Note 27 — SECTION I.

The violent contests of the Sikhs are mentioned by most of their writers; and, though they disagree in their accounts, they all represent Tégh Behádur as falling the innocent sacrifice of Muhammedan despotism and intolerance; which, from the evidence of all respectable contemporary Muhammedan authors, would appear not to be the fact. Tégh Behádur, agreeable to them, provoked his execution by a series of crimes. He joined, they state, with a Moslem Fakír, of the name of Hafiz ed Dín; and, supported by a body of armed mendicants, committed the most violent depredations on the peaceable inhabitants of the Penjáb. The author of the Seir Mutákhherin says he was, in consequence of these excesses, put to death at Gwalior, and his body cut into four quarters, one of which was hung up at each gate of the fortress.