BANARASI DAS. alias Banarasi Babu, who professed to be a Kuka Sikh, was originally a resident of Allahabad. Widely travelled, he had been to England in 1885-86 where he had met the deposed Maharaja Duleep Singh. On his return from England he went to Nepal, the favoured resort of

KOHINUR ("Mountain of Light"), the peerless diamond which today lakes the pride of place among the British crown jewels, once belonged to Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh sovereign of the Punjab. Duleep Singh was made to surrender it to the British after the annexation of

BIJAYBINOD, a chronicle in Punjabi verse of the turbulent period following the death in 1839 of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the sovereign of the Punjab, written according to internal evidence in 1901 Bk/AD 1844. The only known manuscript of the work, still unpublished, is preserved in the private collection of Bhai

NANU SINGH, priest of Gurdwara Sri Hazur Sahib, Nanded (Hyderabad), who served as an intermediary between Thakur Singh Sandharivalia, prime minsiter to Maharaja Duleep Singh in his emigre government at Pondicherry and his associates in the Punjab. Correspondence and messages to and from those working for the restoration of

BUDDH SINGH BAVA, an associate of Thakur Singh Sandhanvalia, who served as a link between him and his contacts in Punchh and Kashmir. He was the son of Faujdar Singh, a Khatri of Batala, in Gurdaspur district. He was first employed as a Sardar in Kashmir irregular force and

NARENDRA SINGH SANDHANVALIA (b. 1868), third son of Thakur Singh Sandharivalia who was prime minister of Maharaja Duleep Singh`s emigre government in Pondicherry. Born in 1868, he was 18 years old when he accompanied his father to that French territory to the south of Madras. Narendra Singh was betrothed

BUTA SINGH, DIWAN (b. 1826) .journalist, printer and one of the last employees of the Sikh royal household, was born the son of Gurdial Singh at Lahore in 1826. He was a man of wealth and influence, being the owner of a chain of printing presses. In his earlier

NIHAL SINGH, of Naushahra near Tarn Taran in Amritsar district of the Punjab, was among the close associates of the Sikh revolutionary, Bhai Maharaj Singh (d. 1856), who assigned him to many a secret mission such as procuring weapons from Charhat Singh, an exkdrddr, and helping Bhai Tek Chand

CASTLE HILL, an 182acre estate in Mussoorie, a hill city in the Himalayas, which was the summer residence for a short period of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh sovereign of the Punjab who after the annexation of his dominions was exiled by the British to Fatehgarh, in present day

PARDUMAN SINGH GIANI, BHAI (d. 1877), principal granthi or priest and manager of Sri Darbar Sahib at Amritsar, was the eldest of the four sons of Bhai Gurmukh Singh Giani (d. 1843), a man of learning and an influential courtier in Sikh times. He was the grandson of the

DAKNO, RANI, who came of a Rajput family of Kangra district, was married to Maharaja Sher Singh in 1842. Reputed to be a most beautiful woman of her time, she was tall and slender, graceful and very fair, with a peculiarly gentle and winning expression of countenance. In the

PARTAP SINGH. GIANI (1855-1920), Sikh school-man and calligraphist, was born in 1855, the son of Bhai Bhag Singh Giani of Lahore. As a young boy, Partap Singh learnt Punjabi, Urdu and Sanskrit and studied Sikh Scriptures. In 1884, he accompanied Thakur Singh Sandhanvalia to England to read the Guru Granth