Page:A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (1869).djvu/102

 CATALOGUE OF MANUSCRIPTS. 91 them to consider any one as successor to qv&v qoyist), would make them unwilling to appear to confess that their religious history was closed, by assigning a limit to him as to the others : and in their troubled history since they have been wont to consider their last and most warlike Master^ as still in a manner present with them, and leading their hosts. The present political position of the Sikhs dates from a period subsequent to the disappearance of their last pontiff by a full century, viz., the foundation of the independent Sikh sovereignty at Lahore, A.D. 1805 by Eunajit Sinha (Eunjeet Sing), who was bom in 1780 and died within the last fifteen years. Some extracts from this book, enough to give an idea of the style and character, may be seen in the sketch of the Sikhs by Brigadier- General Malcolm (afterwards Sir John M.), inserted in the eleventh volume of the Asiatic Eesearches of Calcutta, before Eunjeet Sing's power had attracted any attention there or in England. Besides this copy, now among the treasures of Trinity College, Cambridge, I believe there are but two others of the Adi Granth in this country, viz., those numbered 231 and 2868 in the East India Company's Library, at Leadenhall-street, the gift of the late eminent Orientalist, H. T. Colebrooke. W. H. Mill. The above description of this MS. was written by the late Dr. Mill, Eegius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, in the year 1852. It has been thought worth while to print it in fuU. ^ As Guru r^T^) denotes in Sanscrit and all other Indian languages a religious Preceptor or Master, so does the correlative term Sikh or Sixya ( ^ETV^} denote a Disciple. The very name of the Sikh nation thus bears witness to the original character of their community. At Fatna, in the very heart of Hinduism, the spot where Guru Govind was bom has been marked by the erection of a. Sikh college, where the principal academical observance, as I have witnessed, is the loud recitation of his religious poems in the Dasama Padshah ka Granth, as well as of those of his earlier predecessors in the Adi«Granth.