Note 11 — Nai

Numerous customs appear to indicate that the hair was regarded as the special seat of bodily strength. The Rājpūt warriors formerly wore their hair long and never cut it, but trained it in locks over their shoulders. Similarly the Marātha soldiers wore their hair long. The Hatkars, a class of Marātha spearmen, might never cut their hair while engaged on military service. A Sikh writer states of Guru Govind, the founder of the militant Sikh confederacy: “He appeared as the tenth Avatār (incarnation of Vishnu). He established the Khālsa, his own sect, and by exhibiting singular energy, leaving the hair on his head, and seizing the scimitar, he smote every wicked person.”11 As is well known, no Sikh may cut his hair, and one of the five marks of the Sikh is the kanga or comb, which he must always carry in order to keep his hair in proper order. A proverb states that ‘The origin of a Sikh is in his hair.’12 The following story, related by Sir J. Malcolm, shows the vital importance attached by the Sikh to his hair and beard: “Three inferior agents of Sikh chiefs were one day in my tent. I was laughing and joking with one of them, a Khālsa Sikh, who said he had been ordered to attend me to Calcutta. Among other subjects of our mirth I rallied him on trusting himself so much in my power. ‘Why, what is the worst,’ he said, ‘that you can do to me?’ I passed my hand across my chin, imitating the act of shaving. The man’s face was in an instant distorted with rage and his sword half-drawn. ‘You are ignorant,’ he said to me, ‘of the offence you have given; I cannot strike you who are above me, and the friend of my master and the state; but no power,’ he added, indicating the Khālsa Sikhs, ‘shall save these fellows who dared to smile at your action.’ It was with the greatest difficulty and only by the good offices of some Sikh Chiefs that I was able to pacify his wounded honour.”13 These instances appear to show clearly that the Sikhs considered their hair of vital importance; and as fighting was their object in life, it seems most probable that they thought their strength in war was bound up in it. Similarly when the ancient Spartans were on a military expedition purple garments were worn and their hair was carefully decked with wreaths, a thing which was never done at home.14 And when Leonidas and his three hundred were holding the pass of Thermopylae, and Xerxes sent scouts to ascertain what the Greeks were doing in their camp, the report was that some of them were engaged in gymnastics and warlike exercises, while others were merely sitting and combing their long hair. If the hypothesis already suggested is correct, the Spartan youths so engaged were perhaps not merely adorning themselves for death, but, as they thought, obtaining their full strength for battle. “The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition appears to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans. Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.”15