Dard, Hira Singh, an eminent story writer, wrote with a reformatory attitude. He indirectly preached certain reforms keeping in view the realistic side of life. His story \'Rakhri\'1 is of this nature. The character, of the quarrelsome, rude and unlettered Rukmani—the heroine—making her home a hell and over hen-pecked nature of Daroga Prem Nath—the hero—are god realistic i portrayals but at the same time there is a implied suggestion of needed reform in both of them. His famous story \'Pir Gahlur Shah\' is a fine satire on the religious but blind faith of those people who, being uneducated, repose full faith in the hypocritical preachers.
FATUHAT NAMAH-I-SAMADI, an unpublished Persian manuscript preserved in the British Library, London, under No. Or. 1870, is an account of the victories of `Abd us-Samad Khan. Nawab Saifud Daulah `Abd usSamad Khan Bahadur Diler Jang was appointed governor of the Punjab by the Mughal Emperor Farrukh-SIyar on 22 February 1713, with the specific object of suppressing the Sikhs who had risen under Banda Singh commissioned by Guru Gobind Singh himself, shortly before his death, to chastise the tyrannical rulers of Punjab and Sirhind.

ADVENTURES OF AN OFFICER IN THE PUNJAB (2 vols.) by Major H. M. L. Lawrence, under the pseudonym of Bellasis, published in AD 1846 by Henry Colburn, London, and reprinted in 1970 by the Languages Department, Punjab, Patiala. The book which is a rambling account, half fact half fiction, of the author`s adventures, provides information about the rise of the Sikhs and about the person and government of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. This is "a dose of history, which the reader may read or not, as he pleases" (p. 236), mixed with scandal and bazaar gossip.