LAKKHI MALL, DIWAN (d. 1844), an official of the Lahore Government in the Indus territories, which included Dera Ismail Khan, annexed by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1836. Lakkhi Mall`s charge also included Bannu which the Sikhs had occupied in 1825. In January 1844 Diwan Lakkhi Mall led an expedition

METCALFE, SIR CHARLES THEOPHILUS (1785-1846), diplomat and provisional Governor General of India, son of Thomas Theophilus Matcalfc, a director of the East India Company, was born in Calcutta, on 30 January 1785. He started his career as a writer in the service of the East India Company. He was appointed

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

PANJAB SINGH NALVA (d. 1854), son of the famous Sikh general, Hari Singh Nalva, served in the army under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his successors. He received a sum of Rs 5,400 towards his patrimony after the death of his father. He also served under Maharaja Kharak Singh, and

PREM SINGH HOTI, BABA (1882-1954), historian and biographer, was born on 2 November 1882 at Hoti, near Mardan, in North-West Frontier Province, now part of Pakistan. His father Ganda Singh, a man of means, traced his ancestry back to Bhalla family of Goindval, in Amritsar district, to which noted Sikh

RAM DIAL, DIWAN (1798-1820), a general in the Sikh army, was the eldest son of Diwan Moti Ram. He is said to have become a divisional commaner at the age of 16. In 1814, during the second expedition of Kashmir, he had independent command of a force of 30,000

SANSAR CHAND (1765-1823), Katoch Rajput Raja of Kangra who ascended the throne in 1775. He was an ambitious ruler and began extending his influence over the neighbouring hill states as well as over the plains lying at the foot of the Sivalik ranges. He came as far as Hoshiarpur

SULTAN MAHMUD KHAN (d. 1859) , son of General Ghaus Khan, was a commander of a section of heavy artillery during the regime of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. His derah of artillery was designated as Topkhanai Sultan Mahmud. After the death of General Ghaus Khan in 1814, although the chief command

VIJAI VINOD, also called Bijay Binod, is an account of the events at Lahore Darbar after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. This work was composed in 1844 by Gval, the court poet at Lahore Darbar, at the orders of Pandit Jalla, the mentor and most influential adviser of

AJIT SINGH SANDHANVALIA (d. 1843), son of Basava Singh Sandharivalia, was a leading actor in the gruesome drama of intrigue and murder enacted in the Sikh kingdom following the passing away of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. One of the younger generation of the Sandharivalias, he outstripped his uncles, Atar Singh

ARMY OF MAHARAJA RANJIT SINGH, a formidable military machine that helped the Maharaja carve out an extensive kingdom and maintain it amid hostile and ambitious neighbours, was itself the creation of his own genius. His inheritance was but a scanty force which, in the manner of the Sikh misldari days,

BHAGAT RAM, BAKHSHI (1799-1865), son of Baisakhi Ram, a small moneychanger in the city of Lahore, joined the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1818 at the age of nineteen as a writer in the treasury office under Misr Belt Ram, the chief to shakhama or keeper of the