able for their union, as for their determined courage and unconquerable spirit of resistance: but a state of persecution and distress was most favorable for a constitution like theirs, which required constant and great sacrifices of personal advantage to the public good; and such sacrifices can only be expected from men who act under the influence of that enthusiasm which the fervor of a new religion, or a struggle for independence, only imparts, and which are always most readily made when it becomes obvious to all that a complete union in the general cause is the only hope of individual safety.

The Sikhs may be considered as forming the most western nation of Hindostan; for the king of Candahar possesses but an inconsiderable extent of territory on the east of the Indus. Since the complete downfal of the Mogul empire, they have acquired very extensive domains. But major Rennell observes that their power ought not to be estimated in the exact proportion to the extent of their population, since they do not form one entire state; but a number of small ones, independent of each other in their internal government, and only connected by a federal union. They have extended their territories on the south-east, that is, into the province of Delhi, very rapidly of late years; and perhaps the zemindars of that country may have found it convenient to place themselves under the protection of the Sikhs, in order to avoid the more oppressive government of their former masters. It is certain that the eastern boundary of the Sikh's dominions has been advanced to the banks of the Jumnah River, above Delhi, and to the neighbourhood of that city; for the adjoining territory of Schaurunpour is subject to their depredations, if not actually tributary to them; and they make incursions even to the side of the Ganges. On the south they are bounded by the northern extreme of the sandy desert of Registan, and on the south-west their boundary meets that of Sindy, or Tatta, at the city of Behker or Bhekr, on the Indus. On the west the Indus is their general boundary, as high up as the city of Attock; near to which begin the territories of the king of Candahar; and their northern boundary is the chain of mountains that lies towards Thibet and Cashmere. As this is the case, they will be found to possess the whole soubah or province of Lahore, the principal part of Moultan, and the western part of Delhi; the dimensions of which tract are about 400 British miles from north-west to south-east, and from 150 to 200 broad, in general; although in the part between Attock and Bekhr (that is, along the Indus) the extent cannot be less than 320. Their capital city is Lahore.

According to Sir J. Malcolm, the country now possessed by the Sikhs, which reaches from N. fat. 28° 40′ to beyond N. lat. 32°, and includes all the Panjab, a small part of Moultan, and most of that tract of country which lies between the Jumnah and the Setlej, is bounded to the northward and westward by the territories of the king of Cabul; to the eastward by the possessions of the mountaineer rajas of Jammu, Nadon, and Srinagar; and to the southward by the territories of the English government, and

the sandy deserts of Jasalmer and Hansya Hisar. A general estimate of the value of the country possessed by the Sikhs may be formed, when it is stated that it contains, besides other countries, the whole of the province of Lahore; which, according to Mr. Bernier, produced, in the reign of Aurungzebe, 246 lacks and 95,000 rupees; or £2,469,500 sterling. The Sikhs who inhabit the country between the Setlej and the Jumnah are called Malwa Sinh, and were almost all converted from the Hindoo tribes of Jats and Gujars. The country of the Malwa Sinh is in some parts fruitful; but those districts which border on Hansya and Carnal are very barren; being covered with low wood, and in many places almost destitute of water. Its former capital was Sirhind, but it is now a complete ruin.` Patiala is now the largest and most flourishing town of this province, and next to it is T'hanesur, which is still held in high veneration by the Hindoos, who have also a high reverence for the river Serasweti, which flows through this province. The country of Jalendra Dooab, which reaches from the mountains to the junction of the Setlej and the Beah, is the most fruitful of all the possessions of the Sikhs, and is perhaps excelled, in climate and vegetation, by no province in India. The soil is light, but very productive; the country, which is open and level, abounds in every kind of grain. The towns of Jalendra and Sultanpour are the principal in the Dooab. The country between the Beyah and Ravi Rivers is called Bari Dooab, or Manj'ha; and the Sikhs inhabiting it are called Manj'ha Sinh. The cities of Lahore and Amritsar are both in this province, and consequently it becomes the great centre of the power of this nation. The country of Bari is said to be less fertile, particularly towards the mountains, than Jalendra, but, lying on the same level, its climate and soil must be nearly the same. The inhabitants of the country been Ravi and Chanhab are called D'harpi Sinh, from D'harpi, the name of the country: the D'hanigheb Sinh are beyond the Chanhab, but within the Jehalam river. The Sind Sinh is the term by which the inhabitants of the districts under the Sikhs bordering on the Sind are known; and Nakai Sinh is the name given to the Sikhs who reside in Moultan.

