124 W. Irvine —Guru Gobind Siggh and Bandah. [No. 3, 
the Sikhs, committed excesses of every description. For the space of 
four days the town was given up to pillage, the mosques were defiled, 
the houses burnt, and the Muhammadans slaughtered ; even their 
women and children were not spared. Some say that unborn children 
were taken from the womb and killed before their dying mothers’ eyes. 
Hindus even were not respected. One of the principal objects of the 
Sikh vengeance was, of course, Saj Anand, Brahman, Wazir Khan’s 
chief revenue official and his adviser in taking the life of Gobind’s 
sons. Even Muhammadan writers have nothing to say in this man’s 
favour; he had been, no doubt, like most men in his position, exacting 
and haughty in his days of prosperity. All power was now usurped 
by the Sikhs, and one Bar Siggh, a man of poor origin, belonging to 
parganah Haibatpur Patti in the Bari Duab, was appointed Subahddr, 
or governor of Sirhind. It is said that two krors of rupees (about 
two millions sterling) in money and goods belonging to Wazir Khan’ 
and several hundred thousand rupees belonging to Saj Anand and 
others, fell into the hands of Bandah. 1 
The atrocities of which Bandah and his agents were guilty arous¬ 
ed horror in the breasts of the Muhammadans. They forgot too readily, 
perhaps, that rulers of their own faith had formerly committed equal 
excesses. But, though the ways of the Muhammadan government were 
never gentle in the suppression of rebellion, many generations must 
have passed since such wholesale and unjustifiable destruction of 
life and property had been done by them. Warid can only compare 
the doings of the Sikhs to the cruelties committed by Pharaoh upon 
the people of Israel, or to the massacres that followed the fall of 
Jerusalem. Even in those two instances, though the living were des¬ 
troyed, the dead were spared. But “ those infidels,” the Sikhs, did 
not even spare the dead! The descendants of Shah Faiz, Qadiri, 
of Sadhaura, were summoned before the Guru and told that their 
only chance of life lay in destroying with their own hands their 
mosque and the tomb of their ancestor. The wretched men complied. 
Thereupon the Guru declared that to sweep from the face of the earth 
men who could destroy their own holy places would be a righteous act, 
bringing full reward in a future world. He then directed them to be 
tortured and executed. When the tomb of the saint was dug up, 
there was no trace of the body to be found beyond a handful of dust. 
Instances of Muhammadans abandoning their faith were not unknown. 3 
Dindar Khan, a man belonging to the neighbourhood of Sirhind, joined 
1 Kamwar Khan, entry of 2nd Rab? II, 1122 H. Bar Siijgh also appears as 
Baz, Taj, and Baj Sffigh. 
3 Yar Muhammad, Dastiiru-l-Insha, 8. 
