Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/122

Rh 110 PUNJAB work, P.ik Pattan. At Koliat there is a special manufactory of gun-barrels made of twisted iron straps. There is much excellent carved wood-work on houses and on boats. Among the Punjab arts should be mentioned the artificial nose-making practised by a special class of surgeons at Kangra. Injury has been done to some oT the native arts of the Punjab, as of other parts of India, by unwise copying of European patterns. The Lahore School of Art is expected to correct this and promote the study and execution of native forms and designs. The Lahore Museum contains illustra- tions of the arts and manufactures, as well as raw products, of the Punjab, and a large collection of the sculptures, mostly Buddhist, and many of Greek workmanship, found in the north-west of the province, chiefly trans-Indus. Upwards of 200 Gneco- Buddhist sculptures were excavated in Yusufzai in 1883 and 1884. The numoer of visitors to the Lahore Museum during the year 1884 was upwards of 251,000. The value of the imports into the Punjab during the same year was 981,167, and of the exports 1,083,919. The chief lines of export and import traffic, apart from the trade with the immediately adjoining countries, are on the one side the railway to Delhi and the North-West Provinces, and on the other the Indus River and Indus Valley Railway to Sind and the sea. The Punjab exports wheat, tea, rock-salt, sugar, and other pro- ducts, and articles of local manufacture. English piece-goods, cutlery and other metal-work, fruits (especially from Afghanistan and Kashmir), rice, drugs, and spices are among the chief imports. The most important trade - centres are Delhi, Peshawar, Multan, and Amritsar. There is a large amount of both export and import trade with the countries on the north-west frontier. Efforts were made for some time by the Government to promote trade between the Punjab and Kashgar, but without much result. The endeavour is now being carried on by private enterprise. There are great difficulties in the hill country between, where the goods have to be carried on mules and ponies. finance. The revenue of the British province is 3,232,349. Of this sum 1,605,243 (consisting of land revenue 1,220,880, and minor items 384,363) goes to the imperial treasury; 1,410,379 is provincial, raised and expended in the province in addition to an imperial grant ; and 216,727 is derived from local rates and mis- cellaneous income, and is locally expended. !om- The total length of railways in the province now (1885) open for iunica- traffic is 1205 miles. The main central line from Delhi to Pesha- ion. war is 645 miles in length, of which 125 are east of the Jumna in the North-West Provinces, and 520 in the Punjab. Other lines now open are Lahore to Multan 208 miles, and 10 to Shir-Shah, the port of Multan on the Chinab, Multan to Bahawalpur 63, Delhi to Riwari 52, Riwari to Hissar 89, Hissar to Firozpur 130, Amritsar to Pathankot 67, Wazirabad to Sialkot 27, Lala Miisa (near Gujrat) to Find Dadan Khan and the Salt Mines 62, Rawal Pindi to Khushhalgarh 77. Other lines are under construction. There are 1467 miles of metalled road, 23,156 unmetalled, and 2676 miles of navigable river. In this country of great rivers, crossing lines of road, the value of boat-bridges is very great. During the five years following the construction of the bridge of boats over the Indus at Dera Ismail Khan the annual camel traffic between Afghanistan and the Punjab by the Gumal Pass, through the hills on the west, increased from 50,000 to 80,000, with corresponding increase of the " tirni" or grazing- tax paid by the Povinda camel- drivers. This trade-route and this class of carriers are of some im- portance. For a long time to come they are not likely to make way for other means of transport by road or railroad, though the trade will grow. The Povinua are a travelling tribe belonging to the Ghilzai country in Afghanistan. They make annual trade journeys into India by this route, which is an easy and good one, capable of being tunied to more account. The Sikhs imposed heavy duties on the goods they brought. The remission of these duties by the British Government greatly encouraged the trade, which is now further helped by the boat-bridge across the Indus. There are many passes through the hills between British India and Afghanistan, of which the principal are the Khyber in the north, close to Peshawar, the nearest way to Cabul ; "the Bolan in the south, approached from Shikarpur and Jacobabad in Sind, the way to Quetta and Candahar ; and between them three others looking towards Ghazni, namely, Gumal Pass, the valley of the united Gumal and Zhob rivers opposite Dera Ismail Khan, and the Kurram and Dawar routes opposite BannvL While the amount of railway and other traffic has been steadily increasing with the facilities afforded, the demands on the post- office and telegraph have likewise been growing rapidly. The annual number of letters and post-cards, now about twenty millions, has nearly doubled in ten years. The telegraph has had a fluctuat- ing increase in the number of messages, which during the year 1884 was upwards of 142,000. listory. History. For the early history of the Punjab from the Aryan immigration to the rise of the Mogul dynasty the reader may consult the article INDIA (vol. xii. p. 779 sq.). It deserves, how- ever, to be specially noted here with reference to that period that from the time of Alexander onwards Greek settlers remained in the Punjab, and that