Page:A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (1869).djvu/101

90 CATALOGUE OF MAKUSCBIFTS. commenced the process by which a qaiet philosophical Beet, addicted (as they appear in their book) to eclectic borrowing from the mono- theistic writings of Mahometans, as well as the Yedantic school in Brahmanism, were transformed into an armed body of fierce religionists, breathing vengeance against all enemies of their system, whether Hindu or Musulman^ but especially the latter. This transformation was in progress during the desultory contests that were maintained under the 6th, 7th, and 8th leaders, who died tranquilly ; but it was completed by the event of the last date, which is, like the fifth, a tragical one : when teigh BLKADxm, after being persecuted by the agents of the Moghul emperor, was dragged from his retreat at Patna to Delhi, and executed either there or at Gwalior, by order of the merciless Aurung-Zeib. His son oimir 60VINI), the last and the most formidable of the ten pontifical leaders, devoted himself to avenging his father's deaths and formed extensive plans for the independence of the Sikhs. In his first wars, described by himself in the book called ^^4|l||^'U(f ^ IP^ Dasama Padshah led Granth, i.e., "The Book of the Tenth Bang" (a book venerated by the warrior Sikhs equally with the First Book itself), he was eminently successful. But he experienced signal reverses afterwards from the Moghul Empire, still in the fulness of its power, though its brightest days were past ; and his later years, after these reverses, are strangely enveloped in mystery and fable. This is one reason why the above list of dates, and others equally or more minute, that have been annexed to the Indices of the Adi- Granth, do not g»tft the year, month, and day of his death, as they give those of all his nine predecessors^ though the Indices are evidently transcribed long after that event. But there is, probably, a further religious reason for the omission. An old prophecy current among the Sikhs, which expressly limits the number of the pontifical sovereigns to ten, beginning with nanac, while it forbids eating of the flesh of all animals, excepting only the cow. Before this the followers of Nanac had resemhled the stricter sects of Hinduism, in abstaining rigorously from slaughtering animals and feeding on them. (