Government and Revenue.— The province is under a lieutenant-governor, assisted since 1897 by a legislative council of nine members. The most important item of revenue is the land-tax, which, on the average, yields a net revenue, after deducting charges, of nearly £2,000,000; besides there are excise duties on spirits and drugs, duties on stamps, etc. The financial condition is so favorable that there is often a clear surplus of revenue over expendi ture of £2,500,000. About one-half of the whole cultivated area of the Punjab is tilled by owners, and about 1 per cent by tenants paying a nominal or no rent. Of the remaining area one-fifth is cultivated by occupancy ten ants, and the rest is held by tenants-at-will, a class increasing in numbers from year to year. Rents vary from five annas to 40 rupees per acre, the average being about two and two thirds rupees. On about two-thirds of the land held by tenants-at-will the rent is wholly or partly paid in kind, and the average rent payable in kind is for the whole province about two-fifths of the produce. Nearly 5,000,000 acres are under mortgage.
Army and Police.— The Punjab forms a military district called °The Northern Com mand,' under a lieutenant-general with head quarters at Rawal Pindee. The military au thority of this officer extends to the Northwest Frontier Province. The military cantonments are Rawal Pindee, Peshawar, Noroshera, Abbottabad, Sialkor, Jhelum, Lahore, Jullun dur, Sirhind, Umballa, Forozepore, Kohat, Bannu and Murdan under a lieutenant-general. The military force stationed in the Punjab in 1900 consisted altogether of 68,806 men. Of cavalry there were 11,893, of infantry 50,504, of artillery 6,120, with some engineers, etc. There were thus more troops in the Punjab than in any other division of India. The police force is stated to be in a most effective condi tion. It numbers about 20,000 men, divided into two divisions, the Trasts-Sutlej and the Cis-Sutlej. Almost all the police are armed either with swords or guns. The Punjab has a chief court with five judges, two of whom are natives — and four temporary judges.
History.— The Punjab plays an important part in the history of Hindustan and British India. ft was invaded in 327 s.c. by Alexander the Great, who defeated Porus at Mong in Gujerat and overran the whole country. In 1022 it was overrun by the troops of Mahmad of Ghazni, whose successors held the-country for 170 years, making Lahore the seat of their i government. In 1193 it passed by conquest into the hands of Mohammed Ghori, and Delhi be came the capital. After his death the country was ruled by a succession of turbulent chiefs, principally Afghans, till at length in 1526 Baber, the founder of the Mogul Empire, having ob tained possession of the country, ascended the throne, and established a dynasty whose sway prevailed for about two centuries, during which the Sikhs were rising into importance. In 1738 Nadir Shah overran the Punjab, and in the following year he defeated the Mogul army at Karnal and sacked Delhi. The Sikhs were ut terly defeated by the Afghan conqueror Ahmed Shah Durani in 1762, and the Moguls nominally ceded the Punjab to him. The Durani dy nasty maintained its ascendency till the begin ning of the 19th century, when the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh began their career of conquest.
In 1818 this renowned chieftain stormed MW tan and took Peshawar—in the following year conquering Kashmir and Derajat west of the Indus; and in 10 years he succeeded in estab lishing his power over the whole country. In 1839 Ranjit Singh died. His son Khorak Singh quietly succeeded, but died of a de dine a few months after his father, on which Shere Singh, a natural son of the great Ranjit, assumed the sovereignty, but was assas sinated 15 Sept. 1843. Dhulip Singh, the re puted son of Ranjit Singh, succeeded his brother. This young prince was converted to Christianity and retired on a princely pension to England, where he died. But from the close of 1843 to the period of its annexation to British India the government was in abeyance, or, what is worse, in the hands of an ignorant, bloodthirsty, rapacious and insubordinate army. At length it became manifest that the Sikhs of the Punjab were preparing for an irruption into the territories protected by the British on the east of the Sutlej. In the end of December 1845, the Sikh forces passed the Sutlej into the territories protected by the British, with a most formidable train of artillery, but they found themselves completely worsted after the hard-fought actions of Mudki, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon. Lahore and other stations were afterward occupied by British troops: the Jallandar Doab, between the Sutlej and Beas, was permanently ceded to the British; and the province of Kashmir and the other provinces of the Himalayas were vested in the Rajah Gholab Singh. In 1849 a conspiracy between several disaffected chiefs and the Afgaus re sulted in further hostilities against the British, Multan being the centre of their operations. The indecisive battle of Chillianwalla was fol lowed by the capture of Multan in January, and the victory of Gujerat in February 1849, since which period the former territories of the Sikhs have formed an integral part of the British Empire. The most important subse quent event in the history of the province was the Indian Mutiny, when the Sikhs were loyal to the British government, and the present Sikh regiments of the British native army form the most important section of the military strength of the empire, the Sikhs and the Gurk has being esteemed by many critics the finest soldiers in the world. After the suppression of the mutiny the province was erected into a lieutenant-governorship under Sir John Law rence, the distinguished statesman.
Bibliography.— Consult Cunningham, chEeological Survey of India,' Vol. XIV (Lon don 1882) ; Gore, (Lights and Shades of Hill Life in the Afghan and Hindu Highlands of the Punjab' (London 1895); Latif, (History of the Punjab from the Earliest Antiquity to the Present Time) (London 1896); Medlicott, (Sketch of the Geology of the Punjab) (Cal cutta 1888) ; Prinsep, (History of the Punjab); Griffin, 'The Rajas of the Punjab) (2d ed., London 1872); Honigberger, Thirty-five Years in the East); Edwards, Year on the Pun jab Frontier); Clark, 'Thirty Years of Mis sionary Work in the Punjab); Ga zetteer) (Calcutta).