6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

5TH GLORIOUS EPOCH 385
valour done by common folks, as those by the great warriors
and the Rana himself, that our young generation should
delve deep into them and learn them by rote as reverentially
as they would the stories from Ramayan and Mahabharat.
Fortunately the romantic Rassos of Rajput Bhats upto the
date of the great poet Bhooshan are still available, which
should really be appointed in the secondary schools as com­
pulsory text-books. But alas ! in this critical historical
survey of ours there is no place for citing any passages from
them.
954-955. NOT now in the fading light of my last days
is any time
left for them !
This Rana Pratap Singh, a great ornament to the Hindu
society, died in A.D. 1581".
THE RISE OF THE SIKHS IN THE PUNJAB
A NEW AWAKENING OF THE
HINDU MIGHT
956. A saintly person, by name Guru Nanak, started a
new religious sect in the Punjab by the end of the fifteenth
century, the followers of which soon organized themselves
into a homogeneous group calling themselves Shikh [Sikh—
^izjBO—ffjie disciples of Guru Nanak.] Shree Guru Nanak
was not a sanyasi—a recluse—but a man with a family to
bring up. He preached that the worship of God and the
service of humanity was possible through devotion. 'Every
man can follow this path of devotion !' he asserted*^.
956-A. At that time not only in the Punjab but
throughout the whole of India the Muslims had waged a
total war against Hinduism and resounded the whole country
with the clash of swords, twang of the arrows and the beat
of drums. But throughout the whole of India Hindu rulers
and the Hindu populace had been bravely resisting the
Muslim aggression on every battlefield. Allauddin's almost
completed India-wide conquest and the consequent Muslim
empire was precipitately broken into numerous fragments and