RAKHI SYSTEM, the arrangement whereby the Dal Khalsa during the middecades of the eighteenth century established their sway over territories not under their direct occupation. Rakhi, lit. `protection` or `vigilance,` referred to the cess levied by the Dal Khalsa upon villages which sought their protection against aggression or molestation in

CHARYARI SOWARS was the name given to an irregular cavalry regiment in Sikh times. It owed its origin to four friends, or Char (four) Your (friends), who were seen together all the time. Their names were: Bhup Singh Siddhu.Jit Singh, Ram Singh Saddozai and Hardas Singh Bania. They were all

ANGLOSIKH WAR I, 1845-46, resulting in the partial subjugation of the Sikh kingdom, was the outcome of British expansionism and the near anarchical conditions that overtook the Lahore court after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in June 1839. The English, by then firmly installed in Firozpur on the Sikh

EUROPEAN ADVENTURERS OF NORTHERN INDIA, 1785 to 1849, by G. Grey, first published in 1929 and reprinted by the Languages Department, Punjab, Patiala, in 1970, contains biographical sketches of over one hundred Europeans who came to or served in the Punjab during Sikh times. The book, which is the result

NANKANA SAHIB MASSACRE refers to the grim episode during the Gurdwara Reform movement in which a peaceful batch of reformist Sikhs was subjected to a murderous assault on 20 February 1921 in the holy shrine at Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak. This shrine along with six others in

WELLESLEY PAPERS. Private correspondence and letters of Lord Wellesley, Governor General of India (1798-1805), at the British Library and Museum, London, important for the light it throws on British policy towards the cis Sutlej region and towards the Sikh Darbar. Part of this correspondence relating to the Afghan threat to

RAJPUTSIKH RELATIONS. During his preaching tours. Guru Nanak (1469-1539), founder of the Sikh faith, is believed to have visited Pushkar and Kulayat, two important Hindu pilgrimage centres in Rajputana (now Rajasthan), the land of the Rajputs. While under detention in Gwalior Fort, Guru Hargobind came in contact with some Rajput

TARUNA DAL, army of the youth, was one of the two main divisions of Dal Khalsa, the confederated army of the Sikhs during the eighteenth century, the other one being the Buddha Dal (army of the elders). These Dais came into existence in 1734 when, during a truce with Zakariya

HOLKAR, JASVANT RAO (d. 1811), Maratha chief of Indore, who, defeated at Dig and Fatehgarh in 1804 by the British, moved northwards to obtain succour from the cissutlej Sikh rulers and from Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Accompanied by his Ruhila ally, Amir Khan, he arrived in 1805 at Patiala, where he

ANGLOSIKH WAR II, 1848-49, which resulted in the abrogation of the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab, was virtually a campaign by the victors of the first Anglo Sikh war (1945-46) and since then the de facto rulers of the State finally to overcome the resistance of some of the sardars

EVENTS AT THE COURT OF RANJIT SINGH, 1810-1817, edited by H.L.O. Garrett and G.I.. Ghopra, is a rendition in English of Persian newsletters comprising 193 loose sheets and forming only a small part of a large collection preserved in the Alienation Office, Pune. This material was brought to the notice

OFFER OF SIKH STATE RECALLED BY MAHARAJA YADAVINDER SINGH. It was raining heavily and my garden was enveloped in mist. We were having the First real monsoon downpour of the season. The beautiful dahlias, some of them 10 inches or more in diameter, were sadly drooping. The gladioli were not