The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir Part 9

The only comparatively flat land is on the banks above river beds, which are devoted to rice cultivation, the water being conducted to the embanked fields by an elaborate system of little ca.n.a.ls or _kuhls_. This is the only irrigation in the mountains, and is much valued. The Submontane Zone has a rainfall of from 30 to 40 inches. Well irrigation is little used and the dry crops are generally secure. Wheat and maize are the great staples, but gram and _chari_, i.e. _jowar_ grown for fodder, are also important. Some further information about Kashmir agriculture will be found in a later chapter. For full details about cla.s.ses of cultivation and crops in all the zones Tables II, III and IV should be consulted.

~North Central Panjab Plain.~--The best soils and the finest tillage are to be found in the North Central Zone. Gujrat has been included in it, though it has also affinities in the north with the North-West area, and in the south with the South-Western plain. The rainfall varies from 25 to 35 inches. One-third of the cultivated area is protected by wells, and the well cultivation is of a very high cla.s.s in Ludhiana and Jalandhar, where heavily manured maize is followed by a fine crop of wheat, and cane is commonly grown. In parts of Sialkot and Gujrat the well cultivation is of a different type, the area served per well being large and the object being to protect a big acreage of wheat in the spring harvest. The chief crops in this zone are wheat and _chari_. The latter is included under "Other Fodder" in Tables III and IV.

~North-Western Area.~--The plateau north of the Salt Range has a very clean light white sandy loam soil requiring little ploughing and no weeding. It is often very shallow, and this is one reason for the great preference for cold weather crops. _Kharif_ crops are more liable to be burned up. Generally speaking the rainfall is from 15 to 25 inches, the proportion falling in the winter and spring being larger than elsewhere.

There is, except in Peshawar and Bannu, where the conditions involve a considerable divergence from the type of this zone, practically no ca.n.a.l irrigation. The well irrigation is unimportant and in most parts consists of a few acres round each well intensively cultivated with market-gardening crops. The dry crops are generally very precarious. In Mianwali the Indus valley is a fine tract, but the harvests fluctuate greatly with the extent of the floods. The Thal in Mianwali to the south of the Sind Sagar railway is really a part of the next zone.

~The South-Western Plains.~--This zone contains nine districts. With the exception of the three on the north border of the zone they have a rainfall of from 5 to 10 inches. Of these six arid districts, only one, Montgomery, has any dry cultivation worth mentioning. In the zone as a whole three-fourths of the cultivation is protected by ca.n.a.ls or wells, or by both. In the lowlands near the great rivers cultivation depends on the floods brought to the land direct or through small ca.n.a.ls which carry water to parts which the natural overflow would not reach. In the uplands vast areas formerly untouched by the plough have been brought under tillage by the help of perennial ca.n.a.ls, and the process of reclamation is still going on. The Thal is a large sandy desert which becomes more and more worthless for cultivation as one proceeds southwards. In the north the people have found out of late years that this unpromising sand can not only yield poor _kharif_ crops, but is worth sowing with gram in the spring harvest. The expense is small, and a lucky season means large profits. In Dera Ghazi Khan a large area of "_pat_" below the hills is dependent for cultivation on torrents. The favourite crop in the embanked fields into which the water is diverted is _jowar_.

~The South-Eastern Plains.~--In the south-eastern Panjab except in Hissar and the native territory on the border of Rajputana, the rainfall is from 20 to 30 inches. In Hissar it amounts to some 15 inches. These are averages; the variations in total amount and distribution over the months of the year are very great. In good seasons the area under dry crops is very large, but the fluctuations in the sown acreage are extraordinary, and the matured is often far below the sown area. The great crops are gram and mixtures of wheat or barley with gram in the spring, and _bajra_ in the autumn, harvest. Well cultivation is not of much importance generally, though some of it in the Jamna riverain is excellent. The irrigated cultivation depends mainly on the Western Jamna and Sirhind ca.n.a.ls, and the great ca.n.a.l crops are wheat and cotton. This is the zone in which famine conditions are still most to be feared.

In the Panjab as a whole about one-third of the cultivated area is yearly put under wheat, which with _bajra_ and maize is the staple food of the people. A large surplus of wheat and oil-seeds is available for export.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 52. Carved doorway.]

