SRIJASSA SINGH BINOD, manuscript dealing with the career of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluvalia (1718-83), a prominent Sikh warrior of the eighteenth century and founder of the erstwhile state of Kapurthala in the Punjab, was written by Ram Sukh Rao at the instance of Sardar Fateh Singh, ruler of Kapurthala from 1801 to 1836. The manuscript, formerly the property of Kapurthala state, is now held in the Punjab State Archives, Patiala, at MS. accession No. M/772. It consists of 250 folios, size 22x16 cm, each containing 16 lines. Not much is known about the author, Ram Sukh Rao, except that he was a Brahman, who had worked as a tutor in the Kapurthala family and who was rewarded with a.jagir, i.e. land grant, after his ward Fateh Singh`s accession to the throne.
TARA SINGH, BHAI, the eighteenth century Sikh martyr, was a Buttar Jatt of the village Van, popularly known as Dallvan because of its proximity to another village called Dall, in present day Amritsar district of the Punjab. His father, Gurdas Singh, had received the rites of the Khalsa in the time of Guru Gobind Singh, and had taken part in the battle of Amritsar (6 April 1709), in which Bhai Mani Singh led the Sikhs and in which Har Sahai, a revenue official of Patti, was killed at his (Gurdas Singh`s) hands.
UMDAT UTTWARIKH, lit. the choicest of histories, by Sohan Lal Suri, is a chronicle, in Persian, primarily of the reigns of Ranjit Singh and his successors. The original manuscript, in five volumes in shikastah hand, consisted of some 7,000 pages. A lithographed edition of the work was brought out, in 1880, by the author`s descendants, under the auspices of the Panjab University College, Lahore. The Registrar of the College, G.W. Leitner, had in fact taken the manuscript with him to the International Congress of Orientalists (1879) held at Florence where it was put on display :the manuscript was then returned to Harbhagvan Das, the grandson of the author, from whom it had been borrowed.
VIR SINGH. BHAI (1872-1957), poet, scholar and exegete, was a major figure in the Sikh renaissance and in the movement for the revival and renewal of Punjabi literary tradition. His identification with all the important concerns of modern Sikhism was so complete that he came to be canonized as Bhai, the Brother of the Sikh Order, very early in his career. For his pioneering work in its several different genres, he is acknowledged as the creator of modern Punjabi literature. Born on 5 December 1872, in Amritsar, Bhai Vir Singh was the eldest of Dr Charan Singh`s three sons.
AKHBAR LUDHIANA, a weekly newspaper in Persian sponsored by the British North-West Frontier Agency at Ludhiana in November 1834. The paper, a four page sheet initially, but doubling its size within two years, started printing at the American Missionary Press, Ludhiana, shifting to the Pashauri Mall Press, Ludhiana, in June 1841. Three years later it ceased publication. It had a small circulation mainly determined by the requirements of the East India Company\'s government. The name of the editor or subscription rates were nowhere mentioned. The Akhbar carried news furnished by English news printers from various parts of the Punjab.