Lehal Library

viii INTRODUCTORY the fervour of their belief rose triumphant over persecution, and the Sikhs found their opportunity in the years of disorder which followed the death of the Emperor Bahadur Shah in 1712. Chapter IV relates the gradual establishment of Sikh independence down to 1764. Northern India was a wild welter of confusion. The Mughal Empire was falling rapidly to pieces under the repeated blows of invaders from north and south. First Nadir Shah and his Persian hosts, and then the Afghan Ahmad Shah Durrani, swept down upon the imperial capital. Like Rome of old, Delhi felt again and again the hand of the spoiler, and its glories became a thing of the past. The advent of the Marathas upon the scene seemed at first the prelude to the establishment of Hindu supremacy in the north of India. But the battle of Panipat (1761) proved fatal to their ambitions and left the stage open for the development of a new power in the Punjab. Amid all this confusion the Sikhs gradually achieved their independence. At first they were mere bands of plunderers, but gradually these bands became united into a formidable fighting force. In 1748 the army of the Khalsa became a recognized organization under Jassa Singh, and though it frequently suffered defeat, it never lost its definite character after that date. The Sikhs sustained their greatest disaster at the hands of the Afghans at Ludhiana in 1762, but the waves of Afghan invasion had spent their strength. In 1763, at Sirhind, the Sikhs avenged their defeat of the previous year and permanently occupied the province of Sirhind. In the following year, which witnessed the last Afghan invasion, they became masters of Lahore, and in the same year, at a meeting at Amritsar, organized themselves into a ruling political system, described by the author as a 'theocratic confederate feudalism'. The condition of the Punjab during these years of bloodshed and disorder was miserable in the extreme. To find any parallel in European history one would have to go back to the days of King Stephen in England or to some of the worst episodes of the Thirty Years' War. Waris Shah, the author of the story of Hir and Ranjha, who flourished during this period, gives, in the epilogue of this poem, a vivid account of the state of the country : Fools and sinners give counsel to the world, The words of the wise are set at naught.