to the tenour of his life and teaching, took service under the Emperor Bahádur Sháh; or perhaps it was no more than placing his services with a body of Sikh horse at the disposal of the Mussulman prince to divert suspicion from his generally rebellious conduct and secure a little respite from persecution. In any case he travelled, at the head of his followers, to the Deccan, where he was assassinated by the relatives of an Afghán, whom he had slain in a fit of anger. He died in 1708, at the age of forty-eight, at Naderh, on the river Godávari. This place is known by the Sikhs as Abchalnagar[1], where a shrine to his memory is annually visited by many Sikhs.
To understand the teaching of Govind a few words on the principles of the creed as expounded by Nának are necessary. First it may be observed that although the Sikhs revere the Ádi Granth as a direct revelation in the same degree as Christians and Muhammadans regard their respective scriptures, yet in the writings of Nának and his immediate successors, as collected by Guru Arjun, there is nothing which is of so novel and original a character as to deserve more attention than had been given by Punjabi Hindus to the teaching of holy men like Bhagat Kabír, from whom it would seem that Nának derived the greater part of his inspiration. The dogmas of the Ádi Granth differ in little from the esoteric teaching of Hinduism in its more ancient and purer forms. Nának was himself a mystic, and during a
- ↑ Abchalnagar, i. e. the town of the departure.
