"The religious system of the Sikhs has been touched already by different writers, but in such general terms, that but little can he gathered from them. Even H. H. Wilson, in his “Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus,” has very cautiously handled this matter, and contented himself with offering a few short, though pertinent, remarks about it. All these authors had not read the Granth themselves, but received the information they gave from second hand ; it is therefore partly defective, partly labouring under mistakes.

Nanak himself was not a speculative philosopher, who built up a concise system on scientific principles; he had not received a regular school-training, and uttered therefore his thoughts in a loose way, which are now scattered through the Granth, and must first be patiently searched out and collected into a whole, before we can form an idea of his tenets.

Nanak himself was by no means an independent thinker, neither had he any idea of starting a new religious sect : he followed in all essential points the common Hindu philosophy of those days,* and especially his predecessor Kahir, who was at that time already a popular man in India, and whose writings, which were composed in the vulgar tongue, were accessible to the unlearned masses. This obligation, which Nanak and the following Sikh Gurus owe to Kabir, is acknowledged by the reception of a great portion of the verses of Kabir into the Sikh Granth itself. That also the writings of other famous Bhagats were known to and used by the Sikh Gurus, is sufficiently attested by the Granth, into which they were partly incorporated and thereby saved from oblivion.

The doctrines once uttered by Baba Nanak were taken up by the following Sikh Gurus without any perceptible deviation; and after the volume of the Granth had been collected by Guru Aijun, they were never called into question, the Granth being held sacred as an immediate divine revelation.

The tenth Guru, Govind Singh, relapsed in many points again into Hinduism, he being a special votary of Durga; but notwithstanding this he always asserted the unity of the Supreme, and the innovations he introduced were not so much touching the doctrine as the practical course of life.

"We need therefore in the following sketch of the Sikh religion not anxiously distinguish between the words of Baba Nanak and those of the following Gurus, as none of them excelled by any originality of thought, every succeeding Guru being content to expatiate on the few ideas handed down to him by his predecessors."

- Ernest Trumpp, "The Adi Granth: Or The Holy Scriptures Of The Sikhs" (1877) Page 110

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