the British, and it was not until they had fought two campaigns with us-in which every battle was hardly contested that they accepted defeat. Since those days the Sikhs have been our most loyal allies, they held by us in the Mutiny, and they now form the most substantial part of our Indian Army. In the old days before Ranjit Singh the Sikhs were all horsemen. The infantry only existed to garrison forts or to follow the cavalry on foot until they succeeded to a horse or looted one. Like the Rajputs and Muhammadans, the old Sikh soldiers never endured infantry service gladly. They were too proud to go on foot while others rode, and they had not the patience for it. The Sikh ascendancy has been attributed in part to the fact that they adapted themselves to infantry more readily than their neighbours. They were famous for their matchlockmen when the Rajputs depended on their horse. And this is quite in keeping with the Sikh character, which is steadier than that of their neighbours. It is difficult to get a fair estimate of the fighting qualities of different Indian races, since regimental officers always swear by their own men; but I have often heard the same tale about That is true. The Rajput is dry powder - inflammable, like the Arab and other desert products. The Sikh is of the soil-he has more backbone; he broods; he is a slow fuse. All soldiers who have served with Sikhs know that they have unusual powers of endurance. This was recognised even in the time of Ranjit Singh, when visitors to his court and European officers employed in his service had little that was good to say of the Sikh army. Colonel Steinbach, who served Ranjit Singh for nine years, described his troops as a dissolute rabble, the cavalry very slow in manoeuvring, wretchedly mounted, deficient in courage, and only ready to charge in vastly superior numbers. Yet he admired the extraordinary hardiness and endurance the infantry. A few years after this criticism was written the Sikhs utterly belied our estimate of them. In the battles of Aliwal and Sobraon they fought with splendid gallantry and resolution, hurling themselves on our lines and refusing quarter. It can only have been training and discipline that Ranjit Singh's troops needed, for to-day they have little to learn from in the way of riding. Their cavalry is as good as most, of us and they generally beat us at polo. In 1907 the Patiala team carried off the Beresford Cup from the 17th Lancers. When I hear men talk of Sikh horsemanship, I think of a manœuvre I saw performed by the Patiala Imperial Service troops after a review by Lord Kitchener. Two squadrons of Lancers galloped up, dismounted, and threw their horses on the ground, where they lay like a field of the dead. Not a horse rebelled, and, what is more, they lay still while another two squadrons came galloping up behind, subsided in the same mysterious manner fifty yards ahead, as completely hidden behind a low rise as if they had been a regiment of infantry. Every trooper, as he dismounted, lifted his charger's near fore foot with his left hand and, leaning over his shoulder, tightened the right rein until the beast rolled over on the off. Some of the older horses lay down spontaneously at the sound of the whistle. The manœuvre might conceivably be effective in war, but whether it is turned to account or not, it is an exhibition of an understanding between horse and man of which any cavalry might be proud. No doubt nine troopers out of ten could make their horses lie down on the field if they had the time and patience to train them, but one is not likely to see a whole regiment of docilely recumbent chargers anywhere except in Patiala. It was inspiring to see sudden resurrection of that field, when trooper VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXVII. and horse rose as one man at the whistle like ghosts at the trump of doom. As they receded, the dust, golden in the light of the morning sun, rose up behind, veiling everything from sight save the compact line of green and yellow pennons stretched like a thin scythe above the palpitating dust-cloud, the crest literal and significant of the forces sweeping and thundering underneath. It was pleasant to think that these men were our tried and proven allies. But to return to the Durbar Sahib. The Sikh soldiers, as I said, and the fanatic Akalis in their blue robes covered from the waist to the crown of their tapering turbans with knives and quoits, passed by the Tibetans and myself without a glance of reproach and entered the temple. They were Sepoys of one of the class regiments of the Indian Army-tall, upstanding, robust men, long in the limb and square in the chest, yet possessing a subtle grace and dignity rare even in the East. The edges of their beards curled up at the chin towards the firm white turban combined with it to make a frame through which the keen eyes and regular features, especially the teeth when shown, suggested picture of tenacity in repose, a perfect pattern of manhood. Looking at them, I tried to decipher Govind's stamp. They seemed to have some of the hard-pinched look taken out of them that one sees in the Jat villagers who have not become Sikhs, or in the Jat 2 A a Sikhs who have not left their land. It may be that they are less of slaves to husbandry and cramping ideas of the relations between God and man. When one compares the Khalsa with the stock from which they are sprung, one feels that nothing on earth could have stopped them if they had all been true to Govind and avoided factions and dissensions among themselves. A few strictly orthodox Sikhs are not pleased with the management of the Durbar Sahib. They resent the presence of Brahmins who are allowed to frequent the pavement, display idols, and recite their purans. They are distressed at the introduction of the Hindu rite of Arti, in which lights are waved in front of the Granth after evening prayer, and they say that the spirit of equality among disciples which was taught by Nanak and Govind is not fully observed. If all Sikhs are equal, the Mazbi should enter the shrine with his co-religionists by the west door facing the Granth, instead of being forced to enter by the north door which admits infidels. Also he should be allowed to bathe where he pleases instead of being restricted to the southeast corner, where the water drains out, lest he should pollute the neighbourhood of brothers of the faith. The truth is that the Sikhs have only partially rid themselves of caste. They were able to suppress the instinct so long as it endangered their existence, but when they became para mount in the Punjab and the Khalsa was sufficient for its own needs the old exclusive Brahminical spirit returned. The influence of Ranjit Singh's court increased this retrogressive tendency, and in spite of the Guru's teaching it is not always easy for a low-caste Hindu to become a Sikh today. Still it is not always impossible. The acceptance or rejection of a convert is likely to depend on whether the majority in the district Singh Sabha, or Sikh Council, is conservative or progressive. The so-called conservative party wish to conserve the social prestige of the community— they are naturally exclusive; while the so-called progressives are really purists who would revert to the injunctions of Nanak and Govind. They are ready to receive all converts whom they believe to be genuine, of whatever caste. Sikhs now number a little over two million, and in the last ten years the numbers have only risen in proportion to the general increase of population in the Punjab. converts is due as much to apathy as to obstacles placed in the way by the priests. The The lack of The lack of proselytes to Sikhism is a good illustration of the inveterate stubbornness of the caste-instinct among the Hindus. Here is a community who call themselves levellers, and profess to destroy all class distinctions. Yet this so-called democratising influence of which they boast is really an aristocratising one. That is to say, it is an influence which is |