name is a patronymic; thus Norozejee Jumsheedjee, is Norozejee the son of Jumsheedjee.

The Parsees are the richest individuals on this side of India, and most of the great merchants are partners in British commercial houses. They have generally two or three fine houses, besides those they let to the English; they keep a number of carriages and horses, which they lend willingly, not only to Europeans, but to their own poor relations, whom they always support. They often give dinners to the English gentlemen, and drink a great deal of wine, particularly Madeira. The Guebre women enjoy more freedom than other oriental females, but they have not yet thought of cultivating their minds. Perhaps this is owing in great measure to the early marriages which, in compliance with the Hindoo customs, they contract. By becoming the property of their husbands in their infancy, they never think of acquiring a further share of their affection, and, with the hope of pleasing, one great incitement to mental improvement is cut off.

The Parsees are in general a handsome large people, but they have a more vulgar air than the other natives; they are extremely active and enterprising, and are liberal in their opinions, and less bigotted to their own customs, manners, and dress, than most nations. Of their hospitality and charitable dispositions, the following is an instance. During the famine that desolated India in the years 1805 and 1806, the Parsee merchant Ardesee Dadee, fed five thousand poor persons for three months

at his own expense, besides other liberalities to the starving people. The Parsees are the chief landholders in Bombay. Almost all the houses and gardens inhabited by the Europeans are their property; and Pestengee told me that he received not less than 15,000!. a-year in rents, and that his brother received nearly as much.

CHARACTER AND RELIGION OF THE SIKHS, AN INDIAN NATION IN THE PENJAB. (From Lieutenant-Colonel Mal colm's Sketch of the Sikhs.)

The character of the Sikhs, or rather Singhs, which is the name by which the followers of Gúrú Góvind, who are all devoted to arms, are distinguished, is very marked. They have, in general, the Hindú cast of countenance, somewhat altered by their long beards, and are to the full as active as the Mahratas; and much more robust, from their living fuller, and enjoying a better and colder climate. Their courage is equal, at all times, to that of any natives of India; and when wrought upon by prejudice or religion, is quite desperate. They are all horsemen, and have no infantry in their own country, except for the defence of their forts and villages, though they generally serve as infantry in foreign armies. They are bold, and rather rough, in their address; which appears more to a stranger from their invariably speaking in a loud tone of voice: but this is quite a habit, and is alike used by thein to express the sentiments of re

gard

gard and hatred. The Sikhs have been reputed deceitful and cruel, but I know no grounds upon which they can be considered more so than the other tribes of India. They seemed to me, from all the intercourse I had with them, to be more open and sincere than the Mahrátas, and less rude and savage than the Afgháns. They have, indeed, become, from national success, too proud of their own strength, and too irritable in their tempers, to have patience for the wiles of the former; and they retain, in spite of their change of manners and religion, too much of the original character of their Hindú ancestors, (for the great majority are of the Hindú race,) to have the constitutional ferocity of the latter. The Sikh soldier is, generally speaking, brave, active, and cheerful, without polish, but neither destitute of sincerity nor attachment; and if he often appears wanting in humanity, it is not so much to be attributed to his national character, as to the habits of a life, which, from the condition of the society in which he is born, is generally passed in scenes of violence and rapine.

The Sikh merchant, or cultivafor of the soil, if he is a Singh, differs little in character from the soldier, except that his occupation renders him less presuming and boisterous. He also wears arms, and is, from education, prompt to use them whenever his individual interest, or that of the community in which he lives, requires him to do so. The general occupations of the Khalása Sikhs has been before mentioned. Their character differs widely from that of the Sings. Full of intrigue, pli

1

ant, versatile, and insinuating, they have all the art of the lower classes of Hindús, who are usually employed in transacting business: from whom, indeed, as they have no distinction of dress, it is very difficult to distinguish them.

The religious tribes of Acá.is, Shahid, and Nirmala, have been noticed. Their general character is formed from their habits of life. The Acálís are insolent, ignorant, and daring: presuming upon those rights which their numbers and fanatic courage have established, their deportment is hardly tolerant to the other Sikhs, and insuf ferable to strangers, for whom they entertain a contempt, which they take little pains to conceal. The Shahid and the Nirmala, particularly the latter, have more knowledge, and more urbanity. They are almost all men of quiet, peaceable habits; and many of them are said to possess learning.

