The Dabistán, or School of manners, Volume 2 (of 3): translated from the original Persian, with notes and illustrations
Religion
The Dabistán, or School of manners, Volume 2 (of 3): translated from the original Persian, with notes and illustrations
Iran -- Religion; Religions
_Sadah_, a disciple of the Guru, went by his orders to bring horses
from Balkh to Irak. He had a son who had fallen sick. They said to
him: “You are now in the town of Balkh, and but one day’s journey from
home: go to see your son.” He answered: “If he should die, there is
wood enough in the house to burn him: I went about the Guru’s
business, and will not return.” The son died, but he did not return.
At last he bought three capital horses of Irak; but Khalíl Bég, a
tyrant, took hold of them, which fell hard upon him. In the same year,
he lost his only son and heir, and saw himself deprived of strength
and honor. Sadah was a man neither gladdened by good nor afflicted by
bad fortune. The author of this work was once his companion on a
journey from Kabul to the Penjab. The belt of my coat broke; Sadah
gave me immediately his zunnar to serve me as a belt. I said to him:
“Why do you this?” He answered: “To tie the zunnar purports an
engagement to serve another; as often as I render some service to
friends, may I resign my zunnar for it.”
“This thread serves to tie every thing:
In a cloister it is a rosary; in a temple of idols a zunnar.”
A Sikh asked the Guru Har-govind: “In the absence of my Guru, what
other shall I find?” He replied: “Whichever of the Sikhs comes to your
house under the name of a Guru, him you may take for yours.” It is the
custom among the Sikhs that, whatever demand they have, they can state
it in the assembly of the Sikhs to the Guru, to whom they offer
whatever present they have, or a coin, and in so doing they join their
hands together, and proffer prayers to him, that he may be favorable
to them. The Guru states then his demand in the _Sangat_
(_Sangátí_),[478] that is to say, in the assembly of the Sikhs. This
custom exists also among the _Sipásian_, or _Izedanian_. The belief of
this people is, that an assembly is certainly capable of achieving
every thing, inasmuch as the minds act with their united strength.
Among the Sikhs there is nothing of the religious rites of the Hindús;
they know of no check in eating or drinking. When _Pertábmal_, a
_Jnání_, “wise,” Hindu, saw that his son wished to adopt the faith of
the Muselmans, he asked him: “Why dost thou wish to become a Muselman?
If thou likest to eat every thing, become a Guru of the Sikhs, and eat
whatever thou desirest.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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