1 HISTORY OF RUNJEET SING'S FAMILY. 5
2 people Desee, whence lier rider obtained the nickname of Desoo.
3 Boodh Sing- was distinguished for the most intrepid courage ; for
4 his sagacity and shrewdness, which bore him successfully through
5 all lus schemes, and for his ready wit and good humour. He
6 was also famed for his regard to the rights and property of the
7 poor. As an instance of this it is told that having- once carried
8 away above a hundred head of cattle from about Nunkhona,
9 in the south, he some days afterwards met a poor widow, who,
10 ignorant of whom she was speaking to, told him that she had
11 come a long way to petition Desoo for the return of five head of
12 cattle belonging to her and her fatherless children which had been
13 stolen. Boodh Sing told her that it would be useless to go to
14 Desoo, as he was a hard-hearted inexorable man ; he said however
15 that he in consideration of her poverty and her loss he would
16 give her twenty head of cattle. He kept his word, the story
17 says, and actually sent the cattle by some of his own people,
18 further promising to afford her and her property protection ever
19 after. Boodh Sing, according to tradition, swam the Jhelum, the
20 Chinaub, and the Ravee, fifty times on his piebald mare. He had
21 twenty-seven sword cuts and nine matchlock wounds in different
22 parts of his body. He lived however through all the brunts
23 incident to his vocation and died of apoplexy in 1716. On the
24 day of his death his wife through grief stabbed herself to the
25 heart and they were both burnt together. They left two sons,
26 Nodh Sing and Chund Baun Sing, who was head of the
27 Scindawalla branch of the family.
28 A short time after his father's death, Nodh Sino- bes:an to
29 neglect the cultivation of his lands, and sought wealth and
30 fame in plundering expeditions. But he soon made many
31 acquaintances who turned his thoughts from what they described
32 as the low and unprofitable plunder of cattle, to the more res-
33 pectable and gainful business of a Tharvee, or highway robber.
34 This new line of depredation he accordingly adopted, and soon