Family Tree of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Great Sansi
Family Tree of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Great Sansi
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Kabir
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Karanweer
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Kamal
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Suraj
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Roop
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Dheer
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Garhpal
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Kaul
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Naresh
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Bhatti
(apabhransha of Bhupati, the founder of Bhati Rajput sept)
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Narpat
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Jaspat
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Gajpat
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Shalivahan
(A well known Raghubanshi/Suryabanshi Bhati Rajput king)
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Sankh
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Deosar
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Mansoor
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Man
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Sal
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Jeondan
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Achal
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Jagpal
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Padam Rath
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Sansi or Sans Mal
(the founder of Sansi clan, Wichher and Bhoni were his siblings)
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Beehdoo
(Rasalan and Mahla were his siblings. Rasalan was his sister)
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Harar
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Udret
(Ancestor of the Sansis who came to be known as Sukarchakias and Sindhanwalias)
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Sunder
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Kalu
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Jaddoman
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Galib
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Kiddoh
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Rajada
(Premoo was his sibling)
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Takthmal
(Neeloo and Teloo were his siblings)
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Bhai Bara
(Baloo was his sibling)
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Budha Sansi – Our Ancestors
(Also known as Desu, owing to his picbald mare of “Desi” breed. He got baptized by Guru Gobind Singh as Sikh in 1692 A.D. and became Budh Singh)
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Nodh Singh
(The Sardars of Sukarchakia Missal or Sukarchakias, the immediate family of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, were Nodh Singh’s descendants of Jat Sikh Sandhu clan. Chanda Singh was his younger brother & his descendants were known as Sindhanwalias of Raja Sansi.)
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Charat Singh
(Chet Singh, Dal Singh and Manghi Singh were his siblings)
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Mahan Singh
(Soojh Singh was his sibling. Mahan Singh was married to the daughter of Gajpat Singh , the Chief of Jind, who was the great-grandson of Chaudhary Phul Bhati, the founder of the Phulkiyan Sikh state. Phul Bhati was said to be the 29th generation descendant of Rawal Jaisal Singh, who founded a small Bhati Rajput kingdom in Jaiselmer in 1156 A.D.)
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Maharaja Ranjit Singh
(None of his lineal descendants now survive. The lineage ended with Maharaja Dalip Singh who died without a male heir)
The Sansis, by many accounts, have originated from the Bhati Rajputs. The clan’s history, however, is full of vicissitudes. Bhatis claim origin from Krishna’s clan. After their expulsion from Rajputana by Allaudin Khilji , the Sansis appeared as an offshoot of the vanquished Bhatis who took the title of the clan after Sans Mal, their consanguineous patriarch. The fortune and social standing of the clan underwent gradual deterioration from rulers to wandering gypsies and nomads , infamous in public perception as hunters , robbers and petty-thieves.
The fortune of a section of the clan dramatically changed for the better again after Budha Sansi , formerly a cattle-thief and robber, got baptized as a Sikh and joined forces with the rebellious Sikh militants who later on exploited the power vacuum in Punjab in the aftermath of Maratha-Afghan conflict to establish the independent Sikh Missals or confederacies. Nodh Singh and Chanda Singh, both Sansis and Budha Sansi’s sons, founded the powerful Sukarchakia Missal. Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the representative of Sukarchakia Missal, united all the missals to form the powerful Sikh kingdom which lasted around fifty years.
The rest of the clan was however not that fortunate and got notified as “Criminal Tribe” in the colonial era. The Sindhanwalias , the socially better off surviving Sansis, got allied with the Jats and a Sansi Jat clan was also recorded in early imperial censuses, which were rather crude and inaccurate. But the numbers of this “Jat” clan were extremely small , indicating it, at best, as a very recent accretion into an inclusive and a heterogeneous fold , which represents a functional category , composed of diverse farming identities, almost as often as it does an ethnic caste. Lepel Griffin , a contemporary of Maharaja, however, clearly identified as Sukerchakias as belonging to the same stock as rest of the Sansis, which is the same opinion held by many other historians of note.