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ON THE SIKHS.
of the province, took and demolished Sirhind, and crossing the Jamná spread desolation to Sáharanpur, giving no quarter to the Mohammedans except on condition of their adopting the Sikh faith. Their progress was at last arrested by Abd-us-sámad Khán, a general in the service of Farokhseir. The Sikhs were completely routed and hunted from one stronghold to another until Banda and his most devoted followers who had been shut up in Lohgarh, a fort about 100 miles N.E. of Lahore, were compelled to surrender. According to some accounts they were sent to Delhi and put to death, with circumstances of great ignominy and cruelty; but there is a sect of Sikhs, called Bandá-í, who believe that Banda escaped from the fort and settled in Sindh, where he died peaceably and left his sons to propagate his peculiar doctrines. These do not seem to have been of any essential importance, one of them being the abolition of the blue vesture-an innovation acceded to by the Sikhs in general, but stoutly resisted by the Akálís, a class of fanatics calling themselves Immortals, and who are also known as Govind-sinhís, as being in a particular manner the disciples of Govind Sinh. These are still distinguished by the blue colour of their garments and by carrying steel in the form of the chakar or discus always about their persons.
So rigorous a persecution of the Sikhs followed the defeat and death of Banda that they were almost exterminated in the plains. Some, however, again found refuge in the hills, and after a period of thirty years
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