________________
ON THE SIKHS.
always to have steel about their persons, to wear blue dresses, to let their hair grow, and to use as phrases of salutation, as a war-cry, or as responses in prayers, the sentences "Wah! Guru ji ká khálsa: Wah! Guru ji ká fatteh." "Hurra! for the unity of the Guru: Hurra! for the victory of the Guru;" expressions that have been since in use even among the more genuine descendants of Nának, the Udásís, and Nirmalas.
129
GURU GOVIND was an author as well as a soldier, and has left a record of his own exploits, in a work called the Vichitra Nátak, forming the first portion of a larger compilation which shares with the Ádi Granth the reverence of the Sikhs. It is called the Dasama Pádshah ká Granth*, the Book of the 10th King, or more correctly speaking, Pontiff; and like the Ádi Granth it is a compilation of contributions by various writers, but they are more of a martial and narrative than of a moral or speculative complexion. This as well as its predecessor, the Ádi Granth, is composed chiefly in the Hindi dialect of the Panjab, written in the Gurumukhi character, a singular perversion of the Devanagari alphabet, retaining the forms but altering the sounds of the letters.
To Guru Govind also is ascribed the first attempt at the political organization of the Sikhs by the institution of the Guru matá, or federal council of chiefs, which assembled periodically at Amritsar, as long as
* [See Vol. I, 270 f. It is called in Panjabi Daswin pátsáhi dá granth.]
9
