Sketch Of The Sikhs

by John Malcolm

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1812

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sir John Malcolm was a Scottish historian, soldier, and statesman. In 1782 he began working for the East India Company.

Malcolm was diligent in learning the manners and languages of the East. He was employed in many important negotiations and held various distinguished posts, being Ambassador to Persia, Resident of Gwalior, and Governor of Bombay. He was the author of several valuable works including Sketch of the Sikh (1812), A History of Persia (1815), Memoir of Central India (1823), Political History of India from 1784 to 1823 (1826), and Life of Lord Clive (1836). His books provide excellent insights into this period in British Imperial history.

Reviews

[Nabataean Petra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Author did not do the justice to the topic. His sources and most of the book is folklore of Hindu priesthood. More due is given to Durga, Brahama and other artifactfacts of Hindu mythology than to reality. Book is full of internal contradictions.

Even though author get a copy of Adi granth from Sikhs he did not attempt to draw the sketch from the account of those Sikhs.

By authors account Hindus and Muslims were converting to Sikhism because of what this new philosophy was offering but it was the priesthood and ruling class, Muslim and Hindu both, which did not like this. Muslims tried to suppress Sikhism by could've against common Sikh and Hindus tried to subvert by propaganda,which is on to this day.

On the advise of Hindu priests author gave unequivocal validity to dasam granth and asserted Govind Singh himself, being follower of devis and devtas ask for their blessings in Assam granth.

But when he translate the literature of Sikh writers who were in the company of Gobind Singh it is opposite. Sketch of a Sikh and Sikh Gurus is different.

[J Singh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was originally published in 1812 and is classed as the first serious study on the Sikh faith by a European author named John Malcolm. 



The author served in the army for the East India Company. It is rather interesting to read the sketch created by the author, his attempts to study the Sikh religion from his perspective is somewhat far far from reality.



Though he has tried to reach out and read into Gurmukhi sources to which he has quite rightly done a terrible job in explaining, his works here include far too many shortcomings which makes reading this book monotonous.



Writing style and sentence structures really does not flow. Having made a very light reference to Dassam Granth, it shows a huge lack in knowledge on the authors part. 

With a range of internal contradictions and self created views of what he perceives the Sikh faith to be is far from correct.



I still however applaud his efforts in trying to express his study on the Sikhs however far from reality it actually is. 



As the editor, Pritipal Singh Kapur has done a good job in editing and highlighting some of Malcolms errors throughout the book.