WADE, SIR CLAUDE MARTINE (1794-1861), soldier and diplomat, son of Lt.Col Joseph Wade of the Bengal army, was born on 3 April 1794. He joined the Bengal army in 1809 and was promoted lieutenant in 1815. He served in operations against Scindia and Holkar, and the Pindaris (1815-19) and officiated

BENET, a Frenchma n, was one of the European physicians at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He arrived at Lahore in 1838, and was given employment as a personal physician to the Maharaja and surgeon general to the Khalsa army on a monthly salary of Rs 1,000. After

MACKESON, FREDERICK (1807-1853), son of William and Harriet Mackeson, was born on 28 September 1807, and educated at the King\'s School, Canterbury, and in France. In 1825, he joined the Bengal Native Infantry. In 1831, and for several years afterwards, his regiment was stationed at Ludhiana. In 1832, he was

WAFA BEGAM, the senior wife of Shah Shuja, the king of Kabul, who after the dethronement of her husband came in February 1810 to Lahore where the Sikh sovereign, Ranjit Singh, made arrangements for her reception and accommodation suiting her status. In 1812, Shah Shuja fell into the hands

BHANDARI PAPERS, a large collection of sundry papers, letters and documents preserved in the Punjab State Archives, Patiala, and named after the collector, Rai Indarjit Singh Bhandari of Batala. Little is known about the life of Indarjit Singh beyond a conjecture based upon some of the letters in the collection

MAGGHAR SINGH, SANT (1890-1924). Sikh divine who attracted a local following, came of a Bhullar Jatt family of Ramgarh village, near Jagraon, in Ludhiana district of the Punjab. His grandfather had died fighting against the British in the battle of \'Alival (28 January 1846) during the first Anglo-Sikh war.

Baba Bohar (The Old Banyan Tree) is a poetic play, a long monologue. A tree personified is in conversation with the children who are playing under it; it starts with the contemporary situation in Punjab and goes back to elaborating its glorious past from the time of the Sikh Gurus

MAHARAJ SINGH BHAI (d. 1856), a saintly person turned revolutionary who led an anti-British movement in the Punjab after the first Anglo-Sikh war, was born Nihal Singh at the village of Rabbon, in Ludhiana district. He had a religious bent of mind and came under the influence of Bhai

DEVA SINGH NAROTAM, PANDIT (d. 1924), Nirmala scholar, was the son of Mahitab Singh of the village of Janetpura, 13 km north of Jagraori (30° 47`N, 75° 28`E), in Ludhiana district of the Punjab. He received his early lessons in the Sikh texts at the hands of Bhai Gurdit

DHARAM SINGH, a cousin of the celebrated Tara Singh Ghaiba of the Dallevalia Misi, participated in the campaigns of the Khalsa, fighting against Mughals and Afghans in the second half of the eighteenth century. He figured in the conquest of Sirhind and partition of the territory by Sikhs in

MURRAY, Dr, a British physician attached to 4th Native Infantry, who was in 1836 sent from Ludhiana to Lahore by the British for Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s treatment after he had suffered a stroke of paralysis. During his 8 months` stay in Lahore, Murray found it difficult to persuade the Maharaja