Later Mughals v1.c6.s16.8

v1.c6.s16.8

A few words may appropriately find a place here on the races or castes from which the Sikhs were principally recruited. We have seen that their religion was, as it is still, almost entirely localized in the Panjab, its home lying in the country north of Dihli between the Ravi on the west and the Jamuna on the east. The Sikhs are not a very numerous body, furnishing under 8 per cent. of the total population in the Panjab. All of the Gurus belonged to one or other sub-division of the Khatri tribe, now chiefly found in the Panjab. It was thus from its origin distinctly a non-Brahman religion; Brahmans always stood aloof from it, and under Guru Govind's rules they were to be dealt with as enemies. Etymologically the name Khatri came, no doubt, from the second or warrior tribe of Manu's four divisions, the Kshatriya; but for many generations the Khatri has been, not a soldier, but a banker, petty trader, or official scribe. The offices of the Mughal Empire were full of them. Numerically they are very few among the Sikhs of the present day, but their superior intelligence and education, in addition to their being of the founder's race, must have always given them a power out of proportion to their numbers.*