Writings by non-Sikhs on Sikhs and Punjab

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.

GURU GOBINDA SINGHA, by Basanta Kumar Banerjee, is a biography in Bengali of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth spiritual teacher of the Sikh faith. According to the author\'s statement, the book is an enlarged version of a chapter on the Tenth Guru in his book Sikh Guru. However, neither the Sikh Gurunor the Sikh Gharitra which he claims to have written is extant today. Guru Gobinda Singha, first published in 1909 and later translated into Hindi and English, begins with a general review of the political and religious conditions of the Punjab on the eve of the rise of Sikhism.

PANJAB ON THE EVE OF FIRST SIKH WAR, edited by Hari Ram Gupta, comprises abstracts of letters written daily by British intelligencers mainly from Lahore during the period 30 December 1843 to 31 October 1844. These newsletters constitute an important primary source on the period they pertain to. Maharaja Duleep Singh, then a minor, sat on the throne of the Punjab, with Hira Singh as his Wazir. The reports provide information about the power Hira Singh exercised, the activities of his adviser, Pandit Jalla, external policies of the Lahore kingdom and the state of the Sikh army.

SIKH YUDDHER ITIHAS O MAHARAJA DULEEP SINGH, by Barodakanta Mitra, is a brief narrative in Bengali of the fall of the Sikh kingdom and of the career of the deposed sovereign Duleep Singh. Published in Calcutta in AD 1893, the monograph made use of the official records and other primary sources, besides relying heavily on a number of secondary works such as those of Cunningham, Bell, Smyth and Stein bach. Broadly, the volume can be divided into two sections, the first dealing with the Anglo Sikh wars which, in the opinion of the author, marked the "most decisive event" in the nineteenth century history of India, and the second devoted to the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh.

TRUMPP S TRANSLATION OF PORTIONS OF THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB, first published in 1877 under the title The Adi Granth, was the earliest attempt at rendering the Scripture of the Sikhs into another language. The translator, Dr Ernest Trumpp (1828-85), an eminent linguist proficient in several languages, western as well as eastern, was born on 13 March 1828 at Ilsfeldt, a village in Wurtemberg province of Germany. In 1849, owing to political disturbances in his country, he migrated to London where he was employed as assistant librarian at the East India House, later known as India Office.

AMIR ULIMLA, also known as MUNTAKHAB ULHAQA`IQ, a collection of miscellaneous letters, in Persian script, mostly of Sikh chiefs of the Punjab addressed to one another on subjects relating to private and public affairs. Compiled by Amir Chand in A.H. 1209 (ADi 794-95), the manuscript comprises 127 folios and 247 letters and is preserved in the Oriental section of the British Library, London. On folio 125 of the manuscript is recorded a note referring to one Imanullah as its owner, implying that this is perhaps not the original copy prepared by Amir Chand.

HISAB I AFWAJ MAHARAJA RANJIT SINGH, Persian MS. No. 622, in the Oriental Public (Khuda Bux) Library, Patna, is a manual of the accounts of Maharaja Ranjit Singh\'s army. It is a highly illuminated manuscript with gold ruled borders, size 12"x 71/s" 477 folios, written in mixed shikasld and nasta fiq, with equivalents of essential details, especially the figures, given in Gurmukhi. The anonymous author gives no date of its completion. The work provides information concerning Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s military administration recruitment, equipment, scales of pay, organization and composition of the different branches of the Sikh army and its accounts.

PARAS BHAG is an adaptation into Sadh Bhakha, in Gurmukhi script, of Abu Hamid Muhammad al Ghazzali`s Kimid iSa`ddat, an abridged edition in Urdu of his Ihyd ul Ulum, in Arabic. The work was first published in 1876. Several of the manuscript copies prior to that date are still in circulation. An edition in Devanagari script was brought out in 1929. The question as to who adapted the work into Bhakha and when has not been fully resolved. According to one tradition, the version in Gurmukhi characters was prepared towards the close of the seventeenth century at Anandpur by Sayyid Badr ud Din of Sadhaura at the instance of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708).

SIKHS AND AFGHANS, THE, by Munshi Shahamat `All, the Journal of an expedition to Kabul through the Punjab and die Khaibar Pass in 1838-39 kept by the author, who accompanied Colonel Wade and Shahzada Taimur, Shah Shuja`s eldest son, with an auxiliary force under a treaty made in 1838 between three parties the British, Afghans and the Sikhs.

TWARIKHIAHMADI, or Tarikhi Ahmad, is a book written by Abdul Karim Alavi and published by Mustafai Press, Lucknow, in 1850. Alavi was a prolific writer and his works include besides many translations from Arabic into Persian, the Tarikhi Ahmad which became the most popular of his works and was translated into Urdu under the title Waqiati Durraniand published by Nizami Press, Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in 1875. The style is simple and lucid and not cumbersome and he refrained from ornate phraseology to praise Ahmad Shah Durrani for his achievements. He did not use derogatory language against the opponents of Ahmad Shah Durrani, and narrated the events faithfully.