Guru Gobind Singh repeated the teaching of his father against tobacco. One day when hunting, he came upon a field where the plant grew. He reined in his horse, and inveighed against it. He said that it burned the chest, induced nervousness, palpitation, bronchitis, and other diseases, finally causing death. He, therefore, begged Sikhs to abstain, concluding: "Wine is bad, bhang destroyeth one generation, but tobacco destroyeth all generations."

After the death of Aurangzeb the Guru became on personally good terms With the new Emperor, Bahādur Shāh. They went hunting together, and the Emperor appears to have had a wholesome fear of the Guru. Nevertheless, the enmity between the Sikhs and the Muhammadans continued. Gobind Singh was on his way to Southern India after a battle when he was stabbed by a Muhammadan, and received a wound which afterwards, reopening, resulted in his death. Before he died, he told his Sikhs that the Khālsa was now thoroughly established, both its religious teaching and the laws for everyday life having become sufficiently definite. There was, therefore, no need to establish a new Guru. The Khālsa and the Granth Sāhib were for the future to be revered as Guru, and the spirit of Gobind

[paragraph continues] Singh might be met by "diligently searching the hymns of the sacred volume." Wherever five faithful Sikhs were assembled, Gobind Singh himself would be in the midst of them. They should be considered "priests of all priests," and should have power to absolve sins. The Guru bowed before the Granth Sāhib as his successor, and gave final directions as to charity before he died in 1708, having been Guru for thirty-three years.

It will be seen that the work of Gobind Singh was somewhat different to that of the other Gurus. His special task was to protect the sect at a moment when it might have perished, and for this work he is worthy to stand by Nānak, the founder of the whole movement. But it must not be imagined that because he was a fine warrior he was less spiritual or less religious than his predecessors. He made religious fervour the backbone of all his warlike doctrines. He united practical skill with mystical meditation; and the results speak for themselves. He wrote very many hymns; which, setting aside those in praise of the sword, contain a stronger vein of pantheistic mysticism than do those of the other Gurus. He also made greater claims for himself as prophet.

Among the writings that he has left us there is a curious account of his own spiritual history, in which he tells how God sent him into the world

to help the world when it was going astray. When he desired his Sikhs to baptize him he said: "I am the son of the immortal God, who has sent me into the world to exalt religion." He says that he did not desire to come, but that God "remonstrated earnestly" with him.