VANJARA SIKHS or Banjaras, akin to Labana Sikhs of the Punjab, are found scattered throughout Central and South India as well as in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Although vanjara, from Sanskrit vanij (a merchant, trader), is now used as a generic term for peddlers in the Punjab, the Vanjaras during the medieval times formed a class of travelling traders and carriers of merchandise in Central India, the Deccan and Rajputana (now Rajasthan). Organized in tandas or caravans, each headed by a naik or leader, they trekked between the Western ports and the trade centres of the interior.
ADIT, a professional soldier of Soini clan, came to take refuge at the feet of Guru Arjan. He...
AJIT SINGH PALIT (d. 1725), adopted son of Mata Sundari, the mother of Sahibzada Ajit Singh . Little is known about the family he came of except that Mata Sundari took him over from a goldsmith of Delhi and adopted him because of his striking resemblance with her son, Ajit Singh, who had met a martyr`s death at Chamkaur. She treated him with great affection and got him married to a girl from Burhanpur. Emperor Bahadur Shah, considering Ajit Singh to be Guru Gobind Singh`s heir, ordered, on 30 October 1708, the bestowal of a \'khill`atupon him as a mark of condolence for the Guru`s death.
AKBAR, JALAL UD-DIN MUHAMMAD (1542-1605), third in the line of Mughal emperors of India, was born on 23 November 1542 at Amarkot, in Sindh, while his father, Humayun, was escaping to Persia after he had been ousted by Sher Khan Sur. Akbar was crowned king at Kalanaur, in the Punjab, on 14 February 1556. At that time, the only territory he claimed was a small part of the Punjab, Delhi and Agra having been taken by Hemu. He was then fourteen years old, but he proved himself a great general and conqueror. Upon his death in 1605, he left to his son and successor, Jahangir, a stable kingdom comprising the whole of Upper India, Kabul, Kashmir, Bihar, Bengal, Orissa and a great part of the Deccan.