Their government may be termed a theocracy. Although they obey a temporal chief, that chief preserves his power and authority by professing himself the servant of the khalsa, or government, which can only be said to act, in times of great public emergency, through the means of a national council, of which every chief is a member, and which is supposed to deliberate and resolve under the immediate inspiration and impulse of an invisible being; who, as they believe, always watches over the interests of the commonwealth. It is natural, however, to imagine that the power of this assembly should decline; and, from colonel Malcolm's account, we may infer that it is nearly destroyed. The last Guru-mata was called in 1805, when the British army pursued Holkar into the Panjab. The government is mild; but in their mode of making war the Sikhs are unquestionably savage and cruel. Among the Sikhs there is a class of devotees, called Acalis, or

immortals, who, under the double character of fanatic priests and desperate soldiers, have usurped the sole direction of all religious affairs at Amritsar; and who, of course, are leading men in a national council held at that sacred place, and which deliberates under all the influence of religious enthusiasm. This order of Sikhs was first founded by Guru Govind, and are distinguished by their dress, as well as by their having almost the sole direction of the religious ceremonies at Amritsar. They have a place on the bank of the sacred reservoir of Amritsar, where they generally resort, but are individually possessed of property, though they affect poverty, and subsist on charity. The principal chiefs of the Sikhs are all descended from Hindoo tribes. The lower order of Sikhs, compared with the wretched Mahometans who are doomed to oppression and hard labor, are happy; they are protected from the tyranny and violence of the chiefs under whom they live by the precepts of their common religion, and by the condition of their country, which enables them to abandon, whenever they choose, a leader whom they dislike. The civil officers, to whom the chiefs entrust their accounts, and the management of their property and revenue concerns, as well as the conduct of their negociations, were in general Sikhs of the Khalasa cast, who, being followers of Nanac, and not of Guru Govind, are not devoted to arms, but educated for peaceful occupations, in which they often become very expert and intelligent. In the collection of the revenue of the Panjab, it is said to be a general rule that the chiefs to whom the territories belong should receive the half of the produce, grain paying in kind, but sugar, melons, &c., in cash, and the farmer the other: but the chief never levies the whole of his share; and in no country, perhaps, is the ryat, or cultivator, treated with more indulgence. Commerce is rather restrained than encouraged by the heavy duties and the distracted state of the country. However, a great part of the shawl trade now flows through the cities of Lahore, Amritsar, and Patiala, to Hindostan.

The administration of justice among the Sikhs is in a very rude and imperfect state. Their law is unwritten. Nothing is consigned to any express form of words. There is no definition of any thing. The custom of the country, the custom of the court (that is to say, as far as the judge is pleased to be governed by those customs), and the will of the judge, are the circumstances which guide the decision. Among the Hindoos some of the sacred books, among the Mahometans the Koran, are used as the books of law. Among the Sikhs there is no such reference to any sacred books; and their situation is, in all probability, so much the better: for the Koran or Hindoo books afford scarcely any rules or principles of law, which are not so vague as to speak any language which the interpreter chooses to give them; and while their authority is sufficient to supersede that of the natural dictates of justice and equity, which are the only guides of the Sikh judges, the Hindoo or Mahometan has only to find or to feign a principle of his book, which may enable him to decide as he pleases. Trifling

disputes, in civil matters, are settled by the heads of the village, by arbitration, or by the chiefs. The court of arbitration is called panchayat, or a court of five, the general number of arbitrators chosen to adjust differences and disputes. It is usual to assemble a panchayat, or a court of arbitration, in every part of India under a native government; and, as they are always chosen from men of the best reputation in the place where they meet, this court has a high character for justice. The decision obtained by either of these modes is final. If a theft occurs, the property is recovered, and the party punished, not with death, by the person from whom it was stolen, or by the inhabitants of the village, or his chief. Murder is sometimes punished by the chief; but more generally by the relatives of the deceased, who, in such cases, rigorously retaliate on the murderer, and sometimes on all who endeavour to protect him.

