PREFACE
In writing this sketch of the life and times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh I have made large and frequent use of my former works on the cognate subjects; The Punjab Chiefs, The Rajas of the Punjab, and The Law of Inheritance to Sikh Chiefships. On these books several years of my official life, and several subsequent years of such leisure as belongs to Indian officials, were employed. They contain in full detail the histories of all the great Sikh families in the Punjab proper and the Cis-Sutlej territories, of the men who were the courtiers, the advisers, and generals of the great Maharaja. There was no noble family in the province with which I was not personally acquainted, and from their records and information, as much as from official manuscripts and documents, the history of the time was compiled. It is thus obvious that I am compelled to plagiarize from myself. To Dr. Ernest Trumpp's work on the Adi Granth, I am indebted for some portion of the information contained in the Chapter on The Sikh Theocracy, and to Mr. Denzil Ibbetson's admirable Census Report of 1881, for certain statistics and deductions therefrom.
