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THE

CHURCH MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCER

AND RECORD.

MAY, 1881.

THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.

I.

THE RELIGION OF THE SIKHS.

BY THE REV. T. P. HUGHES, B.D., PESHAWAR.

HE Sikh Reformation may be said to be contemporaneous with the Protestant Reformation in England, for Nanak, the founder of the Sikh Religion, was born in the village of Talwandi, on the banks of the Ravi, in the year A.D. 1469, and closed his life at Katarpur in the Jalandhar Doab, in 1538.

The Sacred Book of the Sikhs is the Adhi Granth, which is preserved with great reverence in the celebrated Golden Temple at Amritsar : a book which is supposed to contain the teaching and sentiments of Nanak, but which was written, under the direction of Arjan, the fifth Guru, some seventy or eighty years after the death of the great teacher. The Adhi Granth has been recently translated by Dr. Ernest Trumpp, formerly a missionary of the Church Missionary Society in the Punjab, under the direct patronage of the Indian Government.

It was at the beginning of the sixteenth century that Hinduism was quickened for a new development, not unlike that which some nineteen centuries before had been effected by the teaching of Gautama the Buddha. For the faith of the Hindus of the Punjab had been leavened with Mohammedanism and Persian mysticism, whilst Ramanand and Gurakh, two Hindu reformers, had preached religious equality, and Kabir, who had appealed to the people in their own tongue, had denounced the worship of images. But it was reserved for Nanak, the Sikh, to establish those principles of reform which fired the minds of his countrymen, and which enabled his successor, Govind, to establish a nation of warriors, who in course of time became a real power in India. These principles of reform were equality in race, equality in creed, and equality in religious hopes.

At the birth of Nanak the whole Hindu pantheon is said to have appeared, for "unbeaten sounds were produced at the gate of the Lord, and thirty-three crores of gods paid homage to the child," whilst sixtyfour joginis, fifty-two heroes, six ascetics, eighty-four siddhs, and nine naths were in attendance, "because a great devotee had come to save the world." As a boy Nanak gave himself to religious meditation, and at the age of seven he was taken to a Hindu school to acquire the

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rudiments of Sanscrit learning. When at school he surprised his teacher by his superior knowledge, and even at this youthful age manifested prophetic powers. As he grew in years, his desire for the devotional life became more and more intense, and he consorted with Hindu and Muslim ascetics to the entire renunciation of the world: "In his spirit he was occupied with the Lord." But the youth's strong aversion to manual labour and mercantile pursuits quite alarmed his thrifty father Kalu, and the family physician was called in, who considered him a lunatic. Nanak, however-so the story goes-discussed religion with his physician, and got the better of the arguments; and his father determined to put Nanak into some position in which he might distinguish himself, and acquire some worldly fame. In order thus to divert his mind from religious contemplations, his father obtained for him an appointment in the commissariat department of a Mohammedan chief; but one morning, whilst bathing in the canal, it is said that angels came and conveyed him to the Divine Presence, where he received the prophetic initiation, a cup of nectar being presented to him, with the injunction to proclaim the name of God on earth.

The first saying of the new teacher which attracted attention was: "There is no Hindu and no Mussulman "; and this appears to have been the key-note to Nanak's new creed. He endeavoured to inaugurate a system of religion which should incorporate the mysticism of the Hindu with the legality of the Muslim, and thus absorb both into one common faith. How far he succeeded we shall have occasion to consider.

The story of Nanak's life is so exaggerated by a love for the miraculous, that, in the opinion of Dr. Trumpp, "with the commencement of the wanderings of Nanak nearly all points in common cease as far as regards the various Janam Sakhis, and the old and later traditions diverge in such a manner that they cannot be reconciled."

Nanak's first wandering is said to have been to the east. There he came upon a certain rationalistic Mohammedan, who had built a temple for the Hindus, and a mosque for the Muslims. This celebrated sheikh was an unmitigated rascal; for his ostensible friendliness to all creeds and races was, we are told, but a cloak for his unbounded avarice. He even murdered his guests whilst sleeping, and appropriated their property! Nanak soon unveiled the "saint's" hypocrisy, and by his fervent exhortations brought him to repentance.

His second wandering was directed to the south, and his followers believe he visited Ceylon, but, says Dr. Trumpp, "the whole story is so mixed up with the miraculous that it bears the stamp of fable on its front." His third wandering was to the north, when he is supposed to have visited Kashmir. His fourth wandering was to the west, when it is said he visited Mecca, the accounts of which have become the narrative of several books. Dr. Trumpp, however, regards this visit to Mecca as a "pure invention from beginning to end.'

During the greater part of his life Nanak seems to have been estranged from his family, and only towards the close of his earthly career was he reconciled to them; and even then, to the great disappointment of his two sons, he nominated his devoted disciple Lahana (or Angad)

his successor in the Guruship of the Sikh people. Shortly before his death he gave instructions for his cremation, and then was for some time engaged in deep meditation. The last words he uttered were, "I am a sacrifice; have mercy upon me, the lowest sinner! Blessed be the Lord!" Then the Lord, having become merciful, said, "I have pardoned thy people; and whoever shall take thy name shall be free. And then," so the story continues, "by the order of the Lord, Guru Nanak was absorbed in Sambat (A.D. 1596), on the tenth day of the dark of the month of Asú." At his death there was some contention as to the disposal of his corpse; for the Hindus claimed it for cremation, and the Muslims demanded it for burial. As the quarrel increased, and the strife of words became great, the sheet which covered all that was mortal of the great Guru was raised, and behold there was nothing left! And all the people cried, "O Teacher!"

