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50 dan thieves who attempted to steal his horses were smitten with blindness, and on another he made a surveyor, who had been sent to appraise the crops of one of the faithful, so forgetful of his arithmetic that he acknowledged the Guru's authority and became a Sikh.

The magnificence of Govind Singh was not maintained without a great deal of oppression, and the Masands, or deputies of the Guru, took the place of the imperial tax-gatherers, and were so grasping and extortionate, and caused so much discontent and resistance, that he was compelled to abolish them altogether. He then returned to his home in Anandpur, passing Sirhind, which he with difficulty dissuaded his people from destroying in revenge for the cruel murder of his children. But he cursed the town, and ordered his followers whenever they passed it on pilgrimage to or from the Ganges to throw two bricks taken from its walls into the Sutlej or the Jumna, otherwise their bathing in the holy river would not profit them. This is still an invariable practice with the Sikhs who travel through the town on foot, though the railway has much reduced the number of such pilgrims. I have sometimes wandered through the ruins and mounds of rubbish which make up a great part of Sirhind, and have thought it a place which seemed truly accursed.

Some time after this, Govind Singh, for reasons which are obscure and which were certainly opposed