1 Administration of Ranjit Singh. n7
2 of a soldier — strong, spare, active, courageous, and
3 enduring. An excellent horseman, he would remain
4 the whole day in the saddle without showing any
5 signs of fatigue. His love for horses amounted to
6 a passion, and he maintained an enormous stud for
7 his personal use collected from every part of India,
8 Arabia, and Persia. He was also a keen sportsman
9 and an accomplished swordsman. At Riipar in 1831
10 he competed with success with his own troopers and
11 those of Skinner's Horse in tent-pegging and feats of
12 swordsmanship." *
13 Ranjit Singh assumed few of the outward signs of
14 royalty. His dress was invariably of the simplest
15 description, his only ornaments, even on State
16 occasions, being a string of pearls about his waist
17 and the Koh-i-nur on his wrist. He never wore
18 a royal head-dress, and he never used a throne.
19 " My sword," he remarked to Baron Htigel, " is all
20 the distinction I require." And yet no stranger
21 could have entered his durbar and mistaken any other
22 person for the Lion of the Punjab. But though he
23 affected simplicity himself, his court was renowned
24 even in India, the home of pageantry, for its
25 splendour. He loved to surround himself with tall
26 and handsome men, and he loved to see them
27 sumptuously attired. At a full durbar, the brilliance
28 of his troops and retainers and the magnificence of
29 his courtiers recalled the glories of the court of Shah
30 Jahan ; while the contrast provided by his own lack
31 of adornment served, as no doubt he knew, to
32 enhance the completeness of his ascendency.
33 1 Ranjit Singh, by Sir Lepel Griffin, p. 90.