The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir

Female Education.—Female education is still a tender plant, but of late growth has been vigorous. The Victoria May School in Lahore founded in 1908 has developed into the Queen Mary College, which provides an excellent education for girls of what may be called the upper middle class. There is a separate class for married ladies. Hitherto they have only been reached by the teaching given in their own homes by missionary ladies, whose useful work is now being imitated by the Hindu community in Lahore. There is an excellent Hindu Girls' Boarding School in Jalandhar. The Sikhs and the body of reformers known as the Dev Samáj have good girls' schools at Ferozepore. The best mission schools are the Kinnaird High School at Lahore and the Alexandra School at Amritsar. The North India School of Medicine for Women at Ludhiána, also a missionary institution, does admirable work. In the case of elementary schools the difficulty of getting qualified teachers is even greater than as regards boys' schools.

Education of European Children.—There are special arrangements for the education of European and Anglo-Indian children. In this department the Roman Catholics have been active and successful. The best schools are the Lawrence Asylum at Sanáwar, Bishop Cotton's School, Auckland House, and St Bede's at Simla, St Denys', the Lawrence Asylum, and the Convent School at Murree.

The Panjáb University.—The Panjáb University was constituted in 1882, but the Government Arts College and Oriental College, the Medical College and the Law School at Lahore, which are affiliated with it, are of older date. The University is an examining body like London University. Besides the two Arts Colleges under Government management mentioned above there are nine private Arts Colleges aided by Government grants and affiliated to the University. Four of these are in Lahore, two, the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic and the Diál Singh Colleges, are Hindu institutions, one, the Islámia College, is Muhammadan, the fourth is the popular and efficient Forman Christian College. Four out of five art students read in Lahore. Of the Arts colleges outside Lahore the most important is the St Stephen's College at Delhi. The Khálsa School and College at Amritsar is a Sikh institution. The Veterinary College at Lahore is the best of its kind in India, and the Agricultural College at Lyallpur is a well-equipped institution, which at present attracts few pupils, but may play a very useful rôle in the future. There is little force in the reproach that we built up a super-structure of higher education before laying a broad foundation of primary education. There is more in the charge that the higher educational food we have offered has not been well adapted to the intellectual digestions of the recipients.

Education in N.W.F. Province, Native States, and I Kashmír.—The Panjáb Native States and Kashmír are much more backward as regards education than the British Province. As is natural in a tract in which the population is overwhelmingly Musalmán by religion and farming by trade the N.W.F. Province lags behind the Panjáb. Six colleges in the States and the N.W.F. Province are affiliated to the Panjáb University.

CHAPTER XII

Roads.—The alignment of good roads in the plains of the Panjáb is easy, and the deposits of calcareous nodules or kankar often found near the surface furnish good metalling material. In the west the rainfall is so scanty and in many parts wheeled traffic so rare that it is often wise to leave the roads unmetalled. There are in the Panjáb over 2000 miles of metalled, and above 20,000 miles of unmetalled roads. The greatest highway in the world, the Grand Trunk, which starts from Calcutta and ends at Pesháwar, passes through the province from Delhi in the south-east to Attock in the extreme north-west corner, and there crosses the Indus and enters the N.W.F. Province. The greater part of the section from Karnál to Lahore had been completed some years before the Mutiny, that from Lahore to Pesháwar was finished in 1863-64. A great loop road connects our arsenal at Ferozepore with the Grand Trunk Road at Lahore and Ludhiána. The fine metalled roads from Ambála to Kálka, and Kálka to Simla have lost much of their importance since the railway was brought to the hill capital. Beyond Simla the Kálka-Simla road is carried on for 150 miles to the Shipkí Pass on the borders of Tibet, being maintained as a very excellent hill road adapted to mule carriage. A fine tonga road partly in the plains and partly in the hills joins Murree with Ráwalpindí. From Murree it drops into the Jhelam valley crossing the river and entering Kashmír at Kohála. It is carried up the gorge of the Jhelam to Báramúla and thence through the Kashmír valley to Srínagar. A motor-car can be driven all the way from Ráwalpindí to Srínagar. In the N.W.F. Province a great metalled road connects Pesháwar, Kohát, Bannu, and Dera Ismail Khán.

