1 CHAPTER VII.
2 ADMINISTRATION AND COURT OF
3 RANJIT SINGH.
4 By the end of 1834 there remained not a vestige of
5 Afghan authority east of the Indus. The kingdom
6 of Lahore had reached the zenith of its power and
7 prosperity, and its ruler who, twenty-five years
8 before, was but the chieftain of an insignificant clan,
9 had become a sovereign whose actions were a matter
10 of concern to the world's greatest Powers. But the
11 strength of the Khalsa lay in the strength of Ranjit
12 Singh ; and when death removed the sceptre from his
13 hand, the fabric of power, which for close on half a
14 century he had laboured to build up, crumbled to
15 pieces in less than five years. Before passing on to
16 the events which immediately preceded its downfall,
17 let us endeavour to get a closer view of the Sikh
18 monarchy in the days of its glory.
19 In the early part of the nineteenth century the
20 population of the Punjab numbered, roughly, twenty
21 millions. The Sikhs constituted barely one-tenth of
22 this total. Of the remaining nine-tenths, rather more
23 than half were Muhammadans and the rest Hindus,
24 the latter being more numerous in the south and
25 the former in the north and north-west, whilst the