The nine successors of Babá Nanak, who are especially entitled to the rank of Guru, are Angad (A.D. 1538), Amar Dás (A.D. 1552), Ram Dás (A.D. 1574), Arjan (A.D. 1581), Har Govind (A.D. 1606), Har Rai (A.D. 1638), Har Kisan (A.D. 1660), Teg Bahadur (A.D. 1664), Govind Singh (A.D. 1675-1708).

Govind Singh, the last of the Gurus, died by the hand of an Afghan assassin. On his death-bed he was asked to nominate a successor, as all the other Gurus had done. But he declined to comply with the request. He entrusted, he said, his people to the bosom of the Timeless, and gave them the Granth as their teacher. He also established the offering Karah Parsad (a sweetmeat made of butter, sugar, and flour), by presenting which to the Sacred Book a Sikh can obtain spiritual communion with the Guru.

From that time the Granth became the sole authority in matters of religion, and has received almost divine honours from the Sikh people. It is a very large volume written in the Gurumukhi character, not entirely the composition of Nanak, but it contains contributions from several of his successors in office, together with very numerous selections from various Hindu poets. The obligation which the Granth owes to the poet Kabir (A.D. 1450) is very great, while its oldest writer is Namdev, à celebrated Marathi poet of the fourteenth century.

Such being the heterogeneous character of the book, it of course varies considerably in style and idiom, a fact which makes the work of translation exceedingly difficult, but which constitutes it a valuable treasury of old Hindu dialects, specimens of which are contained in it but not found in any other known work.

The contents of the sacred Granth are described by its translator, Dr. Trumpp, as incoherent and shallow in the extreme, and a most cursory perusal of its contents will, we feel sure, bear out this opinion as to its merits. It is infinitely below the Mohammedan Quran, and admits of no comparison with the Vedas, either with respect to its teaching or its literary style; but to exemplify this statement by quotations will be unnecessary, for even Dr. Trumpp himself doubts if any ordinary reader will have the patience to proceed to the second Rag of the Granth after he shall have perused the first.

Nanak was not an original thinker, indeed it may be questioned whether there is a single thought expressed in the Granth which has the slightest claim to originality. Nanak and his successors appear to have endorsed most readily the common Hindu philosophy of their day; but as they were all uneducated men, and not capable of systematic thought, the Sikh system of religious belief is so scattered over the pages of the Granth that it is by no means an easy task to collect into a whole the religion of the Sikhs arranged on scientific principles. This, however, Dr. Trumpp has most patiently accomplished, and we have now in his Introduction to the Granth a most complete summary of the religious belief of the Sikhs.

The Sikh conception of God and of His creation is pantheistic; the whole universe, all things therein, being identified with the Supreme. Finite beings have therefore no separate existence apart from the Absolute; and it is merely owing to the Máya, or deception, which the Absolute has spread over the universe, that creatures are led to consider themselves individual beings distinct from God. By Himself the vessels are formed, and He Himself fills them. The world is therefore nothing but a mere farce, in which the Absolute Being plays and sports, and no reason can be given for the production or destruction of created beings, which are regarded but as cosmogonic revolutions to be accounted for only by the sporting propensity of the Great Supreme. He Himself is enjoying pleasure; He Himself is the pleasure; He Himself amuses with pleasure.

It does not appear that Nanak actually forbade their worship of other gods than the Great Supreme. But he certainly did much to lower their position, and to place them in absolute subordination to the one God. The folly of idolatry is also frequently ridiculed in the Granth; e.g. "A stone is shaped by the hammer and formed into an image, giving it a breast and feet. If this image be true, then it will eat the hammerer." And again, "A stone is made the Lord, the whole worship

it.

Who remains in reliance on this is drowned in the black stream." Nanak, although a thorough Hindu, was able to establish some communion of thought between himself and Mohammedans. This, however, arose not so much from a modification of his own views, as from the prevalence of Sufiism, or mysticism, amongst the Muslims of his time, which is little short of pantheism adapted outwardly to the legal forms of Islam. Consequently in the Granth we have mutual tolerance between Hindus and Muslims frequently advocated. some places even, a renunciation of Islam is enjoined; e. g. “Giving up the Guru adore Ram. O silly one, thou art practising oppression. Kabir puts his trust in Rām, the Turks are consumed and defeated.”

In

The human soul is represented as being light which has emanated from the Absolute and is by itself immortal, and it must be the great aim and object of this divine spark to be reunited with the Fountain of Light from which it has emanated, and to be reabsorbed in it.

The Granth admits that the whole world, including of course the human heart, is under the dominion of sin; but it is the belief of every Sikh that man is naturally impelled to perform the actions of his life,