gig SKETGH OF THE SIKHS„ 



same authors, publicly put to deaths without even the allegation of a 

 crime, beyond a firm and undaunted assertion of the truth of that faith 

 ©f which he was the high priest. This event is said to have taken 

 place in the year A. D, 1675, and of the Samvat 1732 ; but the Sikh 

 records of^ their own history, from the death of Har Go Vustd to that 

 of Te'gh Beha'dur, are contradi6lory and unsatisfactory, and appear to 

 merit little attention. The fa6l is, that the se6l was almost crushed, in 

 consequence of their first effort to attain power, under Har Go'vind; 

 mid., from the period of his death, to that of Te'gh Beha'dur, the Mb- 

 gul Empire was, as has been before stated, in the zenith of its power, 

 pnder Aurungzeb; and the Sikhs, who had never attained any real 

 strength, were rendered still weaker by their own internal dissensions^ 

 Their writers have endeavoured to supply this chasm in their history, by a 

 fabulous account of the numerous: miracles which w^ere wrought by their 

 priests, Ra'm Ra'y, Har Crishn, and; even the unfortunate Te'gh Beha'^ 

 BUR, at DeM, all of whom are sai^d; to, have astonished the emperor and 

 liis nobles, by a display of their -supernatural powers; but their wide dif- 

 ference from each other, in these relations, would prove, if any proof was 

 wanting^ that all the annals of that period are fabricated. 



The history of the Sikhs, after the death of Te'gh Beha'dur, assumes 

 a new aspe61. It is no longer the record of a se6l who, revering the con- 

 ciliatory and mild tenets of their founder, desired more to proteft them° 

 selves than to injure others; but that of a nation, who, adding to a deep 

 sense of the injuries they had sustained from a bigotted and overbearing 

 governmerit, all the ardor of men commencing a military career of glory, 

 listened, , with rapture, tQ a. sop glowing, with vengeance against the mur- 

 derers of his father, who taucrht a doftrine suited to the troubled state of 

 his mind, and called upoia his followers, by every feeling of manhood, to 



