BENTINCK, LORD WILLIAM CAVENDISH (1774-1839), Governor General of India, son of William Henry, third duke of Portland, was born on 14 September 1774. In 1803, he was appointed governor of Madras, but recalled in 1807 in consequence of the sepoy mutiny at Vellore. In 1827, Bentinck succeeded Lord Amherst as

DAKKHANI RAI (d. 1815), a sixth generation descendant of Baba Prithi Chand, the elder brother of Guru Arjan, who had founded an Udasi dera or preaching centre of the Udasi sect at Gharachon, a village in present day Sarigrur district of the Punjab. The rulers of Patiala granted him

HUMAYUN, NASIR UDDIN MUHAMMAD (1508-1556), Mughal emperor of India, was born at Kabul on 6 March 1508, the eldest of the four sons of ZahTr udDin Muhammad Babar. Humayuri succeeded Babar to the throne of Delhi in December 1530 at the age of 23, but his reign was beset with

JAGIASI, also Jagiasu orJijnasu is a religious sect cognate with the UdasT section of the NanakpanthTs of Sindh. The word jagidsd is derived from Sanskrit jijndsd (desire to know), jagidsi denoting one desirous of knowledge, of spiritual insight. T`.ic members of the Jagiasi sect are mostly sahajdhdns i.e. gradualists, believing

LEIGH, WILLIAM, an Irish adventurer, who while serving with the 19th Light Dragoons in Bombay, shot down, in 1803, his captain and fled his unit. He travelled in the remote parts of Sindh and Afghanistan. In Khorasan he embraced Islam and adopted the name of Muhammad Khan. He came

POTTINGER, SIR HENRY (1789-1856), soldier and diplomat, son of Eldred Curwen Pottinger, was born on 3 Ocober 1789. He obtained a cadetship in the Indian army in 1804. During 1809-11, he explored the country between Persia and India travelling incognito. He reported the results of his journey which were published

TRIPARTITE TREATY (June 1838). As the rumours of Russian infiltration into Persia and Afghanistan spread in the late thirties of the nineteenth century, the Governor General, Lord Auckland, despatched Captain Alexander Burnes to Kabul to make an alliance with Amir Dost Muhammad. The Afghan ruler made Peshawar the price of