1 PREFACK,
2 n the page of History there is probably no story at once so grand,
3 | so rorantic, and so pregnant with instruction, as that of the
4 British -onquest of India and the progress of the British Nation
5 in the Zast. What deeds of noble daring, what examples of calm
6 resoli:tion and untiring devotion, does it not unfold! Over what
7 fortresses, once deemed impregnable, has not the ‘meteor flag of
8 England’ waved triumphantly! Through what forbidding mountain
9 passes, what dreary defiles, and what tangled glens have not the
10 ‘notes of her bugles echoed and her bright arms gleamed! In
11 what majestic halls, dainty pavilions, and jewelled domes have not
12 the strains of her martial music and the cheers of her advancing
13 soldiery resounded !
14 In their submission to her sway, the children of the sun, the
15 founders of the mighty Empires of Kanauj and Ajuddhia, enshrined
16 in the legends of Rama, feel honoured. Before her might the chil-
17 dren of the moon, the founders of the dynasties of Indraprastha
18 and Pataliputra, glorified in the legends of Krishna and the
19 Pandavas, bowed their heads, These were the heroes of the age of
20 Hindu chivalry, and they are, to this day, honoured with the title of
21 Rajputs, or the sons of kings. At Britain’s feet lay, equally
22 humbled, the hardy Mahratta, who had so long successfully baffled
23 the power of the Moghal, and the proud Afghan, who, more than a
24 century before, had challenged the might of the stern Nadir.
25 But in no part of this great Empire was British rule received
26 with more genuine satisfaction than in the country of the Five
27 Rivers. With a manly and calm resignation, the disciples of Govind,
28 beaten in a fair fight, cheerfully submitted to their conquerors.
29 Unlike the Rajput, the Sikh did not seek glory by tracing back
30 his genealogy to the sun or the moon. Nor, like the enthusias-
31 tic Musalman, did he pride himself on the heroic deeds of ancestors
32 who, under the impulse of religion, had subverted the mightiest em-
33 pires on the face of the earth. Nevertheless he was a Singh of the
34 Guru, an earthborn Singh, or lion of his race. The Sikhs owed their
35 position to the strength of their ownarms. The very land they ruled
36 was, not many generations back, ploughed by their forefathers.
37 A-peculiar race of people, they flourished in a peculiar country.
38 From the remotest antiquity, an interest has attached to the land of
39 the Five Rivers unequalled by that attaching to any other land of this
40 great Peninsula. Placed, as it is, by Nature in a locality which
41 gives it a crowning position, and serving as the gateway to India,
42 every invader from the North has, by its possession, sought the road
43 to fame. In pre-historic times, it was, presumably, the Panjab that
44 was first invaded by the Aryans from their camping ground beyond
45 Sri Satguru J agjit Singh Ji eLibrary NamdhariElibrary@ gmail.com