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In Hindu period relations of Panjab were with western kingdoms.— The large tract included in the British province of the Panjab which lies between the Jamna and the Ghagar is, having regard to race, language, and past history, a part of Hindustan. Where "Panjab" is used without qualification in this section the territories west of the Ghagar and south of Kashmir are intended. The true relations of the Panjab and Kashmir during the Hindu period were, except for brief intervals, with Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkistan rather than with the great kingdoms founded in the valley of the Ganges and the Jamna.

Normal division into petty kingdoms and tribal confederacies.— The normal state of the Panjab in early times was to be divided into a number of small kingdoms and tribal republics. Their names and the areas which they occupied varied from time to time. Names of kingdoms that have been rescued from oblivion are Gandhara, corresponding to Peshawar and the valley of the Kabul river, Urasa or Hazara, where the name is still preserved in the Orash plain, Taxila, which may have corresponded roughly to the present districts of Rawalpindi and Attock with a small part of Hazara, Abhisara or the low hills of Jammu, Kashmir, and Trigartta, with its capital Jalandhara, which occupied most of the Jalandhar division