Page:British India Adhesive Stamps Surcharged For Native States, Part 2.djvu/8



—His Highness Raja-i-Rajgan, Raja Ranbir Singh Bahadur, Farzand-i-Dilband, Rusikh-ul-itikad-i-Daulat-i-Inglishia.

—Sirdar Shamsher Singh.

—1,268 square miles.

—284,560.

—1st July 1885.

JHIND is the second of the Cis-Sutlej Sikh States with which we have to deal. It is about twice the size of Faridkot. Its modern capital, Sangrur, is a fine, well built town with about 9,000 inhabitants. The State is composed of six districts situated apart from one another among British and Patiala territory.

Like Faridkot, it had a primitive postal system of its own before it adopted our methods. The stamps issued for use under the old regime were "home-made" and are now used for court fee and receipt purposes only, with the exception of the anna stamp, which is obsolete.

It is in the case of Jhind that we first meet with the curved vertical surcharge, of which more will be said in the chapter on Patiala. This surcharge takes the form of a rough ellipse, consisting of the words "" and "" both reading upwards. The curves are not uniform, and the length of the surcharge varies inversely with the length of