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Rh a Ját of the Kalál or distiller caste, who settled the village of Ahlu from which the family took its name. But the true founder of the confederacy was Sirdár Jassa Singh, fifth in the descent from Sádho, who was born in 1718, ten years after the death of Guru Govind Singh. He rose to distinction and was a man of great ability and a successful military leader. He did more than almost any chief to consolidate the Sikh power, and at the time of his death, in 1783, was probably the most influential of the Sikh chiefs. His possessions were chiefly in the tract of country between the rivers Sutlej and Beas.

The Bhangis took their name from the enslavement to bhang, an intoxicating preparation of hemp, of their famous leader Sirdár Harí Singh, who, with his brothers Jhanda Singh and Ganda Singh, made his head-quarters in the Amritsar district and overran the neighbouring country and captured and held the city of Múltán for several years. They were crushed by Mahárájá Ranjít early in his career, as will hereafter be told.

The Kanheyas were quite as powerful as the Bhangis and retained their possessions longer owing to their connection by marriage with the Maharaja, Ranjít Singh. Their chief, Jai Singh, married his infant granddaughter Mahtab Kour, in 1786, to Ranjít Singh, who was himself only six years old. When Jai Singh died, in 1789, his daughter-in-law Sada Kour, the mother of Mahtab Kour, a widow of great ability and unscrupulousness, took command of the confederacy, and