Page:A History of Hindi Literature.djvu/77

 THE SUCCESSORS OF KABIR 63 the eighteenth century, and the Ama7' Mul, which is probably as late as 1800. A Kablrpanthi who flourished about 1800 and wrote some pithy verses in kundaliya metre was Paltu Sahib. The Sikhs.— It has already been mentioned in a previous chapter that the religion of the Sikhs, founded by Nanak, was greatly influenced by the teaching of Kablr. Nanak was followed by nine gn7'iis most of whom were poets. The sacred book of_the Sikhs, called the Granth Sahib (or sometimes the Adi Granth^ i.e. "Original Granth," to distinguish it from the later Granth oi the Te7ith Guru), was compiled in 1604 by Guru Arjun (1563-1606), who was the sixth Guru of the Sikhs. It contains the compositions of Guru Nanak, Guru Angad, Guxm A^nar Das ,Gxvvi Ram Das, Guru Ar/2in, Guru Teg Bahadur (the ninth Guru) and a couplet of Guru Govind Singh (the tenth Guru). The com- positions of these last two Gurus were added after the first compilation. Besides the writings of these Gurus, the Granth also contains panegyrics of the Gurus by the bards who attended on them or admired their characters, and hymns of several bhagats, such as Namdev, Kabir and others, whose teachings corrobo- rated that of the Gurus. The hymns are not arranged in the Granth according to their authors but according to the thirty-one Rags, or musical measures, to which they were composed. All the Gurus, except the last, adopted the name of Nanak as their nom de plume. At the beginning of the volume is placed the Japji, which was composed by Nanak, and then follow the So-Darti, the So-purkhu, and the Sohila, which are extracts from later parts of the books. All these pieces were in- tended for devotional purposes, and therefore placed at the beginning of the book. After the Rags at the end of the volume is the Bhog, or conclusion, which con- tains slokas and panegyrics. The whole forms a lengthy volume, the ideas which it contains being repeated in endless variation. For the Sikhs it is a hymn-book and prayer-book as well as a manual of theology. The language varies in different parts, but