The Sikhs have, in general, the Hindoo cast of countenance, somewhat altered by their long beards, and are to the full as active as the Mahrattas, and much more robust, from their living fuller, and enjoying a better and colder climate. Their courage is equal at all times to that of any natives of India; and, when wrought upon by prejudice or religion, is quite desperate. They are all horsemen, and have no infantry in their own country, except for the defence of their forts and villages, though they generally serve as infantry in foreign armies. They are bold, and rather rough in their address, which appears more to a stranger from their invariably speaking in a loud tone of voice: but this is quite a habit, and is alike used by them to express the sentiments of regard and hatred. The Sikhs have been reputed deceitful and cruel, but Sir John Malcolm knew no grounds upon which they could be considered more so than the other tribes of India: they seemed to him, from all the intercourse he had with them, to be more open and sincere than the Mahrattas, and less rude and savage than the Afghans. They have, indeed, become, from national success, too proud of their own strength, and too irritable in their tempers, to have patience for the wiles of the former: and they retain, in spite of their change of manners and religion, too much of the original character of their Hindoo ancestors (for the great majority are of the Hindoo race) to have the constitutional ferocity of the latter. The Sikh soldier is, generally speaking, brave, active, and cheerful; without polish, but destitute neither of sincerity nor attachment; and, if he often appears wanting in humanity, it is not so much to be attributed to his national character, as to the habits of a life, which, from the condition of the society in which he is born, is generally passed in scenes of violence and rapine. The Sikh merchant, or cultivator of the soil, if he is a Sinh, differs little in character from the soldier, except that his occupation renders him less boisterous. He also wears arms, and is, from education, prompt to use them, whenever his individual interest, or that of the community in which he lives, requires him to do so. The general occupation of the Khalasa Sikhs has been before mentioned. Their character differs widely from that of the

Sinhs. Full of intrigue, pliant, versatile, and insinuating, they have all the art of the lower classes of Hindoos, who are usually employed in transacting business; from whom, indeed, as they have no distinction of dress, it is very difficult to distinguish them

The general character of the religious tribes of Acalis, Shahid, and Nirmala, is formed from their habits of life. The Acalis are insolent, ignorant, and daring: presuming upon those rights which their numbers and fanatic courage have established, their deportment is hardly tolerant to the other Sikhs, and insufferable to strangers, for whom they entertain a contempt which they take little pains to conceal. The Shahid and the Nirmala, particularly the latter, have more knowledge and more urbanity; they are almost all men of quiet peaceable habits; and many of them are said to possess learning. There is another tribe among the Sikhs, called the Nanac Pautra, or descendants of Nanac, who have the character of being a mild, inoffensive race; and, though they do not acknowledge the institutions of Guru Govind, they are greatly revered by his followers, who hold it sacrilege to injure the race of their founder; and, under the advantage which this general veneration affords them, the Nanac Pautra pursue their occupations; which, if they are not mendicants, is generally that of travelling merchants. They do not carry arms; and profess, agreeably to the doctrine of Nanac, to be at peace with all mankind.

The Sikh converts continue, after they have quitted their original religion, all those civil usages and customs of the tribes to which they belonged, that they can practise, without infringement of the tenets of Nanac, or the institutions of Guru Govind. They are most particular with regard to their intermarriages; and on this point Sikhs descended from Hindoos almost invariably conform to Hindoo customs, every tribe intermarrying within itself. The Hindoo usage regarding diet is also held equally sacred; no Sikh descended from a Hindoo family ever violating it, except upon particular occasions, such as a Guru-mata, when they are obliged, by their tenets and institutions, to eat promiscuously. The strict observance of these usages has enabled many of the Sikhs, particularly of the Jat and Gujar tribes, which include almost all those settled to the south of the Setlej, to preserve an intimate intercourse with their original tribes; who, considering the Sikhs not as having lost caste, but as Hindoos that have joined a political association, which obliges them to conform to general rules established for its preservation, neither refuse to intermarry, nor to eat with them.

