FERINGHEE is an adaptation of the Indo Persian term frangi or firingi used to denote a person of European origin. It is dervied from Frank, "a member of a group of ancient Germanic peoples dwelling in the regions of the Rhine, one division of whom, the Salians, conquered Gaul [modern France so named after them] about AD 500." Turks were the first Asian people to come in contact with Franks whom they called frangi, a name applied to all Europeans. Europeans who came to India following the arrival in 1498 at Calicut of Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese explorer, were also called Feringhees.
POONA RESIDENCY CORRESPONDENCE is an English rendering, in several volumes, of selections from the Persian records of the Peshwa Dafiar, a collection of British official records of the Resident`s transactions concerning the cis Sutlej region. Prior to the establishment of the Delhi Residency (1803) and the Ludhiana Agency (1809), the British Resident with the Scindia at Fatehgarh was responsible for all such political transactions. The correspondence contains information, sometimes trivial, even conjectural, about the Sikhs before and after 1800.Mr Collins, who was .
LAHORE POLITICAL DIARIES is how volumes III to VI of the Records of the Punjab Government arc collectively referred to. Comprising a part of the British Government records published in nine volumes during the early years of the twentieth century, these four volumes deal with the regency period, 1846-49. They contain journals, reports and diaries of the British residents at the Sikh capital, Lahore, and the agents appointed in different districts of the Punjab. Altogether they afford an intimate glimpse of the administration of the Punjab during the period between the two Anglo Sikh wars, and the settlement of various districts under British officers. These energetic and vigilant officers also kept the Lahore Residency informed of all political events and trends in the areas under their charge.
SIKHS` RELATIONS WITH NAWAB OF OUDH. For a whole decade prior to 1774, Sikhs had been regularly raiding and pillaging upper Ganga Yamuna Doab and Ruhilkhand bordering on Oudh. Yet they had not entered the territory of the Nawab, Shuja` udDaulah, who had become an ally of the British since his defeat in the battle of Buxar (22 October 1764). With British help he conquered Ruhilkhand in 1774, thus eliminating the buffer between himself and the Sikhs. Zabita Khan, the defeated Ruhila chief, invited the Sikhs in 1776 to join him in attacking the imperial domains.
PARTITION OF THE PUNJAB (1947) was the result of the overwhelming support the Muslim demand for the creation of Pakistan, an independent and sovereign Muslim State, had gathered in India. When the word Pakistan was first mentioned, the idea had been laughed out of court, even by the Muslims themselves. But within the next half a decade, it had annexed almost the total support of the Muslim population. During the discussions in England that preceded the passing of the Government of India Act 1935, Pakistan had been mentioned, but no one had taken it as a serious proposition.
FIVE YEARS IN INDIA, by Henry Edward Fane, aide-de-camp to his uncle, General Sir Henry Fane, commander-in-chief of the army of the East India Company during late 1830`s, is "a narrative of [the author`s] travels in the Presidency of Bengal, a visit to the court of Runjeet Singh, a residence in the Himalayan mountains, an account of the late expedition to Cabul and Afghanistan, voyage down the Indus, and journey overland to England." Fane had kept an immaculate journal of his travels from the time his regiment got orders to move to Ceylon in June/ July 1835, till he arrived at Falmouth, England, in April 1840.His actual stay in India was of three and a half years, from August 1836, when he arrived at Calcutta, to the end of 1839, when he commenced his journey homeward. The travelogue was published in two volumes, under one cover, by Henry Colburn, London, in 1842.
PROCLAMATION (1849), declaring that the kingdom of the Punjab had ceased to be and that all the territories of Maharaja Duleep Singh had become part of the British dominions in India, was issued on 29 March 1849 by Governor General Lord Dalhousie. Earlier in the day a darbdrwsis held in the palace inside the Fort at Lahore by Henry M. Elliot, the foreign secretary, under the orders of the Governor General. It was attended by the minor Maharaja Duleep Singh, seated for the last time on the throne of his father, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, surrounded by the British troops and his helpless sarddrs.
MARATHASIKH RELATIONS spanning a period of half a century from 1758 to 1806 alternated between friendly cooperation and mistrust born out of rivalry of political and military ambition. Although Shivaji (1627-80), the founder of Maratha power, and Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the creator of the Khalsa, both rose against the tyiannical rule of Aurarigzib, and although the Sikhs` real crusade in the Punjab took its birth on the banks of the River Godavari in Maharashtra, the two forces did not come in direct contact with each other until the Marathas, in a bid to fill the power vacuum caused by the fall of the Mughal empire, expanded their influence as far as Delhi.
VADDA GHALLUGHARA, lit. major holocaust or carnage, so called to distinguish it from another similar disaster, Chhota (minor) Ghallughara that took place in 1746, is how a one day battle between the Dal Khalsa and Ahmad Shah Durrani fought on 5 February 1762 with a heavy toll of life is remembered in Sikh history. As Ahmad Shah was returning home after his historic victory over the Marathas in the third battle of Panipat in 1761, the Sikhs had harassed him all the way from the Sutlej right up to the Indus.
