PRACHIN PANTH PRAKASH, by Ratan Singh Bharigu, a chronicle in homely Punjabi verse relating to the history of the Sikhs from the time of the founder, Guru Nanak (AD 14691539), to the establishment in the eighteenth century of principalities in the Punjab under Misi sarddrs. The work, which was completed in 1998 Bk/AD 1841 in the bungd of Sham Singh near the Golden Temple at Amritsar, is owed to the Britishers' curiosity about the Sikhs and about their emergence as a political power. Captain Murray, then stationed on the AngloSikh frontier at Ludhiana, had been charged with preparing a history of the Sikhs. He sought the help of a Persian scholar, Maulawl Bute Shah. Ratan Singh volunteered his own services as well to undo, as he says, the bias that might crop up in the narration of a Muslim