Lehal Library

148 The Agrarian Uprising to come to their rescue. The Afghans took a heavy toll of Sikh life and gave up only when night fell and they had wearied of killing.M The Sikhs' troubles were not over. Those who eluded the Afghans had to run the gauntlet of the Brar tribes, who turned against them. According to the Sikh historian Ratan Singh Bhangu, 'Not a single Sikh escaped unhurt; each bore some wounds on his body. '!13 The holocaust of 5 February 1762 is known to the Sikhs as the Va4a, Ghallilghiira (the great massacre) _so Abdali returned to Lahore with fifty cartloads of heads and hundreds of Sikhs in chains. According to Forster, 'Pyramids were erected and covered with the heads of slaughtered Sikhs: and it is mentioned that Ahmed Shah caused the walls of those mosques, which the Sikhs had polluted, to be washed with their blood that contamination might be removed, and the ignominy offered to the religion of Mahomed be expiated. '37 From Lahore, Abdali went to Amritsar. The Harimandir was again blown up with gunpowder and the pool filled with the carcasses of cows. Abdali spent the rest of the year partly at Lahore and partly in cooler Kalanaur. He held out an olive branch to the Marath~s, confirmed Shah Alam as Emperor at Delhi, got the Raja of Jammu to help recapture Kashmir for him, and persuaded the zamindars of the Punjab to settle down peacefully on their lands. Only for the Sikhs he had no forgiveness-and they asked for none. The Ghallughiira and the blowing up of Harimandir only strengthened their determination to fight the Afghans. By the 34 The original of I.he version of the Adi Granth recompiled by Guru Gobind Singh was lost in this engagement. 35 H. R Gupta, History of the Sikhs. t, 170. 36 Eslimares of I.he numbers of Sikhs killed in this engagement vary from between twelve LO thiny thousand mentioned by Muslim and English historians to between five and seven thousand by Rajwade. Whatever the number of casualties, there is little doubt that they were mostly noncombatant, since the Sikh fighting strength was hardly impaired, as was evident a few months after I.he <;f,r,lfiigharii. 37 Forster, Tmwls, 1, 320.