The higher caste of Hindoos, such as Brahmins and Cshatriyas, who have become Sikhs, continue to intermarry with converts of their own tribes, but not with Hindoos of the caste they have abandoned, as they are polluted by eating animal food, all kinds of which are lawful to Sikhs, except the cow, which it is held sacrilege to slay. The Mahometans who become Sikhs intermarry with each other, but are allowed to preserve none of their usages, being obliged to eat hog's-flesh, and abstain from circumcision. The Sikhs are forbidden the use of tobacco, but allowed to

indulge in spirituous liquors, which they almost all drink to excess; and it is rare to see a Sinh soldier, after sun-set, quite sober. Their drink is an ardent spirit, made in the Panjab; but they have no objection to either the wine or spirits of Europe, when they can obtain them. The use of opium to intoxicate is very common with them. They also take b'hang (cannabis sativa), another inebriating drug.

The conduct of the Sikhs to their women differs in no material respect from that of the tribes of Hindoos or Mahometans: their moral character, with regard to women, and indeed in most other points, may, from the freedom of their habits, generally be considered as much more lax than that of their ancestors, who lived under the restraint of severe restrictions, and whose fear of excommunication from their caste, at least obliged them to cover their sins with the veil of decency. This the emancipated Sikhs despise ; and there is hardly an infamy with which this debauched and dissolute race are not accused, and with justice, as Sir John Malcolm believed, of committing in the most open manner.

The Sikhs are almost all horsemen, and they take great delight in riding. Their horses were formerly famous for their strength, temper, and activity; but they are now no better mounted than the Mahrattas. They use swords and spears, and most of them now carry match-locks, though some still use the bow and arrow, a species of arms for excellence in the use of which their forefathers were celebrated, and which their descendants appear to abandon with great reluctance.

The education of the Sikhs renders them hardy, and capable of great fatigue; and the condition of the society in which they live affords constant exercise to that restless spirit of activity and enterprise which their religion has generated. Such a race cannot be epicures; they appear, indeed, generally to despise luxury of diet, and pride themselves in their coarse fare. Their dress is also plain, not unlike the Hindoos, equally light, and divested of ornament. Some of the chiefs wear gold bangles, but this is rare; and the general characteristic of their dress and mode of living is simplicity. The principal leaders among them affect to be familiar and easy of intercourse with their inferiors, and to despise the pomp and state of the Mahometan chiefs; but their pride often counteracts this disposition; and they appear to have, in proportion to their rank and consequence, more state, and to maintain equal, if not more, reserve and dignity with their followers, than is usual with the Mahrattah chiefs.

They boast that they can raise more than 100,000 horse; and, if it were possible to assemble every Sikh horseman, this statement might not be an exaggeration; but there is, perhaps, no chief among them, except Ranjit Sinh of Lahore, that could bring an effective body of 4000 men into the field; and the force of Ranjit Sinh did not in 1805 amount to 8000, and part of that was under chiefs who had been subdued from a state of independence, and whose turbulent minds ill-brooked a usurpation which they deemed subversive of the constitution of their commonwealth. His army is now more numerous than it was, but it is composed of

materials that have no natural cohesion, and the first serious check which it meets will probably cause its dissolution.

The religion of the Sikhs seems, says Sir John Malcolm, to have been a sort of pure deism, grounded on most sublime general truths, blended with the belief of all the absurdities of the Hindoo mythology, and the fables of Mahometanism; for Nanac professed to conciliate Hindoos and Mahometans to the belief of his doctrine, by persuading them to reject those parts of their respective belief and usages, which, he contended, were unworthy of that God whom they both adored. He endeavoured to impress both Hindoos and Mahometans with a love of toleration, and an abhorrence of war; and his life was as peaceable as his doctrine. But is it not evident, says an anonymous writer, that so far as absurdities are mixed with a religious creed, so far the purity of its deism is excluded? But to proceed; Guru Govind gave a new character to the religion of his followers, by establishing institutions and usages, which not only separated them from other Hindoos, but which, by a complete abolition of all distinctions of castes, destroyed a system of civil polity, which, from being interwoven with the religion of a weak and bigoted race, fixed the rule of its priests upon a basis that had withstood the shock of ages.

