Lehal Library

Building of the Sikh Church 49 opened more centres and organized a regular system of collecting offerings to meet their expenses. He had copies made of Nanak's hymns and supplied one to each centre. These copies were made in a script which until then had no precise alphabet of its own. Angad took the thirty-five letters of the acrostic composed by Nanak, selected the appropriate letters from other scripts current in nonhem India, and caUed the new script Gurmukhi (from the mouth of the Guru). 6 This step had farreaching results. Angad's compilation became the nucleus of the sacred writings of the Sikhs. It gave the Sikhs a written language distinctfrom the written language ofthe Hindus or the Mussalmans and thus fostered a sense of their being a separate people. Angad was very keen on physical fitness. He ordered his followers to take part in drill and competitive games after the morning service. Every community centre had a wrestling arena attached to it. He started a tradition which made it easy for his successors to raise troops of able-bodied men from among the disciples. 7 Angad had two sons" but he chose a seventy-three-year~ld disciple, Amar Das, a Khatri of the Bhalla sub-caste to succeed him as the I.bird guru. 6 There is diversity of opinion about the origin and antiquity of the Puajabi language and the Gurmukhi script. The subject will be dealt with in greater detail in a second volume. 7 A soldier named Malu Shah sought the Guru's guidance OD the morality of using force. The Guru counselled him that if ever the necessity to fight arose, it was the duty of a soldier to give battle regardless of the odds against him. 8 Amar Das's succession was 001 recognized by Angad' s son Datu, who ejected him from Khadur and installed himself as the third guru. Amar Das moved to Goindwal and from Goindwal to his own village, Basarke. After some cime, when DaLU's following dwindled, Amar Das was able to return to Goindwal and take up his ministry in earnest. According Lo Sikh chronicles, OD an occasion when Datu literally kicked Amar Das off his seat, the latter joined the palms of his hands and said humbly: 'This must have hurt your foot.· On another occasion Amar Das said, 'If anyone ill-ueats you, bear it patiently. Jfyou bear it three limes, God wm himself fight for you the fourth time.' (Macauliffe, Tiu Si/ch Religion, n, 70.)