The Muhammadan tribes Within the frontier, and British subjects inhabiting partly hills and partly plains, aro :— Hazara district, Turnout', Guksr, boom' and SOU, Kaghan, Syndic and others.
l'eshawur district, Yosufzal, Khalil, Molunand of the plains.
Pesliavzur and Kohat districts, Khatak.
Kohat district, liangash.
Debra Ismail Khan district, Bunnochl, Murwutl, Butani, Chiefs of Tank, Chiefs of Kolschl, Chiefs of Debra Ismail Khan, Nutkani, Lund.
Deb Ghazi Khan district, Dresbuk, Mazer!.
The Panjab or Five River territory of the Muhammadan administrators comprised only the tract of country enclosed and watered by the confluent streams of the Sutlej, the !teas, the Ravi, the Chenab, and the Jhelum. With the Muhammadans the capital was, as now, Lahore, in the centre of the province ; but, under British re-arrangement of the revenue districts, the pro vince now includes Debli, a more populous city, which was long the ancient metropolis of the Moghul dynasty.
In the extreme west, where the Suliman Hills form a great barrier, the Trans-Indus tract forms the first natural division of the Panjab province. Its northernmost portion consists of the Peshawur valley, encircled by mountains, through which the Kabul river flows down to join the Indus at Attock ; together with the billy district of Kohat, a wild outlying mass of salt bearing ranges, traversed by minor tributaries of the great river. Its southern half comprises the Dehrajat, a long strip of barren country lying between the Sunman mountains and the Indus, and forming parts of Bannu and Debra Ismail Khan districts, together with the whole of Debra Ghazi Khan. The entire length of this narrow belt consists, on the west, of a fertile submontane fringe, merging in the centre into a waterless desert, and sinking eastward into the fruitful lowlands of the Indus. The province also includes the isolated Himalayan valleys of Kangra, Kullu, Lahul, and Spiti, and the glens of the Hazara frontier among the outliers of the main Central Asian system of the Hindu Kush.
The Panjab must always have been the line which tribes and races followed in migrating to the south-east. The East Aryans in their migra tions towards India came through the Panjab, and the oldest. Vedas contain their records while dwelling there. Their emigrations into the Indus country occurred about B.C. 4000, and the open ing to the Vendidad describes the succession of the foundation of 14 kingdoms, the last and most. southern of which being this land of the Five Rivers, the Pan jab.
Alexander the Great of Macedon came by way of Bactria and the Hindu-raj crossed the Indus near Taxila, identified by Cunning ham with the ruins of Shah Dheri in the Rawal Pindi district. lie found there great warlike tribes, each with a purely republican constitution, and on one occasion he treated with 300 deputies of a tribe, who seem to have been elected and sent as delegates of the people. The best account of them is at page 300 of llecren's volume on the Persians (Campbell, p. 8). After receiving the adhesion of Mophis or Taxiles king of that. city, he advanced with little resistance to the banks of the Hydaspes or Jhelum. Effecting the passage of the river at Jalalpur, in the Jhelum district, he encountered the army of Porus (Purusha) at Mong, in Gujerat, and defeated the Indian monarch with a loss of 12,000 slain, Porus him self being taken prisoner, but restored by Alexan der to his entire kingdom. The conqueror halted for a month in the neighbourhood of the Hydaspes, and founded two cities, Nikaia and Bukephala ; after which he overran the whole Panjab as far as the Hesudrus or Sutlej. The refusal of his troops to proceed farther from home compelled him to fall back once more upon the Hydaspes, where he embarked on board a fleet to sail down the Indus. The only opposition he met with was from the Malli, who occupied the modern district of Multan. At the siege of their capital, he received a severe wound, in revenge for which he put every person within the walls to the sword.
