The previous administration of Ranjit Singh, "military arrangements for the preservation of the Indus frontier", policing and civil courts, revenue, land grants (jageers) and pensions, development of resources, education, and finance, with the appendix supplying figures for prices, revenue and expenditure, and the expense of irregular troops. The Punjab was "the largest and most powerful state to be absorbed by the Company since the final defeat of the Marathas in 18r8" (ODNB). The Court of Directors of the Company wrote to the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, on 26 October 1853, remarking on their "high satisfaction with which we have read this record of a wise and eminently successful administration", and noting that they "approve your intention of printing and publishing the report for general information" (reprinted in Edwin Arnold, The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration in India (1862), vol. I, pp. 404-05). These reports were published bi-annually up until 1859, after which they were issued yearly. An online search of institutional libraries shows one copy only, at Oxford.