Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the son of Sirdar Mahan Singh, the enterprising and unscrupulous leader of the Sukarchakia confederacy, and was born in the year 1780. His family was of the Jat Sansi tribe, nearly related to the Sindhanwalias who were, at the time of Ranjit Singh's death, the most powerful of all the Sikh nobles north of the Beas, and who still take highest rank in the Punjab, although they now number no distinguished men in their ranks. The Sindhanwalias claim, like most other Sikhs, a Rajput descent, but they have also a close connection with the thievish and degraded tribe of Sansis, after which their ancestral home, Raja Sansi, five miles from the city of Amritsar, is named.

The founder of the Sukarchakia and Sindhanwaha family was a bold and successful robber, Budha Singh, who, on his famous piebald mare Desi, was the terror of the country side. He was wounded some forty times by spear, matchlock or sword, and died at last in his bed, like an honest man, in the year