Railways. Main Lines.—It is just over fifty years since the first railway, a short line joining Lahore and Amritsar, was opened in 1862. Three years later Lahore was linked up with Multán and the small steamers which then plied on the Indus. Amritsar was connected with Delhi in 1870, and Lahore with Pesháwar in 1883. The line from Pesháwar to Lahore, and branching thence to Karáchí and Delhi may be considered the Trunk Line. The railway service has been enormously developed in the past thirty years. In 1912 there were over 4000 miles of open lines. There are now three routes from Delhi to Lahore:

(a) The N.W. Railway via Meerut and Saháranpur (on east of Jamna), and Ambála, Ludhiána, Jalandhar, Amritsar;

(b) The Southern Panjáb Railway via Jind, Rohtak, Bhatinda, and Ferozepore;

(c) The Delhi-Ambála-Kálka branch of the East Indian Rallway from Delhi through Karnál to Ambála, and thence by the N.W. Railway. This is the shortest route.

The Southern Panjáb Railway also connects Delhi with Karáchí through its junction with the N.W. Railway at Samasata to the south of Baháwalpur. Another route is by a line passing through Rewárí and the Merta junction. Karáchí is the natural seaport of the central and western Panjáb. The S.P. Railway now gives an easy connection with Ferozepore and Ludhiána, and the enormous export of wheat, cotton, etc. from the new canal colonies is carried by several lines which converge at Khanewál, a junction on the main line, a little north of Multán.

Railways. Minor Lines.—The Sind Ságar branch starting from Lála Musa between Lahore and Amritsar with smaller lines taking off further north at Golra and Campbellpur serves the part of the province lying north of the Salt Range. These lines converge at Kundian in the Mianwálí district, and a single line runs thence southwards to points on the Indus opposite Dera Ismail Khán and Dera Ghází Khán, and turning eastwards rejoins the trunk line at Sher Sháh near Multán. There are a number of branch lines in the plains, some owned by native States. Strategically a very important one is that which crossing the Indus by the Khushálgarh bridge unites Ráwalpindí with Kohát. The only hill railway is that from Kálka to Simla. A second is now under construction which, when completed, will connect Ráwalpindí with Srínagar. All these lines with the exception of the branch of the E.I. Railway mentioned above are worked by the staff of the N. W. State Railway, whose manager controls inside and outside the Panjáb some 5000 miles of open line. The interest earned in 1912 was 4½ p.c., a good return when it is considered that the parts of the system to the north of the Salt Range and the Sind Ságar railway were built primarily for strategic reasons.

CHAPTER XIII

Extent of Canal Irrigation.—In 1911-12, when the deficiency of the rainfall made the demand for water keen, the canals of the Panjáb and the N.W.F. Province irrigated 8½ millions of acres. The figures are:

Panjáb

N.W. Frontier Province

On the Sirhind Canal, on which the demand fluctuates greatly with the character of the season, the area was twice the normal. The three canals of the Triple Project will, when fully developed, add 1,871,000 acres to the irrigated area of the Panjáb, and the Upper Swát Canal will increase that of the N.W.F. Province by 381,000 acres. The canals will therefore in a year of drought be able to water over ten millions of acres without taking account of possible extensions if a second canal should be drawn from the Sutlej. The money spent from imperial funds on Panjáb canals has exceeded twelve millions sterling, and no money has ever been better spent. In, when the area irrigated was a good deal less than in, the value of the crops raised by the use of canal water was estimated at about 207 millions of rupees or nearly £14,000,000. It is only possible to note very briefly the steps by which this remarkable result has been achieved.

