This was the doctrine of Gúrú Góvind, the son of Tégh Behádur; who, though very young at his father's death, had his mind imbued with the deepest horror at that event, and cherished a spirit of implacable resentment against those whom he considered as his murderers. Devoting his life to this object, we find him, when quite a youth, at the head of a large party of his followers, amid the hills of Srínagar, where he gave proofs of that ardent and daring mind, which afterwards raised him to such eminence. He was not, however, able to maintain himself against the prince of that country, with whom he had entered into hostilities; and, being obliged to leave it, he went to the Penjáb, where he was warmly welcomed by a Hindú chief in rebellion against the government. This chief gave Góvind possession of Mák'havál[29], and several other villages, where he settled with his followers, and repaid his benefactor by aiding him in his depredations. Góvind appears, at this moment, to have been universally acknowledged by the Sikhs, as their Sat-gúrú, or chief spiritual leader; and he used the influence which that station, his sufferings, and the popularity of his cause, gave him, to effect a complete change in the habits and religion of his countrymen[30]. It would be tedious and useless to follow the Sikh writers through those volumes of fables in which they have narrated the wonders that prognosticated the rise of this, the most revered of all their priests, to power; or to enter, at any length, into those accounts which they, and Góvind himself, for he is equally celebrated as an author and as a warrior, have given of his exploits. It will be sufficient, for the purpose of this sketch, to state the essential changes which he effected in his tribe, and the consequences of his innovations. Though the Sikhs had already, under Har Góvind, been initiated in arms, yet they appear to have used these only in self-defence: and as every tribe of Hindús, from the Bráhmen to the lowest of the Súdra, may, in cases of necessity, use them without any infringement of the original institutions of their tribe, no violation of these institutions was caused by the rules of Nánac; which, framed with a view to conciliation, carefully abstained from all interference with the civil institutes of the Hindús. But his more daring successor, Gúrú Góvind, saw that such observances were at variance with the plans of his lofty ambition; and he wisely judged, that the only means by which he could ever hope to oppose the Muhammedan government with success, were not only to admit converts from all tribes, but to break, at once, those rules by which the Hindús had been so long chained; to arm, in short, the whole population of the country, and to make worldly wealth and rank an object to which Hindús, of every class, might aspire.