Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/865

 SIHNAH

789

SILANDUS

papeles pertenecientes a la Universidad de Sigiienza; JosiS Julie de La Fuente, Resefia historica de la Universidad de Sigiienza; Vi- cente DE La Fuente, Historia de las universidades espafiolas (Madrid, 1887) ; SAnchez de la Campa, Historia filosdfica de la instruccion publica en EspaHa (1872) ; Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, II (Oxford, 1895), 97.

TeODORO RoDRtcUEZ.

Sihnah. See Sehna, Diocese of.

Sikhism, the religion of a warlike sect of India, hav- ing its origin in the Punjab and its centre in the holy- City of Amritsar, where their sacred books are pre- served and worshipped. The name Sikh signifies "disciple", and in later times the strict observants or elect were called the Khalsa. The founder of the sect, Nanak (now called Sri Guru Nanak Deva), a Hindu belonging to the Kshastrya caste, was born near La- hore in 1469 and died in 1539. Being from childhood of a religious turn of mind, he began to wander through various parts of India, and perhaps beyond it, and gradually matured a religious system which, revolting from the prevailing polytheism, ceremonial- ism, and caste-exclusiveness, took for its chief doc- trines the oneness of God, salvation by faith and good works, and the equality and brotherhood of man. The new religion spread rapidly and, under the leader- ship of nine successive gurus or teachers, soon became an active rival not only to the older Hinduism, but also to the newer Mohammedanism of the reigning dy- nasties. The "disciples " were therefore somewhat ill- treated by the governing powers. This persecution only gave fresh determination to the sect, which gradually assumed a military characiter and took the name of Singhs or "champion warriors"; under Govind Sing, their tenth and last guru (b. 16G0; d. 170S), who had been provoked by some severe ill-treat- ment of his family by the Moslem rulers, they began to wage active war on the Emperor of Delhi. But the struggle was unequal. The Sikhs were defeated and gradually driven back into the hills. The profession ■ of their faith became a capital offence, and it was only

I the decline of the Mogul power, after the death of

Aurungzeb in 1707, which enabled them to survive. Then seizing their opportunity they emerged from their hiding places, organized their forces, and estab- lished a warlike supremacy over a portion of the Pun- jab round about Lahore.

A reversal took place in 1762, when Ahmed Shah badly defeated them and defiled their sacred temple at Amritsar. In spite of this rev(>rse they managed still to extend their dominion along the banks of the Sutlej and the Jumna Rivers, northwards as far as Peshawar and Rawalpindi, and southwards over the borders of Rajputana. In 17S.S the Mahrattas overran the Pun- jab and brought the Siklis under tribute. Upon the Mahrattas sui)crvene<l the British, who received the allegiance of a portion of tlie Sikhs in 1803, and later on, in 1809, undt^rtook a treaty of protection against their enemy, Runjeet Singh, who, although himself a prominent Sikh leader, had proved overbearing and intolerable to other portions of the sect. Various other treaties between the British and the Sikhs, with a view of opening the Indus and the Sutlej Rivers to trade and navigation, were entered into; but as these agreements were not kept, the British declared war on the Sikhs in 1845. By 1848, partly through actual defeat, partly through internal disorganization and want of leaders, the Sikh power was broken; they gradually settled down among the rest of the popula- tion, preserving only their religious distinctiveness in- tact. According to the census of 1881 the number of the Sikhs was reckoned at 1,853.426, which in the cen- sus of 1901 rose to 2,195,339. At the time of writing the census of 1911 is not yet published.

Their sacred books, called the "Granth" (the orig- inal of which is preserved and venerated in the great temple of Amritsar) consists of two parts: "Adi Granth", the first book or book of Nanak, with later

additions compiled by the fifth guru, Arjoon, and with subsequent additions from later gurus down to the ninth, and contributions by various disciples and devotees; secondly, "The Book of the Tenth King", written by Guru Govind Sing, the tenth and last guru, chiefly with a view of instilling the warlike spirit into the sect. The theology contained in these books is distinctly monotheistic. Great and holy men, even if divinely inspired, are not to be worshipped — not even the Sikh gurus themselves. The use of images is tabooed; ceremonial worship, asceticism, and caste- restrictions are explicitly rejected. Their dead lead- ers are to be saluted simply by the watchword "Hail Guru" and the only material object to be outwardly reverenced is the "Granth", or sacred book. In practice, however, this reverence seems to have de- generated into a superstitious worship of the "Granth"; and even a certain vague divinity is at- tributed to the ten gurus, each of whom is supposed to be a reincarnation of the first of the line, their orig- inal founder — for the Hindu doctrine of transmigra- tion of souls was retained even by Nanak himself, and a certain amount of pantheistic language occurs in parts of the sacred hymns. Salvation is to be ob- tained only by knowledge of the One True God through the Sat Guru (or true spiritual guide), rever- ential fear, faith and purity of mind and morals — the main principles of which are strictly inculcated as marks of the true Sikh; while such prevailing crimes as infanticide and suttee are forbidden. They place some restriction on the killing of animals without necessity, but short of an absolute prohibition. Pe- culiar to the sect is the abstention from tobacco, and in part from other drugs such as opium — a restriction introduced by Guru Govind Sing under the persuasion that smoking was conducive to idleness and injurious to the militant spirit. At the present time an active religious revival is manifesting itself among the Sikhs, having for its object to purge away certain supersti- tions and social restrictions which have gradually fil- tered in from the surrounding Hinduism.

Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (Calcutta, 1904); Macoregor, History of the Sikhs (2 vols., London, 1846); Court, History of the Sikhs; Gough, The Sikhs and the Sikh Wars (London, 1897) ; Saved Mahomed Latif, History of the Punjab (Calcutta, 1891); Sewaram Singh Thapar, Sri Guru Nanak Deva (Rawalpindi, 1904); Bhaoat Lakshman Singh, A Short Sketch of the Life and Work of Guru Govind Singh (Lahore, 1909); Macauliffb, The Sikh Religion (G vols., Ox- ford, 1909); Trumpp, The Adi Granth, the Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs (London, 1877), stigmatised by Macauliffe as an un- reliable translation.

Ernest R. Hull. Silandus, a titular see in Lydia, suffragan of Sardis. It is not mentioned by any ancient geo- grapher or historian. We possess some of its coins representing the Hermus. It is the present village of Selendi, chief town of a nahia in the caza of Koula, in the vilayet of Smyrna, situated on the banks of the Selendi Tchai or Aine Tchai, an affluent of the Hernus (now Ghediz Tchai). Some inscriptions but no ruins are found there. The list of bishops of Silandus given by Le Quien, "Oriens christianus", I, 881, needs correction: Markus, present at the Council of Nicaea, 325 (less probably bishop of Blaundus, as suggested by Ramsay, "Asia Minor", 134); Alcimedes at Chalcedon, 451 (Anatolius, who signed the letter of the bishops of the province to Emperor Leo, 458, belongs rather to Sala, Ramsay, ibid., 122) ; Andreas, at the Council of Constantinople, 680; Stephanus, at Constantinople, 787; Eustathius, at Constantinople, 879 (perhaps Bishop of Blaundus). The bishop mentioned as having taken part in the Council of Constantinople, 1351, belongs to the See of Synaus (Wachter, ' ' Der Verf all des Griechen turns in Kleinasien im XIV Jahrhundert", Leipzig, 1903, 63, n. 1). The See of Silandus is mentioned in the Greek "Notitiae episcopatuum " until the thirteenth century.