BHAI RUPA, village 18 km north of Rampura Phul (30° 16`N, 75° 14`E) in Bathinda district of the Punjab, celebrates the name of a prominent Sikh, Bhai Rupa(Rup Chand, 1614-1709), who laid the foundation of it in 1631 at the instance of Guru Hargobind. Next to Bhai Rupa`s house was

BUDDHA SINGH (d. 1718), great great grand father of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was the founder of the Sukkarchakkia family. One of his ancestors, Bhara Mall, who lived in the village of Sukkarchakk, in Gujranwala district, now in Pakistan, had been initiated into the Sikh faith by the Seventh Guru,

CHHOTA MARVA, a village about 6 km to the west of Bilaspur in Ambala district of Haryana, has a historical shrine known as Gurdwara Golpur Sahib dedicated to Guru Gobind Singh. While at Kapal Mochan near Bilaspur in 1688, Guru Gobind Singh often went out on the chase. During one

DHANNA SINGH MALVAI (1775-1843), soldier and jagirdar under Ranjit Singh, belonged to the village of Maur in Nabha territory. Mall Singh, Dhanna Singh`s father, who was the first in the family to be initiated a Sikh, left his village about 1760 and entered the service of Charhat Singh Sukkarchakkia

GARHI NAZIR, a village 3 km to the southeast of Samana (30°11`N, 76°11`E), is the site of an historical Sikh shrine called Gurdwara Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Patshahi 9. From Samana, Guru Tegh Bahadur, for whose arrest an imperial troop had been patrolling the countryside, was escorted by Muhammad

GULAB SINGH GHOLIA, SANT (1853-1936), Sikh saint and scholar, was born in 1853 to Bhai Dal Singh and Dharam Kaur of Bhattivala, a village 6 km south of Bhavamgarh, in the present Sarigrur district of the Punjab. He received his early education in the village dharamsald, and then spent five

HIMMAT SINGH JALLEVALIA (d. 1829), son of Chaudhan Gulab Rai, a Bairis Jatt of Mahalpur, in present day Hoshiarpur district of the Punjab, joined the Sikh forces which conquered Sirhind province in 1764, and secured for himself the village of Jalla, whence the family derived its cognomen of Jallevalia.

KARTAR SINGH DAKHA, PANDIT (1888-1958), scholar, grammarian and theologian, was born the son of Ram Singh on 13 September 1888 at Dakha, a village 16 km southwest of Ludhiana along the Ludhiana Firozpur highway. After receiving elementary education in his village, lie was admitted to Khalsa Collegiate School, Amritsar,

KIKKAR SINGH, PAHILVAN (1857-1914). wrestler of legendary fame, was born on 13 January 1857 to Javala Singh Sandhu and Sahib Kaur, a farming couple of moderate means living in the village of Ghameke, in Lahore district (now in Pakistan). Javala Singh, himself a wrestler, wished his only son to train

MADDAR, village five kilometre north of Balloke head works in Pakistan, was known to Sikhs in prepartition Punjab for its Gurdwara Sachchi Manji and some relics of the Gurus it claimed to preserve. One of these was a cot (manji, in Punjabi, after which the Gurdwara was named), said to

MARDANA, BHAI (1459-1534), Guru Nanak`s longtime Muslim companion throughout his extensive journeys across the country and abroad, was born the son of a Mirasi (a caste of hereditary minstrels and genealogists) couple, Badra and Lakkho, of Talvandi Rai Bhoe, now Nankana Sahib, in Shcikhupura district of Pakistan. Guru Nanak

MUNIARPUR, a small village in Kurukshetra district of Haryana, 13 km east of Thanesar (29°58`N, 76°50`E) is sacred to the memory of Guru Tegh Bahadur who stayed here for a night while on his way from Kurukshetra to Duddhi and Bani Badarpur. A low platform was erected on the