1 60
2 HISTORY OF THE SIKHS,
3 Govind*s
4 mother leaves
5 the fort with
6 his two sons.
7 She reaches
8 Sirhind, where
9 Govimi’s two
10 sons are mur¬
11 dered, and
12 Goojuree dies
13 of grief.
14 His followers
15 desert him.
16 the end of this time, Govind Singh retreated to life
17 strongest fort, and shut the gates on the besiegers.
18 After a short time, however, his provisions were
19 exhausted, and the followers of the Gooroo deter¬
20 mined to desert him. At this same time, the
21 mother of Govind Singh, who was in the fort with
22 his two sons, Futteh Singh and Zorawur Singh,
23 wrote to the rajahs requesting permission to leave
24 the fort with her two grandsons; and the request
25 being granted, Goojuree departed with the two
26 boys during the night. Several, of the Sikhs ac¬
27 companied her, and she fled to Sirhind, When
28 the Gooroo heard of his mother’s flight, he was
29 very angry, exclaiming, “ She has left me, but how
30 can she escape?—my two boys will be killed,”
31 When Goojuree reached Sirhind, she concealed
32 herself and her grandsons in the house of a Hindoo.
33 But the collector of Sirhind, named Kulgus Xiao,
34 on hearing the intelligence that Govind Singh’s
35 mother and sons were in the city, ordered the two
36 boys to be buried alive under the city wall!
37 Goojuree died of grief at the sad fate of her grand¬
38 sons.* Govind Singh being now reduced to the
39 last extremity, his followers proposed leaving him.
40 For this he abused them as cowards, and throwing
41 open the gates, ordered them to make one more
42 * The cruel murder of Futteh Singh and Zorawut Singh, the sons of
43 Gooroo Govind, has never been forgotten by the Sikhs, and no Sikh pauses
44 Sirhind without taking away a brick and throwing it into the Sutlej ; and '
45 the late Maharajah Runjeet Singh is said to have carried away two- This
46 is done to mark their detestation of the cruel and cold-blooded murder of
47 the two sons of their great Gooroo and reformer,