There is another tribe among the Sikhs, called the Nanac Pautra, or descendants of Nánac, who have the character of being a mild, inoffensive race; and though they do not acknowledge the institutions of Gúrú Góvind, they are greatly revered by his followers, who hold it sacrilege to injure the race of their founder; and, under the advantage which this general veneration affords them, the Nánac Pautra pursue their occupations; which, if they are not mendicants, is generally that of travelling merchants. They do not carry arms; and profess, agreeably to the doctrine of Nanac, to be at peace with all mankind

The Sikh converts, it has been before stated, continue, after they have quitted their original religion,

all

་་

all those civil usages and customs of the tribes to which they belonged, that they can practice, without infringing the tenets of Nanac, or the institutions of Gûrú Góvind. They are most particular with regard to their interniarriages; and, on this point, Sikhs descended from Hindús almost invariably conform to Hindú customs, every tribe intermarrying within itself. The Hindú usage, regard ing diet, is also held equally sacred; no Sikh, descended from a Hindú family, ever violating it, except upon particular occasions, such as a Gúrú-matâ, when they are obliged, by their tencts and institutions, to eat promiscuously. The strict observance of these usages has enabled many of the Sikhs, particularly of the Jât and Gujar tribes, which include almost all those settled to the south of the Satléj, to preserve an intimate intercourse with their original tribes; who, considering the Sikhs not as having lost their cast, but as Hindús that have joined a political association, which obliges them to conform to general rules established for its preservation, neither refuse to intermarry nor to eat with with them.

The higher east of Hindús, such as Brahmens and Cshatriyas, who have become Sikhs, continue to intermarry with converts of their own tribes, but not with Hindús of the cast they have abandoned, as they are polluted by eating animal food; all kinds of which are lawful to Sikhs, except the cow, which it is held sacrilege to slay. Nánac, whose object it was to conciliate the Muhammedans to his creed, prohibited hog's flesh also; but it was introduced by his

his successors, as much, perhaps, from a spirit of revenge against the Moslems, as from considerations of indulgence to the numerous converts of the Ját and Gujar tribe, among whom wild hog is a favou rite species of food.

The Muhammedans, who become Sikhs, intermarry with each other, but are allowed to preserve none of their usages, being obliged to eat hog's flesh, and abstain from circumcision.

The Sikhs are forbid the use of tobacco, but allowed to indulge in spirituous liquors, which they almost all drink to excess; and it is rare to see a Singh soldier, after sun-set, quite sober. Their drink is an ardent spirit, made in the Penjâb; but they have no objections to either the wine or spirits of Europe, when they can obtain them.

The use of opium, to intoxicate, is very common with the Sikhs, as with most of the military tribes of India. They also take B'hang, another inebriating drug.

The conduct of the Sikhs to their women differs in no material respect from that of the tribes of Hindús, or Muhammedans, from whom they are descended. Their moral character with regard to women, and indeed in most other points, may, from the freedom of their habits, generally be considered as much more lax than that of their ancestors, who lived under the restraint of severe restrictions, and whose fear of excommunication froin their cast, at least obliged them to cover their sins with the veil of decency. This the emancipated Sikhs despise : and there is hardly an infamy which this debauched and dissolute

race

race are not accused (and I be lieve with justice) of committing in the most open and shameful

manner.

The Sikhs are almost all horsemen, and they take great delight in riding. Their horses were, a few years ago, famous; and those bred in the Lak'hi Jungle, and other parts of their territory, were justly celebrated for their strength; temper, and activity: but the internal distractions of these territories has been unfavourable to the encouragement of the breed, which has consequently declined; and the Sikhs now are in no respect better mounted than the Mahrátas. From a hundred of their cavalry it would be difficult to select ten horses that would be admitted as fit to mount native troopers in the English service.

Their horsemen use swords and spears, and most of them now carry matchlocks, though some still use the bow and arrow; a species of arms, for excellence in the use of which their forefathers were celebrated, and which their descendants appear to abandon with great reluc

tance.

