was not ashamed to parade, very drunk, on an elephant, during the Holi festival, with Morán by his side. She obtained a grant of Firozpur, and sent troops to reduce it, though without success; and coins, with her name and effigy, were struck in caricature of the East India Company which, in popular Indian belief, was a woman.
Another woman who rose to fame, or rather to notoriety, after the death of the great Mahárájá, was Jindan, the reputed mother of Mahárájá Dhulíp Singh. She was the daughter of Manna Singh, a trooper in the service of the palace, and as a clever mimic and dancer she attracted the notice of the old Mahárájá and was taken into the zenána, where her open intrigues caused astonishment even in the easy Lahore Court. A menial servant, a water-carrier, of the name of Gulu, was generally accepted as the father of Dhulíp Singh. At any rate, the father was not Mahárájá Ranjít Singh, who was paralysed several years before the birth of the child. Nor did he ever marry Jindan by formal or informal marriage. Many believed that Dhulíp Singh was not born of Jindan at all; but was brought into the palace to favour an intrigue of the Jammu Rájás, Ghuláb Singh and Dhyán Singh, who required a child to put forward when all the other possible heirs, real or reputed, of the Mahárájá should have perished; and it is certain that Jindan and the child were for some time sheltered at Jammu and only produced at a convenient time. However this may be, in the wild anarchy which