CHAPTER XV

HANDICRAFTS AND MANUFACTURES

~Handicrafts.~--The chief handicrafts of the province are those of the weaver, the shoemaker, the carpenter, the potter, and the worker in bra.s.s and copper. The figures of the 1911 census for each craft including dependents were: weavers 883,000; shoemakers 540,000; carpenters 381,000; potters and brickmakers 349,000; metalworkers 240,000. The figures for weavers include a few working in factories. The hand-spun cotton-cloth is a coa.r.s.e strong fabric known as "_khaddar_"

with a single warp and weft. "_Khes_" is a better article with a double warp and weft. "_Susi_" is a smooth cloth with coloured stripes used for women's trousers. A superior kind of checked "_khes_" known as "_gabrun_" is made at Ludhiana. The native process of weaving is slow and the weavers are very poor. The Salvation Army is trying to introduce an improved hand loom. Fine "_lungis_" or turbans of cotton with silk borders are made at Ludhiana, Multan, Peshawar, and elsewhere. Effective cotton printing is carried on by very primitive methods at Kot Kamalia and Lah.o.r.e. Ludhiana and Lah.o.r.e turn out cotton _daris_ or rugs. Coa.r.s.e woollen blankets or _lois_ are woven at various places, and coloured felts or _namdas_ are made at Ludhiana, Khushab, and Peshawar. Excellent imitations of Persian carpets are woven at Amritsar, and the Srinagar carpets do credit to the Kashmiris' artistic taste. The best of the Amritsar carpets are made of _pashm_, the fine underwool of the Tibetan sheep, and _pashmina_ is also used as a material for _choghas_ (dressing-gowns), etc. Coa.r.s.e woollen cloth or _pattu_ is woven in the Kangra hills for local use. At Multan useful rugs are made whose fabric is a mixture of cotton and wool. More artistic are the Biluch rugs made by the Biluch women with geometrical patterns. These are excellent in colouring. They are rather difficult to procure as they are not made for sale. The weaving of China silk is a common industry in Amritsar, Bahawalpur, Multan, and other places. The _phulkari_ or silk embroidery of the village maidens of Hissar and other districts of the Eastern Panjab, and the more elaborate gold and silver wire embroideries of the Delhi _bazars_, are excellent. The most artistic product of the plains is the ivory carving of Delhi. As a wood-carver the Panjabi is not to be compared with the Kashmiri. His work is best fitted for doorways and the bow windows or _bokharchas_ commonly seen in the streets of old towns.

The best carvers are at Bhera, Chiniot, Amritsar, and Batala. The European demand has produced at Simla and other places an abundant supply of cheap articles of little merit. The inlaid work of Chiniot and Hoshyarpur is good, as is the lacquer-work of Pakpattan. The papier mache work of Kashmir has much artistic merit (Fig. 55), and some of the repousse silver work of Kashmir is excellent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 53. Shoemaker's craft.]

The craft of the _thathera_ or bra.s.s worker is naturally most prominent in the Eastern Panjab, because Hindus prefer bra.s.s vessels for cooking purposes. Delhi is the great centre, but the trade is actively carried on at other places, and especially at Jagadhri.

Unglazed pottery is made practically in every village. The blue enamelled pottery of Multan and the glazed Delhi china ware are effective. The manufacture of the latter is on a very petty scale.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 54. Carved windows.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 55. Papier mache work ~of~ Kashmir.]

~Factories.~--The factory industries of the Panjab are still very small.

In 1911 there were 268 factories employing 28,184 hands. The typical Panjab factory is a little cotton ginning or pressing mill. The grinding of flour and husking of rice are sometimes part of the same business.

The number of these mills rose in the 20 years ending 1911 from 12 to 202, and there are complaints that there are now too many factories.

Cotton-spinning has not been very successful and the number of mills in 1911, eight, was the same as in 1903-4. The weaving is almost entirely confined to yarn of low counts. Part is used by the hand-loom weavers and part is exported to the United Provinces. Good woollen fabrics are turned out at a factory at Dhariwal in the Gurdaspur district. There were in 1911 fifteen flour mills, ten ironworks, three breweries, and one distillery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 56. The Potter.

(_From a picture book said to have been prepared for Maharaja Dalip Singh._)]

~Joint-Stock Companies.~--The Panjab has not reached the stage where the joint-stock business successfully takes the place of the family banking or factory business. In 1911 there were 194 joint-stock companies. But many of these were provident societies, the working of which has been attended with such abuses that a special act has been pa.s.sed for their control. A number of banks and insurance companies have also sprung up of late years. Of some of these the paid up capital is absurdly small, and the recent collapse of the largest and of two smaller native banks has drawn attention to the extremely risky nature of the business done.

Of course European and Hindu family banking businesses of the old type stand on quite a different footing. Some of the cotton and other mills are joint-stock concerns.

CHAPTER XVI

EXPORTS AND IMPORTS

~Trade.~--In 1911-12 the exports from the Panjab, excluding those by land to Central Asia, Ladakh, and Afghanistan, were valued at Rs.

