AÑJUMAN-I-PAÑJĀB, founded in Lahore on 21 January 1865 by the distinguished linguist, Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, who became successively the first principal of the Government College at Lahore and the first registrar of the University of the Pañjāb, was a voluntary society which aimed at the development of "vernacular literature" and dissemination of popular knowledge through this medium. Its actual activities spanned a wide range of educational forums and social issues, including encouragement of Vedic and Unānī medicine, a mushāirā or poetical symposium, newspaper journalism, a free public library, a system of private primary schools, lecture series and publication of literary works in Indian languages. The Añjuman held meetings for the discussion of questions of literary, scientific and social interests, sent memorials to the government, established a public library and compiled a number of treatises and translations in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. It also started an Oriental school and was instrumental in the establishment of the Paňjāb University College, which was assigned to "promoting the diffusion of European science, as far as possible, through the medium of the vernacular languages of the Punjab, improving and extending vernacular literature generally, affording encouragement to the enlightened study of the Eastern classical languages and literature, and associating the learned and influential classes of the province with the officers of government in the promotion and supervision of popular education. " On 14 October 1882, this college was converted into Pañjāb University which was the outcome primarily of the labours of the Añjuman.

        The Añjuman had a membership of 244 in 1865 - the year of its birth. Among its charter members were several Sikh “wards of the court, " the surviving heirs of decimated Sikh nobility. Among the leading Sikh members of the Añjuman were Rājā Harbaṅs Siṅgh and his steward-adviser, Rāi Mūl Siṅgh. In papers read before the Añjuman they defended the right of Sikhs to study the Punjabi language written in Gurmukhī script. They later represented Sikh interests in the Senate of Pañjāb University College. They, however, encountered the hostility of the British officers of the Punjab Education Department who viewed Punjabi as little more than a rude dialect, without a redeeming literary tradition, and hence unworthy of admittance into the formal curriculum of Pañjāb University College. At this key juncture, it was the well organized personal library of a Sikh scholar, Sardār Attar Siṅgh of Bhadauṛ, which turned the tide of argument on the floor of Pañjāb University College Senate in favour of those advocating Punjabi. Attar Siṅgh submitted a list of 389 works, written in Gurmukhī script, which he had been able to collect in his library. This proved that Punjabi possessed a written literature, although not one widely read or, in 1877, recently attended to by Sikh scholars.

        Sardār (later Sir) Attar Siṅgh's impressive library won Punjabi studies admission at the Pañjāb University. Significantly, the first Gurmukhī instructor appointed to teach classes at the College was Bhāī Gurmukh Siṅgh renowned in Sikh history as a vital figure in Siṅgh Sabhā renaissance. Supporting what he called "semi-secular" education, meaning the admission of religious training into government schools, G. W. Leitner actively sponsored the appointment of Bhāī Gurmukh Siṅgh to teach Gurmukhī and mathematics at the Pañjāb University College. Encouraging Sikh religionists, Leitner launched a Sikh "Bhāī Class" at Oriental College, Lahore, where Gurmukh Siṅgh taught the sons of traditional Sikh literati. This amalgam of Orientalist and Sikh studies led to the institution at the Pañjāb University College of Budhīmān examination in Gurmukhī. Attar Siṅgh became the first examiner. By 1883 a system of Gurmukhī examinations became standardised at Pañjāb University. Supported by Añjuman orientalists, the Siṅgh Sabhā delivered in 1880 a petition to the Senate of Pañjāb University College signed by prominent Sikhs, seeking that new schools they hoped to found be patronized by the Pañjāb University College and the college entrance examinations be held in Punjabi, as was then being done for Urdu and Hindi speakers. The same year the Siṅgh Sabhā joined hands with the Añjuman representing to Viceroy Ripon to raise the Pañjāb University College to University status. Just as a major portion of the Añjuman activities had shifted to the floor of the Pañjāb University College Senate after the creation of that Orientalist-inspired institution in 1870, Ripon's sanction in 1882 of a fully-empowered Pañjāb University witnessed the final decline of the Añjuman. Its principal objective, i. e. the creation of a university, had been realized. Moreover, increased competition between communities, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim, had made the cross-communally populated Añjuman an anachronism by the mid-1880's.