Tempo:
HISTORY OF THE SIKHS
42 1469-1539.
new social laws as a separate people.
But guaEded against their nar-
rowing
into
a sect.
clares
Angad to
n
possible for him to become a municipal law-giver, to subvert the legislation of Manu, or to change the immemorial usages of tribes or races.' His care was rather to prevent his followers contracting into a sect, and his comprehensive principles narrowing into monastic distinctions. This he effected by excluding his son, a meditative and perhaps bigoted ascetic, from the ministry when he should himself be no more; and. as his end approached, he is stated to have made a trial of the obedience or merits of his chosen disciples, and As to have preferred the simple and sincere Lahna. they journeyed along, the body of a man was seen lying by the wayside. Nanak said, 'Ye who trust in me, eat of this food.' All hesitated save Lahna; he knelt and uncovered the dead, and touched without tasting the flesh of man; but, behold! the corpse had
disappeared and Nanak was in Nanak de-
CHAP,
its place.
The Guru
embraced his faithful follower, saying he was as himThe self, and that his spirit would dwell within him.name of Lahna was changed to Angi-Khud, or Angad, or own body,^ and whatever may be the foundation Malcolm (Sketch, pp. 44, 147) says Nanak made little or no alteration in the civil institutions of the Hindus, and Ward 1
(The Hindoos, iii. 463) says, the Sikhs have no written civil or criminal laws. Similar observations of dispraise or applause might be made with regard to the code of the early Christians, and we know the difficulties under which the apostles laboured, owing to the want of a new declaratory law, or owing to the scruples and prejudices of their disciples. (Acts xv. 20, 28, 29, and other passages.) The seventh of the articles of the Church of England, and the nineteenth chapter of the Scottish Confession of Faith, show the existing perplexity of modern divines, and, doubtless, it will long continue to be disputed how far Christians are amenable to some portions of the Jewish law, and whether Sikhs should wholly reject the institutions of Manu and the usages of race. There were Judaizing Christians and there are Brahmanizing Sikhs; the swine was a difficulty with one. the cow is a difficulty with the other; and yet the greatest obstacle, perhaps, to a complete obliteration of caste, is the rootfeeling that marriages should properly take place only between people of the same origin or nation, without much reference to faith. (Cf. Ward on The Hindoos, ii. 459; Malcolm, Sketch, p. 157 note; and Forster's Travels, i. 293, 295, 308.) - This story is related by various Punjabi compilers, and it is given with one of the variations by Dr. Macgregor, in his History of the Sikhs (i. 48). In the Dabistan (ii. 268, 269) there is a story of a similar kind about the successive sacrifice in the four ages of a cow, a horse, an elephant, and a man. The pious partakers of the flesh of the last offering were declared to" be saved, an^ the victim himself again appeared in his bodily shape. 5 Cf. Malcolm, Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 24 note. [Angad, however, is an old Hindu name, and the ambassador of Rama to Ravan was so called. (Kennedy, Res. Hind. MythoL, p. 438.)
—J.D.C.]
42 1469-1539.
new social laws as a separate people.
But guaEded against their nar-
rowing
into
a sect.
clares
Angad to
n
possible for him to become a municipal law-giver, to subvert the legislation of Manu, or to change the immemorial usages of tribes or races.' His care was rather to prevent his followers contracting into a sect, and his comprehensive principles narrowing into monastic distinctions. This he effected by excluding his son, a meditative and perhaps bigoted ascetic, from the ministry when he should himself be no more; and. as his end approached, he is stated to have made a trial of the obedience or merits of his chosen disciples, and As to have preferred the simple and sincere Lahna. they journeyed along, the body of a man was seen lying by the wayside. Nanak said, 'Ye who trust in me, eat of this food.' All hesitated save Lahna; he knelt and uncovered the dead, and touched without tasting the flesh of man; but, behold! the corpse had
disappeared and Nanak was in Nanak de-
CHAP,
its place.
The Guru
embraced his faithful follower, saying he was as himThe self, and that his spirit would dwell within him.name of Lahna was changed to Angi-Khud, or Angad, or own body,^ and whatever may be the foundation Malcolm (Sketch, pp. 44, 147) says Nanak made little or no alteration in the civil institutions of the Hindus, and Ward 1
(The Hindoos, iii. 463) says, the Sikhs have no written civil or criminal laws. Similar observations of dispraise or applause might be made with regard to the code of the early Christians, and we know the difficulties under which the apostles laboured, owing to the want of a new declaratory law, or owing to the scruples and prejudices of their disciples. (Acts xv. 20, 28, 29, and other passages.) The seventh of the articles of the Church of England, and the nineteenth chapter of the Scottish Confession of Faith, show the existing perplexity of modern divines, and, doubtless, it will long continue to be disputed how far Christians are amenable to some portions of the Jewish law, and whether Sikhs should wholly reject the institutions of Manu and the usages of race. There were Judaizing Christians and there are Brahmanizing Sikhs; the swine was a difficulty with one. the cow is a difficulty with the other; and yet the greatest obstacle, perhaps, to a complete obliteration of caste, is the rootfeeling that marriages should properly take place only between people of the same origin or nation, without much reference to faith. (Cf. Ward on The Hindoos, ii. 459; Malcolm, Sketch, p. 157 note; and Forster's Travels, i. 293, 295, 308.) - This story is related by various Punjabi compilers, and it is given with one of the variations by Dr. Macgregor, in his History of the Sikhs (i. 48). In the Dabistan (ii. 268, 269) there is a story of a similar kind about the successive sacrifice in the four ages of a cow, a horse, an elephant, and a man. The pious partakers of the flesh of the last offering were declared to" be saved, an^ the victim himself again appeared in his bodily shape. 5 Cf. Malcolm, Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 24 note. [Angad, however, is an old Hindu name, and the ambassador of Rama to Ravan was so called. (Kennedy, Res. Hind. MythoL, p. 438.)
—J.D.C.]
©
2026
Lehal.net