RA1VAL PINDI, lat. 33° 36' 5" N., and long. 72° 59' 8" E., in the Panjab, a large military station. Mean height of the cantonment, 1737 feet. It gives its name to a revenue district lying between lat. 33° and 34° N., and long. 71°46' and 73° 41' E., with an area of 6218 square miles, and in 1868 a population of 711,256 souls. Its surface is every where cut up by mountain ranges ; that on the east is known as the Murree Hills, on which a sanatorium has been formed, and one of the Lawrence Institutions established. It is clothed with forest trees, and in some places elevated 8000 feet. Its chief river is the Indus, and its tribu taries the Sohan and Haroh. The district con tains many of the towns connected with the events of Alexander's expedition, and its earliest inhabitants appear to have been the Takka, a Turanian race, who held the greater part of the Sind Sagar Doab, and gave their name to the town of Takshasila, the Taxila of the ancient Greeks. Its ruins have been identified in the site of Dehra Shahan or Shah Deri, which lie to the north of the Margala pass. Since then the district became subject to the king of Magadha, and Prince Asoka was employed to suppress a rebellion of the Takka. In the 11th century, the
Ghakkar, a non-Aryan race, were dominant, and in the 12th century (A.D. 1193) 30,000 of them were in the Confederate Rajput forces under Pritwi Raja. In 1205, on the reverses of Shahab ud-Din Ghori in Khanzm, the Ghakkar revolted, but were defeated, and compelled to adopt Muham madanism, though on retiring he was surprised by a Ghakkar detachment, which swam the river, and killed him at night in his tent (A.n. 14th March 1206). They unsuccessfully revolted again in Baber's time, and again in the time of the Sikhs, and in 1819 the district fell to the British on the conquest of the Panjab. In 1843 and 1844 the country- wa,s devastated by locusts (Cal. Rev. 1871). Its revenue subdivisions are Rawal Pindi, Jhelum, Shahpur, and Gujerat. The town of Rawal Pindi is situated between the Indus and the Jhelum ; population about 20,000. It is 1453 miles from Calcutta. Rawal Pindi produces gold from the wa.shings at Attock, sandstone, lime stone.-1?ob.; Schl.