Ranjit Singh was the most adventurous, audacious, and sagacious ruler of the Indian subcontinent since Chandragupta Maurya. Like the Kohinoor he wore, he was a gem among rulers. He rose like a bright and brief firmament when India became a part of the global colonial geopolitics. He abolished the death sentence and created a new empire based on principles of statecraft. In the 1770s, the Punjab was sixty-eight pieces of a wild and prosperous land inhabited by a brutal and querulous people making a living by plunder even as invasion after invasion from the north-west frontier trampled it.