RAI SINGH, son of Lakhmir Singh of Amritsar and a leader of the Bharigi family, captured, together with his brother Bagh Singh, 204 villages around Buria after the sack of Sirhind by the Sikhs in January 1764. Eighty-four of these villages including Jagadhari and Dialgarh fell to the share of Rai Singh. Jagadhari had been completely ruined by Nadir Shah. Rai Singh invited traders and artisans to settle there and they turned it into a flourishing town. Rai Singh also controlled Haridvar and received considerable income from the city at the time of fairs and festivals. The state of Garhval was tributary to him as well.
DHARAM SINGH, a cousin of the celebrated Tara Singh Ghaiba of the Dallevalia Misi, participated in the campaigns of the Khalsa, fighting against Mughals and Afghans in the second half of the eighteenth century. He figured in the conquest of Sirhind and partition of the territory by Sikhs in January 1764 when he occupied a cluster of villages and founded amid them his own Dharamsinghvala.
RAKHI SYSTEM, the arrangement whereby the Dal Khalsa during the middecades of the eighteenth century established their sway over territories not under their direct occupation. Rakhi, lit. `protection` or `vigilance,` referred to the cess levied by the Dal Khalsa upon villages which sought their protection against aggression or molestation in those disturbed times. The establishment of Dal Khalsa in 1748 coincided with the first of a series of invasions by Ahmad Shah Durrani which further weakened the already crumbling administration of the Mughals.
GURBAKHSH SINGH KALSIA (d. 1785), a leading figure in the Karor Singhia misi of the Sikhs, was a Sandhu Jatt, belonging to the village of Kalsia in Lahore district. He received Sikh initiatory rites at the hands of the revered Bhai Mani Singh at Amritsar in the time of Nawab Zakariya Khan of Lahore. As a mark of mutual friendliness, he exchanged turbans with Karora Singh, the Karor Singhia misi chief, and participated in several expeditions of the Dal Khalsa At the time of the conquest of Sirhind in January 1764, he seized the parganah of Chhachhrauli, now in Jagadhari tahsll of Haryana, comprising 114 villages, and founded an independent principality called Kalsia after the name of his native village.
SADDA SINGH was the son of Hazuri Singh, an Uppal Khatri owing allegiance to the Karorsinghia misi, who lived at Panjgarh in Amritsar district. Sadda Singh, whose father was the first in the family to receive the rites of the Khalsa, took up military service under Raja Amar Singh of Patiala in 1770, receiving as his reward a quarter share in 48 of the villages in the neighborhood of Dhanaura, in Ambala district. He afterwards conquered seven villages on his own account and established his headquarters at Dhanaura. He was succeeded to his estates by his nephew, Sahib Singh.
