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Sir Lepel Henry Griffin and Colonel C F Massy, Chiefs and families of note in the Punjab: A Revised edition of "The Punjab Cities", Lahore: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1940, 3 volumes

Volume I: [2], xi, 512 pp.
Volume II: [2], iv, 620 pp.
Volume III: [2], 275 pp.
All 3 volumes include numerous genealogical tables; rebound in recent half-tan calf over green (volumes I and II) and maroon (volume III) cloth-covered boards; spines in six compartments with 4 raised bands, double gilt fillets and gilt-lettered text at the spine, marbled endpapers and red silk ribbon markers bound in. All edges untrimmed (each)

THE DEFINITIVE GENEALOGICAL RECORD OF PUNJAB’S ARISTOCRACY UNDER BRITISH RULE—A RARE COMPLETE SET OF THE 1940 REVISED EDITION

First compiled in the late 19th century by Sir Lepel H. Griffin, a senior administrator and political officer in British India, and later expanded and revised by Colonel C F Massy, this revised 1940 edition of the 3 volumes of Chiefs and Families of Note in the Punjab represents the culmination of decades of ethnographic, genealogical, and political documentation of Punjab’s hereditary nobility.

Originally titled The Punjab Chiefs and issued in 1865, the work was conceived as an official record of the region’s leading landholding and ruling families, following the annexation of the Punjab by the British East India Company after the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1849).

The 1940 edition is a significant bibliographical milestone in the historiography of British India’s princely and landed elite and reflects expanded research, updated lineages, and the evolving socio-political roles of the nobility under the Raj. They also incorporate a wide range of crest illustrations, and genealogical charts, providing valuable visual reference material. While the 1865 and 1890 editions of The Punjab Chiefs are better known to bibliographers (see Sotheby’s, London, 2012, “The Library of a British Indian Administrator”), this revised 1940 publication provides detailed entries on tribal chiefs, jagirdars, taluqdars, and sirdars, including information on:

• family origins and caste affiliations,
• participation in Anglo-Sikh or Anglo-Afghan campaigns,
• relations with the British Government,
• roles in colonial administration and the Indian Army,
• landholdings and revenue obligations,
• and dynastic succession.

This edition is geographically organised and rich with colonial ethnographic detail, structured to reinforce the British administrative objective of mapping authority and loyalty across the Punjab. It was also intended for use by political agents and ICS officers, underscoring their practical utility within the structure of the Punjab Political Service.

It remains an essential primary source for scholars of colonial ethnography, post-Partition Punjab identity, Indian princely history, and genealogical research. The work has long been cited by institutions such as the India Office Records, British Library, and the Punjab Archives.