How numerous they are who praise thee! they exceed my comprehension: how, then, shall Nánac describe them? He, even he, is the Lord of truth, true, and truly just. He is, he was, he passes, he passes not, the preserver of all that is preserved. Of numerous hues, sorts and kinds, he is the original author of Máyá (deception). Having formed the creation, he surveys his own work, the display of his own greatness. What pleases him he does, and no order of any other being can reach him. He is the Pádsháh and the Pádsáheb of Sháhs; Nánac resides in his favour. These few verses are, perhaps, sufficient to show, that it was on a principle of pure deism that Nánac entirely grounded his religion. It was not possible, however, that the minds of any large portion of mankind could remain long fixed in a belief which presented them only with general truths, and those of a nature too vast for their contemplation or comprehension. The followers of Nánac, since his death, have paid an adoration to his name, which is at variance with the lessons which he taught; they have clothed him in all the attributes of a saint: they consider him as the selected instrument of God to make known the true faith to fallen man; and, as such, they give him divine honours; not only performing pilgrimage to his tomb, but addressing him, in their prayers, as their saviour and mediator. The religious tenets and usages of the Sikhs continued, as they had been established by Nánac[111], till the time of Gúrú Góvind; who, though he did not alter the fundamental principles of the established faith, made so complete a change in the sacred usages and civil habits of his followers, that he gave them an entirely new character: and though the Sikhs retain all their veneration for Nánac, they deem Gúrú Góvind to have been equally exalted, by the immediate favour and protection of the Divinity; and the Dasama Pádsháh ká Grant'h, or book of the tenth king, which was written by Gúrú Góvind, is considered, in every respect, as holy as the Adí-Grant'h of Nánac, and his immediate successors. I cannot better explain the pretensions which Gúrú Góvind has made to the rank of a prophet, than by exhibiting his own account of his mission in a literal version from his Vichitra Nátac. "I now declare my own history, and the multifarious austerities which I have performed.