Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/321

Rh vivid red, green, or orange, and if we had remained another day I should have succumbed to the prevailing mode, assumed a bright-red shawl, and with it the theatrical pose and stride, the flap and fling of loose ends of drapery. The Sikhs, "the Swiss of Asia," were old friends, whom I had known before I knew the Panjab—the splendid statuesque, red-turbaned policemen of Shanghai and Hong Kong, "the red-top men" of such terror to Chinese malefactors. Originally Hindus, their Luther protested against caste and idolatry and denounced the corruption of the Brahmans; and, just before Columbus's voyage to America, he established his dissenting sect near Lahore. Akbar showed tolerance and granted them the sacred pool at Amritsar, but his successors persecuted them, tortured their leaders, and so aroused their national and military spirit that after many battles they established their independence in the middle of the eighteenth century. Their last great leader was Runjeet Singh, after whose death in 1839 they embroiled themselves with the English, were defeated at Gujerat in 1849, and the Koh-i-nur went with the Panjab to the victors, and now the pensioned descendants of their ruler live as country gentlemen and champion cricket-players in England, marrying with the English nobility. The Sikhs' loyalty during the Mutiny gave them a prestige still preserved, and these stalwart and interesting people are claimed by the Magyars as long-lost Aryan kinfolk, many common words and the common fashion of beards first suggesting the relationship. While the old