rounding it being allotted to Rájá Ala Singh. Ahmad Sháh, who returned the following year, made no attempt to recover Sirhind or appoint another governor, but accepting the logic of events assigned the district to Ala Singh on payment of an annual tribute[1].
Thus the Sikhs, both by their defeat and their victory, acquired a status which they did not before possess, and had they known how to put aside private jealousies and unite habitually as they had done for the conquest of Sirhind, they would have become as formidable and irresistible in North India as the Maráthás in the South and West. But the democratic nature of the Sikh faith, responding to the natural sentiment of the people, resisted all attempts at dictation by one central authority, until Mahárájá Ranjít Singh broke down opposition and reduced rivals and enemies to a common obedience.
The history of Sikh development between this year 1762 and the birth of Ranjít Singh in 1780, or rather to the death of his father Mahán Singh and his own succession to the headship of the Sukarchakia misl in 1791, a period of great importance and interest, must be studied elsewhere[2]. All that
- ↑ The Rájás of the Punjab.
- ↑ The only works in which the history of this period has been treated in detail are my Punjab Chiefs and Rájá of the Punjab. In the first the full account of the various misls north of the Sutlej will be found under such heads as the Rámgarhias, the Bhangis, the Kanheyas; while the second is the history of the Phúlkian and Ahluwalia misls.
