Ranjit Singh and The Sikh Barrier Between Our Growing Empire and Central Asia

'a Then came the war with the English in which the Sikhs badly led displayed the utmost gallantry in vain ; ending in the occupation of the Punjab by a foreign army dismemberment and finally annexation: As Ran* Singh had often prophesied the red line marking the limit of British possessions moved on from the Sutlej to the Beas thence to the Indus and the Afghan mountains and all that remain [...] Al-INTRODUCTORY 17 thougthe hands of the English were clean in the matter of the Sikh wars and in the annexation of the Punjab which were forced unwillingly upon them by the fierce and uncontrolled passions of the Sikh chiefs and people yet there can be little doubt that even if the contest with the English had been delayed and the successors of Ranjit Singh had clung as he did to the Bri [...] The Manjha is the name of the southern portion of the Bari Dogb (the word dofib signifying a tract of country between two rivers here the Beas and the Ravi) in the neighbourhood of the cities of Lahore anAmritsar ; and the Manjha Sikh's by a convenient enlargement of the terms may be held to include all those who at the time of the final dissolution of the Muhammadan power were resident to [...] IfT SINGH was so completely a prduct of the Sikh theocracy and so embodied the spirit of the Khalsa that no account of his character and career would be complete without a description of the religious system which had so powerful an effect upon the Rd cultivators of the Punjab in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. [...] Over this cetain verses from the Japji of the Grant& were recited and the neophyte drank a portion the rest being sprinkled on his head and body while the baptizer and the disciple shouted Wah ! Guruji ka Kitlase (Victory to the Khalsa of the Guru) ' The name of the new Sikh Commonwealth the Khcilsa is THE SIKH THEOCRACY 47 After Guru Govind had baptized his five disciples a number signifi