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He appears to have been a Mohammedan weaver by birth, though tradition is not unanimous on this point. It is admitted, however, that he was brought up among Moslims at Benares but became a disciple of Râmânand. This suggests that he lived early in the fifteenth century.
Together with the Jewish Bedouins, his own adherents had till then Jerusalem as their Kebly; but Mohammed now turned it towards the Kaaba, to which that fine passage of the Koran alludes: "Say, to God belong the east and the west; he directs whomsoever he pleases in the road of piety:" a sentence written to convince the Moslims, that wherever they turned, in their prayers, God stood before them.
In still quite another way many Moslims who found their freedom of thought or action impeded by the prevailing law and doctrine, have returned to the origin of their religion.
The hatred against Christians is nearly equal in every part of the Ottoman empire; and if the Moslims sacrifice that feeling, it is not to the principles of charity or humanity, but to the frown of those who happen to be in power; and their baseness is such, that they will kiss
Since Govind had abolished the Guruship, he could not claim to be more than a temporal chief, but what he lacked in spiritual authority he made amends for in fanaticism. The eight years of his leadership were spent in a war of mutual extermination waged with the Moslims of the Panjab and diversified only by internal dissensions.
During this journey, I had frequent opportunities of learning the opinion entertained by these Malays of the government and manners of the English, their present masters; they discovered a determined rancour and hostile spirit towards them, and greatly reviled their manners, of which, however, the worst they knew was, that they indulged too freely in wine, and that the sexes mixed together in social intercourse; none, however, impeached the justice of the government, which they contrasted with the oppression of their native princes; and although they bestowed upon the British the same opprobrious epithets with which the fanatic Moslims every where revile Europeans, they never failed to add, "but their government is good."
Previous experience of Moslims and other invaders disposed the Brahmans to accept foreigners as rulers without admitting that their creeds and customs were in the least worthy of imitation. European methods of organization and advertisement have not however been disdained. The last half century has witnessed a remarkable revival of Hinduism.
When on the verge of our nineteenth century, they tried, as true Moslims, to force by material means their religious conceptions on others, they were combated as heretics by the authorities of catholic Islam. Central and Western Arabia formed the battlefield on which these zealots, called Wahhabites after their leader, were defeated by Mohammed Ali, the first Khedive, and his Egyptian army.
The Moslim of yore, going through the world with the Qoran in one hand, the sword in the other, giving unbelievers the choice between conversion or death, is a creation of legendary fancy. We can but hope that modern civilization will not be so fanatical against Moslims, as the latter were unjustly said to have been during the period of their power.
The question whether it is better simply to leave the Moslims to Islam as it was for centuries is no longer an object of serious discussion, the reforming process being at work everywhere in some parts with surprising rapidity. We can only try to prognosticate the solution which the near future reserves for the problem, how the Moslim world is to be associated with modern thought.
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