Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 83

SIKHISM
75
Men quarrel as to which he was, for he was above the distinctions of outer creed and he loved all men and called himself nothing. When he came to die, after seventy years of noble life and priceless teaching, his disciples disputed as to what faith he really belonged; should he be burned as a Hindū, or should he be buied as a Musulman? And as they disputed, one lifted the sheet over the corpse, and the body lad disappeared, and he was neither burned nor buried.
Such was the spirit of the great Teacher, as shown in his life and conduct, and in the teachings that he left behind him; they show the spirit that mored him—that profound devotion to the Supreme, that love for God that worldly men call madness, that passion and derotion that the saints in every age and in every religion have felt. Philosophically he was a Hindū; his specialty is this profound Bhakti and his hatred of sham. Let us take his teaching and the teaching of his successors, for here we can make no difference, and see how ther taught, and see the spirit of the teaching. I have, here, a large number of extracts from the idi Grantha Sihab, classified muder certain headings on which I had asked for specific Sikh teaching, so as to be able to give you an authoritative ontline of that teaching, and I take passages from these Sikh translations, to show you exactly the nature of the teachings*
* I owe most of these to Sirdar's I'mra Singh and linhans Singh, who selected the illustrative passages and translated them.
The verification of the references may be rendered more easy by tlie snbjoined description of the contents of the li Grantha Sahab.