"Then," this author adds, "there were two races in the world; the one Hindú, the other Muhammedan; and both were alike excited by pride, enmity, and avarice, to violence. The Hindús set their heart on Gangá and Benares; the Muhammedans on Mecca and the Cáaba: the Hindús clung to their mark on the forehead and brahminical string; the Moslemans to their circumcision: the one cried Rám (the name of an Avatár), the other Rahím (the merciful); one name, but two ways of pronouncing it; forgetting equally the Védas and the Korán: and through the deceptions of lust, avarice, the world, and Satan, they swerved equally from the true path: while Bráhmens and Moulavis destroyed each other by their quarrels, and the vicissitudes of life and death hung always suspended over their heads. "When the world was in this distracted state, and vice prevailed," says this writer, "the complaint of virtue, whose dominion was extinct, reached the throne of the Almighty, who created Nánac, to enlighten and improve a degenerate and corrupt age: and that holy man made God the Supreme known to all, giving the nectareous water that washed his feet to his disciples to drink. He restored to Virtue her strength, blended the four casts[104] into one, established one mode of salutation, changed the childish play of bending the head at the feet of idols, taught the worship of the true God, and reformed a depraved world." Nánac appears, by the account of this author, to have established his fame for sanctity by the usual modes of religious mendicants. He performed severe Tapasa[105], living upon sand and swallow-wort, and sleeping on sharp pebbles; and, after attaining fame by this kind of penance, he commenced his travels, with the view of spreading his doctrine over the earth. After Nánac had completed his terrestrial travels, he is supposed to have ascended to Suméru, where he saw the Sidd'his[106], all seated in a circle. These, from a knowledge of that eminence for which he was predestined, wished to make him assume the characteristic devotion of their sect, to which they thought he would be an ornament. While means were used to effect this purpose, a divine voice was heard to exclaim: "Nánac shall form his own sect, distinct from all the Yatís[107] and Sidd'his; and his name shall be joyful to the Cáli Yug." After this, Nánac preached the adoration of the true God to the Hindús; and then went to instruct the Muhammedans, in their sacred temples at Mecca. When at that place, the holy men are said to have gathered round him, and demanded, Whether their faith, or that of the Hindús, was the best? "Without the practice of true piety, both," said Nánac, "are erroneous, and neither Hindús nor Moslems will be acceptable before the throne of God; for the faded tinge of scarlet, that has been soiled by water, will never return. You both deceive yourselves, pronouncing aloud Rám and Rahím, and the way of Satan prevails in the universe."