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 GULAB SINGH 145

when the British were still behind the Sutlej, but were engaged in the fruitless and disastrous expedition to Kabul, which resulted in the murder of the envoy. Gulab Singh quelled the mutiny in Kashmir, placed there a governor of his own, and from this time he became virtual master of the valley, though till the year 1846 it nominally belonged to the Sikh rulers at Lahore.

As he was the founder of the present ruling dynasty, it will be well to pause here to describe who he was and where he came from. He was what is known as a Dogra Rajput, that is, a Rajput inhabiting the Dogra country—the hilly country stretching down to the plains of the Punjab from the snowy range bounding Kashmir on the south. His far-away ancestors were Rajputs who for generations had followed warlike operations, Originally settled in Oudh or in Rajputana they eventually moved to the Punjab, and settled at Mirpur in the Dogra country. One branch then migrated to Chamba, another to Kangra, and the one to which Gulab Singh belonged to Jammu, where the great-great-grand-uncle of Gulab Singh — Throv Deo—was during the middle of the eighteenth century a man of importance. In 1775

the son of Throv Deo built the palace at Jammu, 10