Tempo:
HISTORY OF THE SIKHS
92 1762-3.
great defeat of the Sikhs near Ludhiana, Feb. 1762.
Alha
Singh
of Patiala.
Kabuli Mai governor of Lahore.
Ahmad Shah ret res after
committing various excesses,
of
end
1762.
The Sikhs continue to increase in strength.
Kasur plundered.
The Afghans defeated,
Dec.
1763.
CHAP. IV
pursuit as they had been ardent in the attack. The Sikhs are variously reported to have lost from twelve to twenty-five thousand men, and the rout is still familiarly known as the 'Ghulu Ghara', or great disaster.^ Alha Singh, the founder of the present family of Patiala, was among the prisoners, but his manly deportment pleased the warlike king, and the conqueror may not have been insensible to the policy of widening the difference between a Malwa and a Manjha Singh. He was declared a raja of the state and dismissed with honour. The Shah had an interview at Sirhind with his ally or dependent, Najib-ud-daula; he made a Hindu, named Kabuli Mai, his governor of Lahore, and then hastened towards Kandahar to suppress an insurrection in that distant quarter; but he first gratified his own resentment, and indulged the savage bigotry of his followers, by destroying the renewed temples jf Amritsar, by polluting the pool with slaughtered cows, by encasing numerous pyramids with the heads of decapitated Sikhs, and by cleansing, the walls of desecrated mosques with the blood of his infidel enemies.^
The Sikhs were not cast down; they received daily accessions to their numbers; a vague feeling that they were a people had arisen among them; all were bent on revenge, and their leaders were ambitious of dominion and of fame. Their first efforts were directed against the Pathan colony of Kasur, which place they took and plundered, and they then fell upon and slew their old enemy Hinghan Khan of Maler Kotla. They next marched towards Sirhind, and the court of Delhi was incapable of raising an arm in support of Muhammadanism. Zain Khan, the Afghan governor, gave battle to the true or probable number of 40,000 Sikhs in the rhonth of December 1763, but he was defeated and slain, and the plains of Sirhind, from the Sutlej to the Jumna, were occupied by the victors without further opposition. Tradition still describes how the Sikhs dispersed as soon as the battle was won, and how, riding day and night, each horseman would throw his belt and scabbard, his articles of dress and accoutrement, until he was almost naked, into successive 1 The scene of the fight lay between Gujerwal and Bernala, perhaps twenty miles south from Ludhiana. Hmgham Khan, of Maler Kotla, seems to have guided the Shah. Cf. Browne, Tracts, ii. 23; Forster, Travels, i. 319; and Murray, Ranjit Singh, np. 23, 25. The action appears to have been fought in February
1762. -
p. 25.
Cf. Forster,
Travels,
i.
320:
and Murray, Ranjit Singh, t
92 1762-3.
great defeat of the Sikhs near Ludhiana, Feb. 1762.
Alha
Singh
of Patiala.
Kabuli Mai governor of Lahore.
Ahmad Shah ret res after
committing various excesses,
of
end
1762.
The Sikhs continue to increase in strength.
Kasur plundered.
The Afghans defeated,
Dec.
1763.
CHAP. IV
pursuit as they had been ardent in the attack. The Sikhs are variously reported to have lost from twelve to twenty-five thousand men, and the rout is still familiarly known as the 'Ghulu Ghara', or great disaster.^ Alha Singh, the founder of the present family of Patiala, was among the prisoners, but his manly deportment pleased the warlike king, and the conqueror may not have been insensible to the policy of widening the difference between a Malwa and a Manjha Singh. He was declared a raja of the state and dismissed with honour. The Shah had an interview at Sirhind with his ally or dependent, Najib-ud-daula; he made a Hindu, named Kabuli Mai, his governor of Lahore, and then hastened towards Kandahar to suppress an insurrection in that distant quarter; but he first gratified his own resentment, and indulged the savage bigotry of his followers, by destroying the renewed temples jf Amritsar, by polluting the pool with slaughtered cows, by encasing numerous pyramids with the heads of decapitated Sikhs, and by cleansing, the walls of desecrated mosques with the blood of his infidel enemies.^
The Sikhs were not cast down; they received daily accessions to their numbers; a vague feeling that they were a people had arisen among them; all were bent on revenge, and their leaders were ambitious of dominion and of fame. Their first efforts were directed against the Pathan colony of Kasur, which place they took and plundered, and they then fell upon and slew their old enemy Hinghan Khan of Maler Kotla. They next marched towards Sirhind, and the court of Delhi was incapable of raising an arm in support of Muhammadanism. Zain Khan, the Afghan governor, gave battle to the true or probable number of 40,000 Sikhs in the rhonth of December 1763, but he was defeated and slain, and the plains of Sirhind, from the Sutlej to the Jumna, were occupied by the victors without further opposition. Tradition still describes how the Sikhs dispersed as soon as the battle was won, and how, riding day and night, each horseman would throw his belt and scabbard, his articles of dress and accoutrement, until he was almost naked, into successive 1 The scene of the fight lay between Gujerwal and Bernala, perhaps twenty miles south from Ludhiana. Hmgham Khan, of Maler Kotla, seems to have guided the Shah. Cf. Browne, Tracts, ii. 23; Forster, Travels, i. 319; and Murray, Ranjit Singh, np. 23, 25. The action appears to have been fought in February
1762. -
p. 25.
Cf. Forster,
Travels,
i.
320:
and Murray, Ranjit Singh, t
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