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Page 408

 

Sikhs THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

Ind., Jan. 2, 1853. He was educated at Concordia College, Fort Wayne (A.B., 1869), Concordia Lutheran Divinity School, St. Louis (from which he was graduated in 1872), the universities of Berlin and Leipsic (1872-75), and Johns Hopkins (Ph.D., 1878). He was a classical instructor in New York City (1879-91); professor of classics at Concordia College, Milwaukee (1891-92); and since 1892 has been professor of Latin in New York University. In theology he " holds to the historical position of recorded Christianity, is a conservative in the full acceptance of Gospels and Epistles," and " believes that the spiritual failure of classical civilization is a profound argument for Christianity." He is the author of a number of editions of classics and of Testimonium Animm: or, Greek and Roman before Jesus Christ (New York, 1908), a series of essays and sketches dealing with the spiritual elements in classical civilization; and Annals of Ccesar; critical Biography, with a Survey of the Sources (1910).

SIKHS, siks, SIKHISM. 1. History of the Sikhs. Background and Sources (§ 1). Life of the Founder (§ 2). The Other Gurus (¢ 3). History from 1708 (§ 4). II. The Religion. The Granth (§ 1). Belief and Practise (5 2).

Sikh is the name accepted by a people in India found almost exclusively in the Punjab, who are bound together not by tribal affiliations but by a religious bond. The term, meaning " disciple," is the correlative of guru, "teacher," a common noun appropriated as the title of the founder of the religion and transmitted to the nine men who succeeded him as religious heads of the faith. The fact that " Sikh " came to have a semi-national significance is not an essential of the system, but merely a consequence of the political conditions at the breaking up of the Mohammedan power in northwest India during the eighteenth century.

I. History of the Sikhs: While the religion was founded and developed by a series of ten teachers who were called Gurus, the beginnings of their faith are traced by themselves to a man named

Kabir, who, as so often in India, was r. Back- regarded as an incarnation of deity.

ground and His birth date is variously given as Sources. 1398 and about 1500. He is said to

have been miraculously conceived and born in or near Benares, to have grown up a religious reformer, and to have composed hymns which are received among the sacred writings of the Sikhs. His revolt was against all distinctions of caste and religion, against the Puranas and Shastras of Hinduism, and, necessarily, against the assumptions of the Brahmans, and no less against the bigotry fostered by the Koran. A number of sects, it is claimed, sprang from his teachings, the last of whom were the Sikhs. All these sects exemplify the tendency of Indian teaching to combine elevated ideals and noble reforms with gross superstition and foolish observances. The sources of knowledge of the Sikh religion and its founders and leaders are the following. The principal work and the sacred book

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of the Sikhs is the Adi Granth or Granth Sahib (see below), a work in an obscure dialect of the Pan)abi called Gurmukhi, which includes compositions by the Gurus and also by Bhagats (Indian saints) who preceded the Gurus. Hymns are found also in Prakrit, Hindi, Marathi, Multani, and a number of local dialects. For the lives of the Gurus there is a series of works embodying accounts of their lives, teachings, and miracles, in various languages, principally Panjabi and Hindi, claiming to be by adherents of the faith who were in especially close relations with one or another of the Gurus. One manuscript of the earliest of these lives dealing with Guru Nanak bears the date of 1588, and was therefore written during the lifetime of a certain Bhai Budha, a venerable Sikh, who is admitted to have been a young contemporary and disciple of Nanak and to have lived to a great age, actually linking by his life the leadership of the first six Gurus. This would be of importance were it not for the fact that the life under discussion, and all later works of the kind, abound in the legendary, and have been besides extensively corrupted by the admixture of characteristic Hindu material which vitiates them for critical use. Two of the most extensive of these works, the Nanak Parkash, dealing with the life and teachings of Nanak, was written in 1823, and by the same author the Suraj Parkash, in 6 volumes, was written between that year and 1843. A great number of schismatic (for Sikhism had its schisms) and what may be called apocryphal works exist, all of which teem with the miraculous, while they are sparing of data which submit to verification.

The Gurus were ten in number, each of the nine last of whom became leader on the death (or retirement) of his predecessor. Their names and dates are as follows: Nanak (1469-1538), Angad (1504-52),

Amar Das (1479-1574), Ram Das x. Life (1534-81), Arjan (1563-1606), Har of the Gobind (1595-1645), Har Rai (1630 Founder. 1661), Har Krishan (1656-64), Teg Bar hadur (1622-75), and Gobind Rai or Gobind Singh (1666-1708). The important names here are Nanak, Ram Das, Arjan, Har Gobind, Teg Bahadur, and Gobind Singh. The narrative, in brief, of the life of Nanak will give the flavor of all of these Indian lives. He was born in Apr.-May, 1469, at or near Talwandi (a small town 30 m. s.w. of Lahore), and died at Kartarpur (62 m. e. of La hore) in 1538. His father was an accountant and agriculturist, consequently Nanak came not of priestly but of lay lineage. This fact is significant both for the character of the religion and for the tongue in which the literature is cast-the vernacu lar and not the Sanskrit. His home was away from the centers of Mohammedan influence and fanati cism, and this accounts for the impetus the religion secured before encountering opposition. Accord ing to reports, the astrologer who was called in at his birth foretold his greatness-some records affirm the presence of the gods; at the age of five he be gan to meditate on heavenly themes; when at the ages of seven he went to school, the master wrote for him the alphabet, and he immediately composed an acrostic on the alphabet and speedily excelled