27,63,21,000 (18,421,000), of which 61 p.c. went to Karachi and about 10 p.c. to Calcutta and Bombay. Of the total 27 p.c. consisted of wheat, nearly the whole of which was dispatched to Karachi. All other grains and pulses were about equal in value to the wheat. "Gram and other pulses" (18 p.c. of total exports) was the chief item. Raw cotton accounts for 15, and oil-seeds for 10 p.c. The imports amounted in value to Rs. 30,01,28,000 (20,008,000), little more than one-third being received from Karachi. Cotton piece goods (Foreign 22, Indian 8-1/2 p.c.) make up one-third of the total. The other important figures are sugar 12, and metals 11 p.c. The land trade with Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Ladakh is insignificant, but interesting as furnishing an example of modes of transport which have endured for many centuries, and of the pursuit of gain often under appalling physical difficulties.

CHAPTER XVII

HISTORY--PRE-MUHAMMADAN PERIOD, 500 B.C.--1000 A.D.

~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 north of the Sutlej and the states of Chamba, Suket, and Mandi. The historians of Alexander's campaigns introduce us also to the kingdoms of the elder Poros on both banks of the Jhelam, of the younger Poros east of the Chenab, and of Sophytes (Saubhuti) in the neighbourhood of the Salt Range. We meet also with tribal confederacies, such as in Alexander's time those of the Kathaioi on the upper, and of the Malloi on the lower, Ravi.

~Invasion by Alexander, 327-325 B.C.~--The great Persian king, Darius, in 512 B.C. pushed out the boundary of his empire to the Indus, then running in a more easternly course than to-day[4]. The army with which Xerxes invaded Greece included a contingent of Indian bowmen[5]. When Alexander overthrew the Persian Empire and started on the conquest of India, the Indus was the boundary of the former. His remarkable campaign lasted from April, 327 B.C., when he led an army of 50,000 or 60,000 Europeans across the Hindu Kush into the Kabul valley, to October, 325, when he started from Sindh on his march to Persia through Makran. Having cleared his left flank by a campaign in the hills of Buner and Swat, he crossed the Indus sixteen miles above Attock near Torbela. The King of Taxila, whose capital was near the Margalla pa.s.s on the north border of the present Rawalpindi district, had prudently submitted as soon as the Macedonian army appeared in the Kabul valley. From the Indus Alexander marched to Taxila, and thence to the Jhelam (Hydaspes), forming a camp near the site now occupied by the town of that name in the country of Poros. The great army of the Indian king was drawn up to dispute the pa.s.sage probably not very far from the eastern end of the present railway bridge. Favoured by night and a monsoon rain-storm--it was the month of July, 326 B.C.--Alexander succeeded in crossing some miles higher up into the Karri plain under the low hills of Gujrat. Here, somewhere near the line now occupied by the upper Jhelam Ca.n.a.l, the Greek soldiers gave the first example of a feat often repeated since, the rout of a large and unwieldy Indian army by a small, but mobile and well-led, European force. Having defeated Poros, Alexander crossed the Chenab (Akesines), stormed Sangala, a fort of the Kathaioi on the upper Ravi (Hydraotes) and advanced as far as the Bias (Hyphasis). But the weary soldiers insisted that this should be the bourn of their eastward march, and, after setting up twelve stone altars on the farther side, Alexander in September, 326 B.C., reluctantly turned back. Before he left the Panjab he had hard fighting with the Malloi on the lower Ravi, and was nearly killed in the storm of one of their forts. Alexander intended that his conquests should be permanent, and made careful arrangements for their administration. But his death in June, 323 B.C., put an end to Greek rule in India. Chandra Gupta Maurya expelled the Macedonian garrisons, and some twenty years later Seleukos Nicator had to cede to him Afghanistan.

~Maurya Dominion and Empire of Asoka, 323-231 B.C.~--Chandra Gupta is the Sandrakottos, to whose capital at Pataliputra (Patna) Seleukos sent Megasthenes in 303 B.C. The Greek amba.s.sador was a diligent and truthful observer, and his notes give a picture of a civilized and complex system of administration. If Chandra Gupta was the David, his grandson, Asoka, was the Solomon of the first Hindu Empire. His long reign, lasting from 273 to 231 B.C., was with one exception a period of profound peace deliberately maintained by an emperor who, after his conversion to the teaching of Gautama Buddha, thought war a sin.

Asoka strove to lead his people into the right path by means of pithy abstracts of the moral law of his master graven on rocks and pillars. It is curious to remember that this missionary king was peacefully ruling a great empire in India during the twenty-four years of the struggle between Rome and Carthage, which we call the first Punic War. Of the four Viceroys who governed the outlying provinces of the empire one had his headquarters at Taxila. One of the rock edicts is at Mansehra in Hazara and another at Shahbazgarhi in Peshawar. From this time and for many centuries the dominant religion in the Panjab was Buddhism, but the religion of the villages may then have been as remote from the State creed as it is to-day from orthodox Brahmanism.

