"Steinbach, a European ex-army officer, who worked at the Lahore Durbar for nine years, described the Golden Temple at Amritsar as a Temple of Visnu, one of the Sikh deities”. The Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition, 1857) does that same. Quoting Thornton’s Gazette (1862 edition), it says that “in the middle on the small island, is a temple of Hari or Vishnu”, and adds that Ahmed Shah “blew up the shrine with gunpowder, filled up the holy tank, and caused kine to be slaughtered, thus desecrating the spot.”"