The education of the Sikhs renders them hardy, and capable of great fatigue; and the condition of the society in which they live, affords constant exercise to that restless spirit of activity and enterprise which their religion has generated. Such a race cannot be epicures they appear, indeed, generally to despise luxury of diet, and pride themselves in their coarse fare. Their dress is also plain, not unlike that of the Hindus, equally light and divested of ornament. Some of the chiefs wear gold bangles; but this is rare; and the

general characteristic of their dress and mode of living, is simplicity.

The principal leaders among the Sikhs affect to be familiar and easy of intercourse with their inferiors, and to despise the pomp and state of the Muhammedan chiefs: but their pride often counteracts this disposition; and they appeared to me to have, in proportion to their rank and consequence, more state, and to maintain equal, if not more, reserve and dignity with their followers, than is usual with the Mahráta chiefs.

It would be difficult, if not impracticable, to ascertain the amount of the population of the Sikh territories, or even to compute the number of the armies which they could bring into action. They boast that they can raise more than a hundred thousand horse: and, if it were possible to assemble every Sikh horseman, this statement might not be an exaggeration: but there is, perhaps, no chief among them, except Ranjit Singh, of Lahore, that could bring an effective body of four thousand men into the field. The force of Ranjit Singh' did not, in 1805, amount to eight thousand; and part of that was under chiefs who had been subdued from a state of independence, and whose turbulent minds ill brooked an usurpation which they deemed subversive of the constitution of their commonwealth. His army is now more numerous than it was, but it is composed of materials which have no natural cohesion, and the first serious cheek which it meets, will probably cause its dissolution.

There is no brauch of this sketch which is more curious and important, or that offers more dif

ficulties

ficulties to the inquirer, than the religion of the Sikhs. We meet with a creed of pure deism, grounded on the most sublime general truths, blended with the belief of all the absurdities of the Hindu mythology, and the fables of Muhammedanism; for Nánac professed a desire to reform, not to destroy, the religion of the tribe in which he was born, and, actuated by the great and benevolent design of reconciling the jaring faiths of Brahma and Muhammed, he endeavoured to conciliate both Hindús and Moslems to his doctrine, by persuading them to reject those parts of their respective beliefs and usages, which, he contended, were unworthy of that God whom they both adored. He called upon the Hindús to abandon the worship of idols, and to return to that pure devotion of the Deity, in which their religion originated. He called upon the Muhammedans to abstain from practices, like the slaughter of cows, that were offensive to the religion of the Hindus, and to cease from the persecution of that race. He adopted, in order to conciliate them, many of the maxims which he had learnt from mendicants, who professed the principles of the Súfi sect; and he constantly referred to the admired writings of the celebrated Muhammedan Kabir, who was a professed Súfi, and who inculcated the doctrine of the equality of the relation of all created beings to their Creator. Nánac endeavoured, with all the power of his own genius, aided by such authorities, to impress both Hindús and Muhammedans with a love of toleration and an abhorrence of war; and his

life was as peaceable as his does trine. He appears, indeed, to have adopted, from the hour in which he abandoned his worldly occupations to that of his death, the habits practised by that crowd of holy mendicants, Sanyásis and Fakirs, with whom India swarms. He conformed to their customs; and his extraordinary austerities are a constant theme of praise with his followers. His works are all in praise of God; but he treats the polytheism of the Hindus with respect, and even veneration. He never shows a disposition to destroy the fabric, but only wishes to divest it of its useless tinsel and false ornaments, and to establish its complete dependence upon the great Creator of the universe. He speaks every where of Muhammed, and his successors, with moderation; but animadverts boldly on what he conceives to be their errors; and, above all, on their endeavours to propagate their faith by the sword.

As Nánac made no material invasion of either the civil or religious usages of the Hindús, and as his only desire was to restore a nation who had degenerated from their original pure worship into idolatry, he may be considered more in the light of a reformer than of a subverter of the Hindu religion; and those Sikhs who adhere to his tenets, without admitting those of Gurú Góvind, are hardly to be distinguished from the great mass of Hindú population; among whom there are many sects who differ much more than that of Nánac, from the general and orthodox worship at present established in India.

The first successors of Nánac

appear