The Nishanwalia were the standard bearers of the Dal Khalsa. Their sardars carried the nishan, the banner, at the head of the army, and the misl took its name and its standing from that office rather than from a place.
Its founders were Dasaundha Singh and Sangat Singh, and its territory lay in the Cis-Sutlej country around Ambala, Shahabad and Singhwala.
Being east of the Sutlej, what survived of it came under British protection in 1809 rather than into the Lahore state, and its holdings were reduced to jagirs.
A misl defined by a ceremonial function is a reminder that the Dal Khalsa was an army with offices before it was a set of territories.
The number twelve is itself a convention. The lists come from nineteenth century writers and the compilers who followed them, and the bands they name were not equal, not fixed in membership and not stable in name. A rider could change misl. The neat table of twelve with founders and territories attached was drawn up afterward for the convenience of people writing history.
Dasaundha Singh held Ambala and Shahabad and died about 1767. What his successors kept passed under British protection with the rest of the Cis-Sutlej tract, and the jagirs were resumed a few villages at a time as lines failed to produce heirs the Company was willing to recognise.
Nothing marks the misl on the ground now. Shahabad and Amloh are ordinary towns and no building in either is identified with the Nishanwalia sardars. What survives is the entry in the standard lists of the twelve misls, repeated from one book to the next, with the same two founding names and the same three or four sentences.