CHAPTER VIII
His Early Conquests
Mahárájá Ranjít Singh was the son of Sirdár Mahán Singh, the enterprising and unscrupulous leader of the Sukarchakia confederacy, and was born in the year 1780. His family was of the Ját Sánsi tribe, nearly related to the Sindhanwalias who were, at the time of Ranjít Singh's death, the most powerful of all the Sikh nobles north of the Beas, and who still take highest rank in the Punjab, although they now number no distinguished men in their ranks. The Sindhanwalias claim, like most other Sikhs, a Rájput descent, but they have also a close connection with the thievish and degraded tribe of Sánsis, after which their ancestral home, Rájá Sánsi, five miles from the city of Amritsar, is named.
The founder of the Sukarchakia and Sindhanwaha family was a bold and successful robber, Budha Singh, who, on his famous piebald mare Desi, was the terror of the country side. He was wounded some forty times by spear, matchlock or sword, and died at last in his bed, like an honest man, in the year