Western Jamna Canal.—Soon after the assumption of authority at Delhi in 1803 the question of the old Canal from the Jamna was taken up. The Delhi Branch was reopened in 1819, and the Hánsí Branch six years later. In the famine year nearly 400,000 acres were irrigated. For more than half a century that figure represented the irrigating capacity of the canal. The English engineers in the main retained the faulty Moghal alignment, and waterlogging of the worst description developed. The effect on the health of the people was appalling. After long delay the canal was remodelled. The result has been most satisfactory in every way. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the Sirsa Branch and the Nardak Distributary were added, to carry water to parts of the Karnál and Hissár districts where any failure of the monsoon resulted in widespread loss of crops. If a scheme to increase the supply can be carried out, further extension in tracts now very liable to famine will become possible. In the six years ending the interest earned exceeded 8 p.c.

Upper Bárí Doáb Canal.—The headworks of the Upper Bárí Doáb Canal are above Mádhopur near the point where the Ráví leaves the hills. The work was started soon after annexation, but only finished in 1859. Irrigation has grown from 90,000 acres in to 533,000 in, 861,000 in 1900-1, and 1,157,000 in. The later history of the canal consists mainly of great extensions in the arid Lahore district, and the irrigation there is now three-fifths of the whole. In parts of Amritsar, and markedly near the city, waterlogging has become a grave evil, but remedial measures have now been undertaken. The interest earned on the capital expenditure in the six years ending averaged 11½ p.c.

Sirhind Canal.—A quarter of a century passed after the Upper Bárí Doáb Canal began working before the water of the Sutlej was used for irrigation. The Sirhind Canal weir is at Rupar where the river emerges from the Siwáliks. Patiála, Jínd, and Nábha contributed to the cost, and own three of the five branches. But the two British branches are entitled to nearly two-thirds of the water, which is utilized in the Ludhiána and Ferozepore districts and in the Farídkot State. The soil of the tract commanded is for the most part a light sandy loam, and in years of good rainfall it repays dry cultivation. The result is that the area watered fluctuates largely. But in the six years ending the interest earned averaged 7 p.c., and the power of expansion in a bad year is a great boon to the peasantry.

Canal extensions in Western Panjáb.—In the last quarter of a century the chief task of the Canal Department in the Panjáb has been the extension of irrigation to the Rechna and Jech Doábs and the lower part of the Bárí Doáb. All three contained large areas of waste belonging to the State, mostly good soil, but incapable of cultivation owing to the scanty rainfall. Colonization has therefore been an important part of all the later canal projects. The operations have embraced the excavation of five canals.

Lower Chenáb Canal.—The Lower Chenáb Canal is one of the greatest irrigation works in the world, the area commanded being 3-1/3 million acres, the average discharge four or five times that of the Thames at Teddington, and the average irrigated area 2¼ million acres. There are three main branches, the Rakh, the Jhang, and the Gugera. The supply is secured by a great weir built across the Chenáb river at Khánkí in the Gujránwála district, and the irrigation is chiefly in the Gujránwála, Lyallpur, and Jhang districts. In the four years ending the average interest earned was 28 p.c., and in future the rate should rarely fall below 30 p.c. The capital expenditure has been a little over £2,000,000. The interest charges were cleared about five years after the starting of irrigation, and the capital has already been repaid to the State twice over.

Lower Jhelam Canal.—The Lower Jhelam Canal, which waters the tract between the Jhelam and Chenáb in the Sháhpur and Jhang districts, is a smaller and less profitable work. The culturable commanded area is about one million acres. The head-works are at Rasúl in the Gujrát district. Irrigation began in 1901. In the four years ending 1911-12 the average area watered was 748,000 acres and the interest earned exceeded 10 p.c.

