when he lay dying of a wound received in the unsuccessful storm of Náráyangarh. The chief is said to have counselled him never to appoint any Ját Sikh to a position of authority about the court, but to confine them to military service. Whether the story be true or not it is certain that the Mahárájá observed the principle and, while his bravest officers and generals were Játs, in the council he gave his confidence to Bráhmans, Rájputs, Muhammadans: or even to Khattrís, like Diwán Sáwan Mall. As it was then so it is at the present time. Two generations of British rule have not modified in any essential particular the character of the Ját Sikhs. They are still as impatient of education, as slow witted, as simple in their habits and ideas as when Ranjít Singh formed them, for a few years, into the semblance of a nation.
The most conspicuous figure in the eyes of foreigners visiting the court of the Mahárájá was Fakír Azizuddin, his Foreign Minister. He, with his brothers Nuruddin and Imamuddin, was descended from a Muhammadan family of Bokhára of great respectability, and in that country many of his descendants still reside. His father, Ghulám Mohaiuddin, was a clever medical practitioner. In 1799 the principal Lahore physician, with whom Azizuddin was studying, placed the youth in attendance on Ranjít Singh, when that chief, soon after his capture of Lahore, was suffering from ophthalmia. The skill and attention of the young doctor won the chief's
