The Gurus: Nānak.—Bāba—or Father—Nānak, as he is usually called by pious Sikhs, was born in the year 1460 at Talwandi, in the present Lahore district of the Punjab. It is said that his birth was attended by miracles, and that an astrologer predicted his future greatness. Very early the boy displayed a great interest in religious matters. At the village school to which he went he astonished his teacher by making an acrostic on the alphabet, in which he emphasised the need for true religion. After this Nānak took to private study, and spent much time in meditation and in association with religious men. He wandered in the dense forests around his home, and there doubtless met the religious teachers and reformers of his day, ascetics and wanderers of every kind. From them he must have learned the subtleties associated with religious controversy, and for the first time the principles of Muhammadan doctrine. Nānak's parents were strict Hindus of the Khatri caste, and in due time the Brahman priest came to invest the boy with the sacred thread. 1 Nānak was only nine years old, but he protested against

the formality involved in such a ceremony by means of an improvised hymn:

"Make mercy thy cotton, contentment thy thread, continence its knot, truth its twist.

"That would make a janeu 1 for the soul; if thou have it, O Brahman, then put it on me.

"It will not break, or become soiled, or be burned, or lost.

"Blest the man, O Nānak, 2 who goeth with such a thread on his neck."

This hymn is typical of the manner in which Nānak afterwards conveyed most of his teaching. From that day onward he protested against the tyranny of caste, and the authority of the Brahman priesthood. He proceeded to learn Persian, in which language he was able to read many of the great Muhammadan writings, whose influence is shown so clearly in these early years. An acrostic composed on the letters of the Persian alphabet is entirely Muhammadan in tone, as, for example, the following sentence, which shows how far Nānak's mind had travelled in this direction:

"Renounce heresy, and walk according to the Shariat" (Muhammadan law).