Greek artists gave their services for Buddhist work and introduced features of their own architecture in Indian as well as Grecian buildings. Besides the bases and capitals of large Greek columns at Shah-deri (Taxila) and elsewhere, numerous sculptures of Greek workmanship have been found at various places. These are single statues (probably portraits), also figures of Buddha, and representations of scenes in his legendary history, and other subjects. They are obtained from ruins of monasteries and other buildings, from mounds, and the remains of villages or monumental topes. Of Buddhist buildings now remaining the most conspicuous as well as distinctive in character are the topes (sthupa), in shape a plain hemisphere, raised on a platform of two or more stages. One of the largest of these is at Manikyala, 1 4 miles east of Rawal Pindi. These Buddhist buildings and sculptures are all probably the work of the two centuries before and the three or four after the beginning of the Christian era. The character of the sculptures is now well known from the specimens in the India Museum, South Kensington, and both originals and casts of others in the Lahore Museum. Unfortunately they have no names or inscriptions, which give so much value to the sculptures of the Bharhut tope. The several bodies of settlers in the Punjab from the earliest Tribes times have formed groups of families or clans (not identical with and Indian castes, but in many cases joining them), which have gener- clans, ally preserved distinct characteristics and followed certain classes of occupation in particular parts of the country. Some of the existing tribes in the Punjab are believed to be traceable to the early Aryan settlers, as the Bhatti tribe, whose special region is Bhattiana south of the Sutlej, and who have also in the village of Pindi Bhattian a record of their early occupation of a tract of country on the left bank of the Chinab, Avest of Lahore. The Dogra, another Aryan clan, belong to a tract of the lower hills between the Chinab and the Ravi. Others similarly have their special ancient localities. To the earlier settlers the dark race (Dasyu) whom the Aryans found in the country, and who are commonly spoken of as aborigines belonged, as is supjwsed, the old tribe called Takka, whose name is found in Taksha-sila or Taxila. And from the later foreigners again, the Indo Scythians, are probably descended the great Jat tribe of cultivators, also the Gujars, a pastoral people and traders, and others. Some of the tribes or sections of them, having received the Hindu faith and the system of caste, have afterwards given large bodies of converts to Mohammedanism, so that there are now Hindus and Moham- medans of the same tribe continuing to bear the same name. There are Mohammedan Rajputs, and there are both Hindu and Mohammedan Jats, and so with others. It was during the events which brought Babar, the first of the Sikh Mogul dynasty, to the throne that the sect of the Sikhs arose, sect. Nanak, the founder, derived his first ideas of the movement he was to lead from Kabir of Banaras, a Mohammedan by birth (it is believed), who joined himself to a sect of Hindus and strove to give to their religion a new form and spirit free from idolatry. And the Sikh religion of the Punjab, founded on this model, was a reformed and monotheistic Hinduism. Nanak was born in 1469 at Talwandi on the Ravi, and lived to the age of seventy, leaving a large number of followers at his death. The name Sikh means " disciple," and the strength of the movement lay in the relation of the disciple to the "guru" or spiritual guide. In the time of Babar's successor, Humayun (who was only in the Punjab during the tem- porary success of his rival, Shir Khan Sur), the Sikhs were under the direction of the second of their gurus, Angad (1539-1552), and of the third, Amar Das (1552-1574). During the long reign of Akbar (1556-1605) the Sikhs increased in number and power under the mild and liberal rule of a Mohammedan emperor who was more than tolerant in all matters of religion. He nimself sought diligently for knowledge of other faiths, and Amar Das, the Sikh guru, was one of those who had conferences with him. Ram Das, son-in-law of Amar Das, succeeded him in 1574. He received from Akbar a gift of a piece of land, on which he dug the large square tank afterwards called Amritsar ("the pool of immortality"). In the last year of this guru's life the Punjab was visited, on Akbar's invitation, by several Jesuit fathers from Goa, who were received with great favour. To them the emperor gave a site for a church in the city of Lahore, and the church was built at his expense. In 1581 Ram Das was succeeded by his son Arjun Mai, a man of note. In the middle of his father's tank at Amritsar he built the temple, which was called at first Hari Mandar, and afterwards Darbar Sahib, the name by which it is now known. The town which began to rise round the tank and temple was made the headquarters of the Sikhs. Arjun gave further coherence to the body of his followers by levying a regular tax in place of the free and varied offerings they used to give ; and he was the compiler of the sacred book called the Adi Granth, the materials for which he had received unarranged from his father. Akbar lived much in the Punjab. In 1586 he directed a campaign against the Afghans of the Peshawar valley, which was attended with no important results except the death of his able minister Bir Bal. In the next year he conquered Kashmir. On his visit to this new acquisition he was