JHELUM, a town in the Panjab, in lat. 55' 26" N., long. 73° 46' 36" E., with upwards of 5000 inhabitants. It is the headquarters town of a district of the same name. The Kshatriya Hindus here are traders and money-lenders ; the Arora are husbandmen. The industrious Jat are largely Muhammadans. They bold the whole central region to the north and south of the Salt Range, the hills themselves being the home of the Janjuahs. They remained loyal during the mutiny in 1857. The Awan are numerous, nearly a hundred thousand. An interest is thrown around them by the conjecture that they represent the descendants of Alexander's army ; though they themselves put forward a more apocryphal gene alogy from the son-in-law of the prophet. The Gujar, farther south, form a pastoral tribe with a bad reputation for cattle-lifting, but are here a body of thriving and honest agriculturists, with a fine manly physique, and considerable landed possessions around the town of Jhelum. Large numbers of Kashmiri arrive every winter in search of harvest work, and return home when the summer sets in. The Khokars, though numerically unimportant, possess great social distinction. One of their ancestors founded the town of rind Dadan Khan, which ho called after his own name, and has become the chief centre of the salt trade. The Jhelum river of the Panjab is the Hydaspes of the Greeks, and the 13ehut, Vehut, Vitasta, and Betusta of the Hindus. It rises in Kashmir,
the whole valley of which it drains, and takes its course through the Baramula pass in the Pir Panjal range, entering the plain of the Panjab about 220 miles from its source. Below JalnIpur it runs nearly south, joining the Chenab a little above the Trimo ferry, in lat. 31° 10' N., and long. 72° 9' E., after a course of 450 miles. At this confluence the Jhelum is about 500 yards wide ; after the union, the channel of the united streams is a mile broad and 12 feet deep.
The Jhelum district of the Paujab river yields gold, coal, marble, soapstone, gypsum, topaz, rock salt, French chalk, sandstone, limestone. There is a thriving trade in horses and mules. The first thing a zamindar does with any small sum of money he has saved, is to buy a good mare, from which he breeds ; and if any single individual is too poor to buy a whole snare himself, he and two or three others in the same condition as him self will club and purchase an animal amongst them. The colts or fillies produced there are largely bought up by officers of the cavalry service in search of remounts. Prices are given for them sometimes as high as Rs. 300 and Rs. 350 for three year - old colts and fillies. Brass vessels and leather and parchment jars are largely made at Pind Dadun Khan.