~Graeco-Bactrian and Graeco-Parthian Rule.~--The Panjab slipped from the feeble grasp of Asoka's successors, and for four centuries it looked not to the Ganges, but to the Kabul and the Oxus rivers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 57. Coin--obverse and reverse of Menander.]

Up to the middle of the first century of our era it was first under Graeco-Bactrian, and later under Graeco-Parthian, rule directly, or indirectly through local rulers with Greek names or Saka Satraps. The Sakas, one of the central Asian shepherd hordes, were pushed out of their pastures on the upper Jaxartes by another horde, the Yuechi.

Shadowy h.e.l.lenist Princes have left ~us~ only their names on coins; one Menander, who ruled about 150 B.C., is an exception. He antic.i.p.ated the feats of later rulers of Kabul by a temporary conquest of North-Western India, westwards to the Jamna and southwards to the sea.

~The Kushan Dynasty.~--The Yuechi in turn were driven southward to the Oxus and the Kabul valley and under the Kushan dynasty established their authority in the Panjab about the middle of the first century. The most famous name is that of Kanishka, who wrested from China Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, and a.s.sembled ~a~ notable council of sages of the law in Kashmir. His reign may be dated from 120 to 150 A.D. His capital was at Purushapura (Peshawar), near which he built the famous relic tower of Buddha, 400 feet high. Beside the tower was a large monastery still renowned in the ninth and tenth centuries as a home of sacred learning.

The rule of Kushan kings in the Panjab lasted till the end of the first quarter of the third century. To their time belong the Buddhist sculptures found in the tracts near their Peshawar capital (see also page 204).

~The Gupta Empire.~--Of the century preceding the establishment in 320 B.C. of the Gupta dynasty at Patna we know nothing. The Panjab probably again fell under the sway of petty rajas and tribal confederacies, though the Kushan rule was maintained in Peshawar till 465 A.D., when it was finally blotted out by the White Huns. These savage invaders soon after defeated Skanda Gupta, and from this blow the Gupta Empire never recovered. At the height of its power in 400 A.D. under Chandra Gupta II, known as Vikramaditya, who is probably the original of the Bikramajit of Indian legends, it may have reached as far west as the Chenab.

~The White Huns or Ephthalites.~--In the beginning of the sixth century the White Hun, Mahirakula, ruled the Panjab from Sakala, the modern Sialkot. He was a worshipper of Siva, and a deadly foe of the Buddhist cult, and has been described as a monster of cruelty.

The short-lived dominion of the White Huns was destroyed by the Turks and Persians about the year 565 A.D.

~Panjab in seventh century A.D.~--From various sources, one of the most valuable being the Memoirs of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who travelled in India from 630 to 644 A.D., we know something of Northern India in the first half of the seventh century. Hiuen Tsang was at Kanauj as a guest of a powerful king named Harsha, whose first capital was at Thanesar, and who held a suzerainty over all the rajas from the Brahmaputra to the Bias. West of that river the king of Kashmir was also overlord of Taxila, Urasa, Parnotsa (Punch), Raj.a.puri (Rajauri) and Sinhapura, which seems to have included the Salt Range. The Peshawar valley was probably ruled by the Turki Shahiya kings of Kabul. The rest of the Panjab was divided between a kingdom called by Hiuen Tsang Tsekhia, whose capital was somewhere near Sialkot, and the important kingdom of Sindh, in which the Indus valley as far north as the Salt Range was included. Harsha died in 647 A.D. and his empire collapsed.

~Kashmir under Hindu Kings.~--For the next century China was at the height of its power. It established a suzerainty over Kashmir, Udyana (Swat), Yasin, and Chitral. The first was at this period a powerful Hindu kingdom. Its annals, as recorded in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, bear henceforward a real relation to history. In 733 A.D. King Muktapida Lalitaditya received invest.i.ture from the Chinese Emperor. Seven years later he defeated the King of Kanauj on the Ganges. A ruler who carried his arms so far afield must have been very powerful in the Northern Panjab. The remains of the wonderful Martand temple, which he built in honour of the Sun G.o.d, are a standing memorial of his greatness. The history of Kashmir under its Hindu kings for the next 400 years is for the most part that of a wretched people ground down by cruel tyrants. A notable exception was Avantidharman--855-883 A.D.--whose minister, Suyya, carried out very useful drainage and irrigation works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 58. Martand Temple.]

~The Panjab, 650-1000 A.D.~--We know little of Panjab history in the 340 years which elapsed between the death of Harsha and the beginning of the Indian raids of the Sultans of Ghazni in 986-7 A.D. The conquest of the kingdom of Sindh by the Arab general, Muhammad Kasim, occurred some centuries earlier, in 712 A.D. Multan, the city of the Sun-worshippers, was occupied, and part at least of the Indus valley submitted to the youthful conqueror. He and his successors in Sindh were tolerant rulers.