162 The Sikh Sect.

account of Nanak and the characteristic features of Nanak's
teaching.

It appears to be a well-ascertained fact that this great
teacher was born, not in Lahore itself, but in a neighbour-
ing village, called Talvandl, on the river Ravi, not far from
Lahore, in the year 1469, a few years before Caitanya in
Bengal and Martin Luther in Europe. Of course the various
biographies of Nanak—called Janam-sakhls, and written in
the Panjabi dialect—are filled with myths and stories of
miraculous events, invented to justify the semi-deification of
the founder of the sect soon after his death. That all the
Hindu gods appeared in the sky and announced the birth
of a great saint (Bhagat) to save the world, is not quite
capable of proof. Nor can we quite accept as a fact another
statement of his chroniclers, that one day angels seized him
while bathing, and carried him bodily into the presence of
the Deity, who presented him with a cup of nectar and
charged him to proclaim the one God, under the name of
Hari, upon earth. But we need not disbelieve the statement
that at an early age he became a diligent student of Vaish-
nava religious books, and that in his youth he imitated the
example of other incipient reformers, wandering to various
shrines in search of some clue to the labyrinth of Hinduism.
It is even affirmed that his travels included the performance
of a hajj to Mecca, and that on being reproved by the KazI
for lying down with his feet towards the Ka'bah, he replied,
' Put my feet in that direction where the house of God is not.'

Nanak, however, laid no claim to be the originator of a new
religion. His teaching was mainly founded on that of his
predecessors, especially on that of Kablr, whom he constantly
quoted. He was simply a Guru, or teacher, and his followers
were simply Sikhs or disciples. But he was also a reformer
who aimed, as other reformers had done before him, at deli-
vering Hinduism, and especially the Vaishnavism of Northern
India, from its incubus of caste, superstition, and idolatry.