The Greek brigades in the Panjab were placed first under Philip, while the civil administration of the country remained in the hands of the native princes, Taxiles and :Porus. Afterwards, on the murder of Philip by the mercenary sol diers, Alexander (Anabasis, vi. 2 ; vii.) directed Eudemos and Taxiles to govern the country until he should send another deputy. It is probable, however, that the Greeks continued to retain the charge ; for after Alexander's death, in B.C. 323,
Eudemos contrived, by his general Eumenes, to make himself master of the country by the treacherous assassination of king Porus (Diodorus, xix. 5). Some few years later, in B.C. 317, he marched to the assistance of Eumenes, with 3000 infantry and 5000 cavalry, and no less than 120 elephants. With this force he performed good service at the battle of Gabiene. But his con tinued absence gave the Indians an opportunity not to be neglected ; and their liberty was fully asserted by the expulsion of the Greek troops and the slaughter of their chiefs. (Justin, xv. 4— ' Prmfactos ejus occiderat ;' again, Molienti deinde bellum adversus prmfactos Alexandri.') Chand ragupta was present when Porus was murdered, and he became the leader of the national move ment, which ended in his own elevation to the sovereignty of the Pan jab. Justin attributes his success to the assistance of banditti. (Justin, xv. 4 —` Contractis latronibui Indos ad novitatem regni solicitavit.) But in this Col. Cunningham thinks he has been misled by a very natural mistake ; for the Aratta, who were the dominant people of the Eastern Panjab, are never mentioned in the Mahabharata without being called robbers. (Lassen, Pentapot Indica — Aratti profecto latrones,' and Bahici latrones.') The Sanskrit name is Arashtra, the kingless,' which is pre served in the Adraistm of Arrian, who places them on the Ravi. They were the republican defenders of Sangala, or Sakala, a fact which points to their Sanskrit name of Arashtra, or kingless.' But though their power was then confined to the Eastern Panjab, the people them selves had once spread over the whole country : --‘Ubi fluvii illi quini . . . ibi sedes sunt Arat torum ' (Lassen, Pentapot Indica, from the Mahabharata). They were known by the several names of Bahika, Jarttika, and Takka ; of which the last would appear to have been their true appellation ; for their old capital of Taxila or Takka-sila was known to the Greeks of Alex ander ; and the people themielves still exist in some numbers in the Panjab hills. The ancient extent of their power is proved by the present prevalence of their alphabetical characters, which, under the name of Takri or Takni, are now used by the Hindus of Kashmir and the northern mountains, from Simla and Subathu to Kabul and Bamian. On these grounds, Major Cunning ham identifies the banditti of Justin with the Takka, or original inhabitants of the Panjab, and assigns to them the honour of delivering their native land from the thraldom of a foreign yoke. This event occurred most probably about 316 B.C., or shortly after the march of Eudemos to the assistance of Etunenes. It was followed immedi ately by the conquest of Gangetic India (Justin, xv. p.4), and in 316 B. C. the rule of Chandragupta was acknowledged over the whole northern Peninsula, from the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges. According to Colonel Tod, the Yavan, or Greek princes, who apparently continued to rule within the Indus after the Christian era, were either the remains of the Bactrian dynasty, or the independent kingdom of Demetrius or Apollodotus, who ruled in the Paujab, having as their capital Sagala, changed by Demetrius to Euthymedia. Beyer says, in his Hist. Reg. Bact., p. 84, that according to Claudius Ptolemy there was a city within the Hydaspes yet nearer the Indus, called Sagala, also Euthymedia ; but he scarcely doubts that Demetrius called it Euthy media from his father, after his death and that of Menander. Demetrius was deprived of his ' patrimony, A.U.C. 562. Sagala is conjectured by Col. Tod to be the Salbhanpura of the Yadu, when driven from Zabulisthau, and that of the Yuchi or Yuti, who were fixed there from Central Asia in the fifth century, and if so early as the second century, when Ptolemy wrote, may have originated the change to Yutimedia, the Central Yuti.' Numerous medals, chiefly found within the probable limits of the Greek kingdom of Sagala, either belong to these princes or the Parthian kings of Minagara on the Indus. The legends are in Greek on one side, and in the Sassaniau character on the reverse. The names of Apollodotus and Menander have been de ciphered, and the titles of 'Great King,' Saviour,' and other epithets adopted by the Arsacidm, are perfectly legible. The devices, however, resemble the Parthian. These Greeks and Parthians must have gradually merged into the Hindu population.