ZAFARNAMAH-I-RANJIT SINGH (A Chronicle of the Victories of Ranjit Singh), by Diwan Amar Nath, is a contemporary account in Persian of the events of Maharaja Ranjit Singh\'s reign from AD 1800 to AD 1837. Amar Nath, born in 1822, was the son of Diwan Dina Nath, the Maharaja\'s finance

AKHBAR-I-DARBAR-I-MAHARAJA RANJIT SINGH, also called Akhbari Deorhi Sardar Ranjit Singh Bahadur, is a set of Persian manuscripts comprising 193 loose sheets of unequal size and containing, as the title indicates, news of the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839). These sheets are believed to be newsletters sent from the Punjab

ATA MUHAMMAD KHAN BARAKZAI, son of Painda Khan Barakzai, became the governor of Kashmir in 1809. When Shah Shuja`, the king of Afghanistan, was dethroned, he fled towards the Punjab. At Attock he was captured by the governor, Jaharidad Khan. who sent him to Kashmir to be handed over

BHAVANI DAS, DlWAN (1770-1834), was the son of Diwan Thakur Das, revenue and finance minister of the Afghan king, Ahmad Shah Durrani. Bhavani Das succeeded to the position after the death of his father and served successively Shah Zaman, Shah Mahmud and Shah Shuja` until 1808 when Maharaja Ranjit

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

DEVA SINGH, SIR (1834-1890), a highranking Patiala state administrator, was born in 1834 into an Arora Sikh family, the son of Colonel Khushal Singh, a brave soldier who had once killed a tiger (sher, in Punjabi) near one of the city gates conferring upon it the name Sheranvala which lasts

FATEH SINGH CHHACHHI (d. 1814), son of Tahal Singh Chhachhi, a Kohli Khatri belonging to Gujranwala district in the Punjab, served under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He fought in the campaigns launched by the Maharaja for the conquest of Pind Dadan Khan, Pindi Gheb and Jhang and obtained considerable addition

GUISE, WALTER (d. 1857), tutor to Maharaja Duleep Singh from 1850 to 1853 at Fatehgarh in present day Uttar Pradesh to which place the young prince had been taken by the British after the occupation of the Punjab. In contemporary records,he has been described as "a very good fellow, patient

HIRA SINGH DOGRA (1816-1844), prime minister of the Sikh kingdom of Lahore from 17 September 1843 to 21 December 1844, was born the eldest son of Raja Dhian Singh in 1816 at Ramgarh, about 25 km from Jammu. Dhian Singh, an influential courtier, introduced his son to his patron

JAI SINGH ATARIVALA (d. 1838), son of Wazir Singh, was a soldier and jdgirddr during Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s reign. About 1820, he was sent on a mission to Peshawar where, much to the chagrin of the Maharaja, he cultivated treacherously friendly relations with Dost Muhammad Khan, the Barak/ai chief

JIND KAUR, MAHARANI (1817-1863), popularly known as Jindari, was wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and mother of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh sovereign of the Punjab. She was daughter of Manna Singh, an Aulakh Jail of Gujrariwala, who held an humble position at the court as an overseer

KHURSHUID KHALSA (Khurshid, lit, tlie sun rays of tlie sun) is a book in Urdu pertaining to the history of the Sikhs from the time of Guru Nanak published at Aftabi Hind Press in Lahore in 1885. The book caused a considerable amount of controversy in contemporary Sikhism. Already riven