Sohan Lal Suri

[1] Sohan was the son of Lala Ganpat Rai, the waqai navis or court chronicler of the Sukerchakia Misl and later Sikh Empire.

[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.

[7]: General Preface 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…’.