SILARUS, a river of Italy, in Picenum, rising in the Appennine mountains, and falling into the Tyrrhene Sea. Its waters had a petrifying virtue. Strabo. v. Mela ii.

SILAS, or SYLVANUS, the fellow-traveller with St. Paul, and one of the primitive teachers of Christianity in the apostolic age. He is styled a prophet in Acts xv. 32. Some writers conjecture that he and Carpus were the two disciples whom John the Baptist sent to Jesus. (Matt. xi. 2, 3.) Some make him the same with Tertius, who mentions himself as Paul's amanuensis in Rom. xvi. 21; but why he should have called himself Tertius in that epistle, while he is called Silas or Sylvanus in the Acts and other epistles, we know not. In the two epistles to the Thessalonians, his name is expressly joined with those of Paul and Timotheus in the incipient salutations. He was sent with Paul from

Antioch to the synod at Jerusalem; and he and Judas were sent by the synod with Paul and Barnabas, with their decrees to the churches. He accompanied Paul to Lycaonia, Phrygia, Galatia, and Macedonia; and was his fellow prisoner at Philippi. Along with Timothy he instructed the disciples at Berea, and preached at Corinth. St. Peter also wrote his first epistle to the dispersed Jews by him (chap. v. 12). He died in Macedonia.

SILBURY HILL, the remains of a stupendous Roman barrow, near the village of Avebury, Selkely hundred, Wiltshire, seven miles from Marlborough; it rises 170 feet in perpendicular height, and its form is the frustum of a cone, its diameter at the top being 105 feet, and at the bottom 500.

SILCHESTER, a parish in Holdshott hundred, and division of Basingstoke, Hants., on the border of Berkshire, seven miles north from Basingstoke, and forty-five from London; con

taining but eighty-five houses, but is supposed to have been once a populous city, called by the Romans Segontiaci, by the Britons Caer-Segont, and by the Saxons Silcester, or the great city. Leland records the walls to have been two miles in compass, comprising eighty acres of ground. These are remaining at present, and are of nine unequal sides, formed of rows of stones and flints alternately, being about eighteen feet high and fifteen thick; the remains of the ditches are in some places twelve yards over, with the appearance of having had four principal gates. Many British coins have been dug up at different times. Without the walls on the north-east is a pond, which was the site of an amphitheatre. A military road called Lonbank and Grimsdike, pitched with flints, runs from the south gate to Winchester; and another, called the Portway, leads from the south-gate, by Andover, to Old Sarum.

SILENCE, n.s., interj. Fr. silence; Lat. SILENT, adj. [&v. a.ance of speech; the silentium. ForbearSILENTLY, adv.

ance

state of holding peace; stillness; secrecy; oblivion: be still! to silence is, to oblige to hold peace; still; forbid to speak: the adjective and adverb corresponding.

O my God, I cry in the day time, and in the night season I am not silent. Psalm xxii. 2. Unto me men gave ear, and waited and kept silence at my counsel. Job xxix. 21. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

1 Timothy ii. 12.

Sir, have pity; I'll be his surety.
-Silence! one word more
Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee.

Shakspeare.
He would have made them mules, silenced their
We must suggest the people, that to 's power
pleaders, and
Dispropertied their freedoms.

Id.

Silence that dreadful bell; it frights the isle From her propriety. Id. Othello.

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night, The time of the night when Troy was set on fire, The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl. Shakspeare.

Second and instrumental causes, together with nature itself, without that operative faculty which God gave them, would become silent, virtueless, and dead. Raleigh's History.

moved the question.
This passed as an oracle, and silenced those that
Bacon's Henry VII.
Since in dark sorrow I my days did spend,
I could not silence my complaints. Denham.
This would silence all further opposition.

Clarendon.

Silent, and in face
Confounded, long they sat as stricken mute. Milton.
Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell;

For strength from truth divided, and from just,
Illaudable, nought merits but dispraise
And ignominy; yet to glory aspires,
Vain-glorious, and through infamy seeks fame;

Therefore eternal silence be their doom.

The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
This new created world, whereof in hell
Fame is not silent.

Id.

Id.

Jd.