Ratan Singh Bhangu

Ratan Singh Bhangu ( – 10 February 1846 ) was a Sikh historian and Nihang who wrote about the Sikhs' struggles and rise to power in North India, in his book Prachin Panth Prakash. This work describes how the Sikh people came to dominate Punjab in the 1700s and remains one of the few historical accounts of the era.

Life Rattan Singh was likely born in 1785 and passed in 1846. According to G. S. Mann, it is more likely that Rattan Singh was born " in the middle years of the third quarter of the eighteenth century".

His paternal grandfather, Mehtab Singh Bhangu, was a famous Sikh warrior who assassinated Massa Ranghar for defiling the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar. He was approached by the British East India Company who wished to know how the Sikhs rose to power in the Punjab Region. Vir Singh believes the text was completed in 1841. Vir Singh is believed to the first to publish the text in 1914. In 2004, Balwant Singh Dhillon published a revised larger version of the text utilising manuscripts, including the material that was excised in Vir Singh's version. Scholars like Fenech and Harinder Singh have documented the various edits by Vir Singh (writer) in their scholarship, see Bhai Vir Singh’s Editing of Panth Prakāsh by Rattan Singh Bhangu.

Bhangu was a member of the ruling Sikh aristocracy and had first-hand knowledge of the struggle and success of the Khalsa. Due to lack of written records at the time, the work was primarily compiled from oral histories, including interviews, family history, and information collected from British and French officers in Punjab. The work describes how the Sikh people successfully came to rule over Punjab. His coverage of the two ghallugharas of the 18th century are especially helpful due to the resources he had to acquire information.