2-982-507 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Interior of a Sikh Temple at Umritzir [in India] - reading the Grunt'h - from a drawing by W. Carpenter, Jun., 1858. 'The Gooroos are the spiritual guides of the Sikhs. Arjoon, fourth Gooroo, arranged the various writings of his predecessors. Namuk and Unggud added to them the best known or the most suitable compositions of some other religious reformers, and, completing the whole with a prayer and some exhortations of his own, he declared the compilation to be pre-eminently the "Grunt'h," or book...The Gooroo is sitting before the Grunt'h, which lies open on a stool before him, covered with a brocaded cloth, with a chowree lying across it (the tail of the Thibet ox, used as a flyflap)...and above it is suspended a canopy of crimson velvet embroidered with gold. On the floor is a heap of offerings of the faithful, being swept up by an attendant, not, as in the palmy days of the Sikh power, gold mohurs, jewels, bracelets, &c., but copper pice and cowries. The women, as they make a circuit of the building, receive flowers which have been blessed by the priest. Music of a most excruciating character is kept up without intermission on tomtoms, banjos, &c., assisted by a chorus of human voices scarcely more tuneable'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.