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45 Birth of Sikhjsm Nanak was kept alive by a following which increased day by day.42 The way of life adopted by Nanak's disciples was somewhat different from that of the Hindus or the Muslims from whom they had sprung. Since Nanak had emphasized the role of truthful companionship ( sat sang), his disciples naturaUy interpreted it as being constituted of those who accepted Nanak as their gum. The breakaway from the parent communities started in the guru's lifetime. It began with a different place and mode of worship. The Sikh no longer chanted Sanskrit slokas to stone idols or murmured the Arabic of the Koran while genuflecting towards Mecca; be sang the hymns of Nanak in his own mothertongue, Punjabi. He ate with his fellow Sikhs at the guru's kitchen, which he helped to organize by co11ecting rations and in which he took turns to serve as a cook or scrubber of utensils. 4~ To greet people he no longer used the Hindu's namaste or the Muslim's salam alii.ikum but the guru's Sat Kartar (True Creator).44 All this resulLed in building a community of people who had more in common with each other than with the communities to which they had belonged. As important as the religious and communal aspects of Nanak's preaching were the political. He was the first popular leader of the Puajab in recorded history. And even though the number of his actual disciples was not perhaps very great, the number of those belonging to other communities who paid homage to the ideal of'there is no Hindu; there is no Mussalman, • was considerable. It was this ideal which gave birth to Punjabi consciousness and to Punjabi nationalism. 42 'They [i.e., other religious teachers] perfected forms of dissent ralher than planted the germs of nations, and their sects remain to this day as they left them.· (Cunningham, History of thz Sikhs, p. 34.) 43 Th.is is expressed in the aphorism: dapa pa,:ii guru !ta ~lwl Sf!Ufi sikha11 di. Food and drink are the gifts of the Guru Service and devotion concribmed by his sen,iLOrs. 44 This greeting changed subsequently to sat sri akal, which means the same thing. Kartiir means lhe Creator and sri akiil the Timeless One, that is, God.