________________
ON THE SIKHS.
139
Delhi, of which they acknowledged themselves to be the subjects, as in truth they as well as all the Sikhs in the Panjab originally were, rising to independence only wlien the descendants of Baber were too weak to reclaim their allegiance. The appeal wos admitted, but Ranjit, although he relinquished his menacing attitude only upon the approach of a military force, was leniently dealt with: he was allowed to keep the places on the left bank of the Setlej, of which he was in actual possession, however unwarrantable the means by which they had been acquired; but the Sikh chiefs who had so far escaped his grasp were thenceforth protected from his violence or his craft: he thence returned to the westward and there sought more promising fields for the employment of his growing power and the gratification of his ambitious designs. In the prosecution of this policy he took Multán, reduced the districts between the Ravi and the Indus to his absolute dominion, crossed the latter river and conquered a considerable portion of the country of the Afgháns, ascended the mountains on the north of the Panjáb, and compelled the hill Rájás to pay him heavy tribute or to fly from their ancient seats to avoid his tyranny, occupied and ruined Kashmir, and subjected to his will the unoffending princes of Little Tibet, encircling to the north the Himalayan dependencies of British India, and approaching the contines of the Celestial Empire, with which his lieutenants finally came, not very successfully, into collision. To the whole of these possessions he had no other title
