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44 than the colloquial idiom, while, at the same time, retaining the power of being popularly understood. The writings of Guru Govind Singh are composed in almost pure Hindi, and as such are at the present day unintelligible to the Punjábi-speaking Sikhs.

The most important chapter of the Ádi Granth is the first, known as Japu or Japji, which was written by Nának himself and contains an exposition of doctrine, while, as a literary effort, it is superior to anything in the volume, except, perhaps, some of the mystical writings of Kabír or Shekh Faríd to which reference has already been made. The reputation of the Bhagat Kabír is widely spread in India, and there is still a monastery of his disciples, the Kabír-panthís, at Benares, where his writings are expounded ¹. The earliest composers whose writings are included in the Granth are two Maráthí poets, Nám Deva and Trilocan, whose peculiar dialects, akin to the modern Maráthí in many of its forms, prove their birthplace to have been in the Deccan.

Govind Singh, the tenth and last of the Gurus, was fifteen years old when his father was tortured and killed as a martyr by the bigoted Emperor Aurangzeb. The boy fled to the hills where he remained for some years completing his education, in which he was superior to his predecessors, knowing Persian, Hindi and a little Sanskrit, which he at times attempted to introduce into his later compositions.