Sohan Lal Suri

Sohan Lal Suri (died 1852) was a Punjabi historiographer, who specialized in the period of the Sikh Empire.^[1] Sohan was the son of Lala Ganpat Rai, the waqai navis or court chronicler of the Sukerchakia Misl and later Sikh Empire.^[1] Sohan Lal inherited the position from his father in 1811 and served at the court of Lahore till after the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839. The period covered by him as a court chronicler begins in 1812 and includes the Anglo-Sikh War. His magnum opus was the Umdat-ut-Tawarikh.^[2]

Very little is known of his early life.^[1] Sohan Lal was born in a Hindu Khatri family from the Pothwar region of Punjab, now in Pakistan. The family was said to be descended from Raja Khokhar Anand, a 12th-century ruler of Lahore.^[3] His family was allegedly of the Khukhrain gotra or biradari (clan), with Suri being a sub-clan.^[2]

His father, Lala Ganpat Rai, had served as a Munshi for three generations of the Sukerchakia Misl.^[1] He gained employment under Sardar Charat Singh in 1771 and on his death, served under Maha Singh and then in Ranjit Singh's court till 1811–12.^[1]

Sohan inherited his father's position in 1811.^[1] Suri was well-educated in mathematics, numerology, astronomy, and well-versed in languages like Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit.^[2][1] Besides his popular works, he also produced a genealogical table of his family up to 1836, a funeral oration on the death of his father, an account of the chiefs of the cis-Sutlej states, a description of English institutions, an account of his meeting with General Claude Martin Wade, and copies of letters and testimonials.^[1]

The sources he used to compose his works includes notes he inherited from his father, his own first-hand knowledge, and other works available to him, such as the Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh by Sujan Rai Bhandari.^[1]

Fakir Azizuddin introduced Sohan Lal Suri to General Claude Martin Wade as Ranjit Singh's court chronicler and the Sikh court's historian.^[1] Ranjit Singh permitted Wade's request to have Sohan travel to Ludhiana, where it is said that Sohan read-out excerpts from his Umdat-ut-Twarikh to Wade twice-a-week.^[1] Sohan also presented to Wade a copy of the Twarikh work, which is still preserved in the Royal Asiatic Society Library in London.^[1][4]

After the annexation of the Sikh Empire in 1849, Sohan Lal Suri was bestowed with jagir (estate) grant of 1,000 rupees per annum in Manga.^[1] The village of Manga in the Amritsar District, which was the estate of Lala Sohan Lal Suri during Maharaja Ranjit Singh's reign,^[5] was confirmed, in 1850, for life by the East India Company following the annexation of Punjab.^[6][1] Sohan Lal Suri likely lived out his remaining years there.^[1]

The Umdat-ut-Twarikh originally consisted of around 7,000 pages in-total written in shikasta running Persian script.^[1] Sohan Lal penned events at the Lahore Durbar in Persian, contiguous with the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The work, in five daftars or volumes, was translated into English in the twentieth century by Vidya Sagar Suri, his descendant.^{[7]: General Preface}

• Daftar 1: History of the Sikhs from the birth of Guru Nanak in 1469 to 1771.
• Daftar 2 Charts the career of Charhat Singh and the rise of Ranjit Singh and covers the period from 1772 to 1830.
• Daftar 3 Is divided into five parts and covers the events in the court of Lahore from 1831 to 1839, the year Ranjit Singh died.
• Daftar 4 Is divided into three parts and covers significant events in the Sikh Court from 1839 to 1845. A part of the narrative from this period is missing. After the First Anglo-Sikh War, Sohan Lal Suri gave the account of the wars from 29 September 1845 to 20 September 1846 between the ‘Singhs’ and the ‘glorious Sahibs’ to Herbert Benjamin Edwardes who served at the Punjab Frontier to peruse. Edwardes did not return the records. As there was no copy, this period is missing from the Umdat-ut-tawarikh, the Lahore court chronicle.^{[7]: 373 vol IV part 3 —translator's note}
• Daftar 5 This volume deals with the period commencing in 1845 till 1849, the year the Sikh Empire was annexed by the East India Company.

Claude Martin Wade was appointed the political agent by the East India Company and was ordered to report the proceedings of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's court. In speaking of the indigenous work, he said—

"Allowing for the partiality of the writer’s views and opinions, as regards the fame and credit of his patron, yet, as a record of dates and a chronicle of events, tested by a minute comparison with other authorities, and my own personal investigations into its accuracy during a residence of seventeen years among the Sikhs, I am enabled to pronounce it, in those two respects, as a true and faithful narrative of Runjeet Singh’s eventful life."^[8]

According to Bayly, a twenty-first-century specialist in global and Indian history, Sohan Lal Suri's Umdat-ut-Tawarikh gives ‘a good impression of the density of information coming in to Ranjit Singh…’.^[9]

The original manuscript of the Umdat-ut-Twarikh is lying somewhere in the disorganized and poorly kept collection of the Punjab Archives in Lahore.^[3] Another early copy is with the Royal Asiatic Society Library in London.^[3][4]

This is a small work in verse that is an account of the murders of Maharaja Sher Singh and Raja Dhian Singh by the Sandhawalia sardars in September 1843.^[1][2]

A manuscript that contains brief accounts on courtiers, rajas, diwans, learned men, saints, and ascetics living in the year 1831.^[1]

• He allegedly authored mathematical, geometric, and astronomical treatises^[1]