A history of the Sikhs, from the origin of the nation to the battles of the Sutlej.

84

HISTORY OF THE SIKHS

CHAP. III

1708-16. sorrow that God's holy city should be left in the possession
of infidels: he would not behold that which he could not
redeem, and he descended from the Mount to retire to
captivity and a premature grave.1 Success is thus not
always the measure of greatness. The last apostle of the
Sikhs did not live to see his own ends accomplished, but he
Anew effectually roused the dormant energies of a vanquished
character
impressed people, and filled them with a lofty although fitful longing
upon the for social freedom and national ascendancy, the proper
reformed adjuncts of that purity of worship which had been preached
Hindus;
by Nanak. Gobind saw what was yet vital, and he
relumed it with Promethean fire. A living spirit possesses
the whole Sikh people, and the impress of Gobind has not
only elevated and altered the constitution of their minds,
but has operated materially and given amplitude to their
physical frames. The features and external form of a whole
people have been modified, and a Sikh chief is not more
distinguishable by his stately person and free and manly
bearing, than a minister of his faith is by a lofty thoughtfulness of look, which marks the fervour of his soul, and his
persuasion of the near presence of the Divinity.2 Notwithstanding these changes it has been usual to regard the Sikhs
as essentially Hindu, and they doubtless are so in language
and everyday customs, for Gobind did not fetter his
1 For this story of the lion-like king, see Gibbon (Decline and Fall,
xi. 143). See also Turner's comparison of the characters of Achilles
and Richard (History of England, p. 300), and Hallam's assent to its
superior justness relatively to his own parallel of the Cid and the
English hero (Middle Ages, iii. 482).
2 This physical change has been noticed by Sir Alexander Burnes
(Travels, i. 285, and ii. 39), by Elphinstone (History of India, ii. 564),
and it also slightly struck Malcolm (Sketch, p. 129). Similarly a change
of aspect, as well as of dress, &c., may be observed in the descendants
of such members of Hindu families as became Muhammadans one or
two centuries ago, and whose personal appearance may yet be readily
compared with that of their undoubted Brahmanical cousins in many
parts of Malwa and Upper India. That Prichard (Physical History of
Mankind, i. 183 and i. 191) notices no such change in the features,
although he does in the characters, of the Hottentots and Esquimaux
who have been converted to Christianity, may either show that the
attention of our observers and inquirers has not been directed to
the subject, or that the savages in question have embraced a new
faith with little of living ardour and absorbing enthusiasm.