Page:The Sikhs (Gordon).djvu/283

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UNDER THE BRITISH CROWN.
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some distance off from the shrine and walked on barefooted, with slow and solemn steps, through the crowd, who bowed reverently as he passed. A few days before, at the great Durbar held to hear the proclamation announcing the Coronation of his Majesty the King-Emperor of India, when all the chiefs tendered their felicitations and assurances of homage to the Crown, he added to his the few eloquent words, "Now I can die in peace, as I have discharged the three duties of a true Sikh—I have lived according to the precepts of the Gurus, I have aided the State with my sword, and now I have paid personal homage to my sovereign."[1]

The Sikhs are no longer illiterate as they were in the old days, when they despised the pen and looked on the sword as the one power in the land. Now they see that the pen is sometimes the more powerful of

  1. Contingents from the armies of the Sikh states have ever, from the days when they came under our protection, aided their suzerain in war.

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