Triple Project—Upper Jhelam and Upper Chenáb Canals and Lower Bárí Doáb Canal.—The Lower Chenáb Canal takes the whole available supply of the Chenáb river. But it does not command a large area in the Rechna Doáb lying in the west of Gujránwála, in which rain cultivation is very risky and well cultivation is costly. No help can be got from the Ráví, as the Upper Bárí Doáb Canal exhausts its supply. Desirable as the extension of irrigation in the areas mentioned above is, the problem of supplying it might well have seemed insuperable. The bold scheme known as the Triple Project which embraces the construction of the Upper Jhelam, Upper Chenáb, and Lower Bárí Doáb Canals, is based on the belief that the Jhelam river has even in the cold weather water to spare after feeding the Lower Jhelam Canal. The true raison d'être of the Upper Jhelam Canal, whose head-works are at Mangla in Kashmír a little north of the Gujrát district, is to throw a large volume of water into the Chenáb at Khánkí, where the Lower Chenáb Canal takes off, and so set free an equal supply to be taken out of the Chenáb higher up at Merála in Siálkot, where are the head-works of the Upper Chenáb Canal. But the Upper Jhelam Canal will also water annually some 345,000 acres in Gujrát and Sháhpur. The Upper Chenáb Canal will irrigate 648,000 acres mostly in Gujránwála, and will be carried across the Ráví by an aqueduct at Balloke in the south of Lahore. Henceforth the canal is known as the Lower Bárí Doáb, which will water 882,000 acres, mostly owned by the State, in the Montgomery and Multán districts. On the other two canals the area of Government land is not large. The Triple Project is approaching completion, and irrigation from the Upper Chenáb Canal has begun. The engineering difficulties have been great, and the forecast does not promise such large gains as even the Lower Jhelam Canal. But a return of 7½ p.c. is expected.

Monsoon or Inundation Canals.—The numerous monsoon or inundation canals, which take off from the Indus, Jhelam, Chenáb, Ráví, and Sutlej, though individually petty works, perform an important office in the thirsty south-western districts. By their aid a kharíf crop can be raised without working the wells in the hot weather, and with luck the fallow can be well soaked in autumn, and put under wheat and other spring crops. For the maturing of these crops a prudent cultivator should not trust to the scanty cold weather rainfall, but should irrigate them from a well. The Sidhnai has a weir, but may be included in this class, for there is no assured supply at its head in the Ráví in the winter. In 1910-11 the inundation canals managed by the State watered 1,800,000 acres. There are a number of private canals in Ferozepore, Sháhpur, and the hill district of Kángra. In Ferozepore the district authorities take a share in the management.

Colonization of Canal Lands.—The colonization of huge areas of State lands has been an important part of new canal schemes in the west of the Panjáb. When the Lower Chenáb Canal was started the population of the vast Bár tract which it commands consisted of a few nomad cattle owners and cattle thieves. It was a point of honour to combine the two professions. Large bodies of colonists were brought from the crowded districts of the central Panjáb. The allotments to peasants usually consisted of 55 acres, a big holding for a man who possibly owned only four or five acres in his native district. There were larger allotments known as yeoman and capitalist grants, but the peasants are the only class who have turned out quite satisfactory farmers. Colonization began in 1892 and was practically complete by 1904, when over 1,800,000 acres had been allotted. To save the peasants from the evils which an unrestricted right of transfer was then bringing on the heads of many small farmers in the Panjáb it was decided only to give them permanent inalienable tenant right. The Panjáb Alienation of Land Act, No. XIII of 1900, has supplied a remedy generally applicable, and the peasant grantees are now being allowed to acquire ownership on very easy terms. The greater part of the colony is in the new Lyallpur district, which had in 1911 a population of 857,511 souls.

On the Lower Jhelam Canal the area of colonized land exceeds 400,000 acres. A feature of colonization on that canal is that half the area is held on condition of keeping up one or more brood mares, the object being to secure a good class of remounts. Succession to these grants is governed by primogeniture. On the Lower Bárí Doáb Canal a very large area is now being colonized.

Canals of the N.W.F. Province.—Hemmed in as the N.W.F. Province is between the Indus and the Hills, its canals are insignificant as compared with the great irrigation works of the Panjáb. The only ones of any importance are in the Pesháwar Valley. These draw their supplies from the Kábul, Bára, and Swát rivers, but the works supplied by the first two streams only command small areas. The Lower Swát Canal was begun in 1876, but the tribesmen were hostile and the diggers had to sleep in fortified enclosures. The work was not opened till 1885. A reef in the river has made it possible to dispense with a permanent weir. The country is not an ideal one for irrigation, being much cut up by ravines. But a large area has been brought under command, and the irrigation has more than once exceeded 170,000 acres. In 1911-12 it was 157,650 acres, and the interest earned was 9¾ p.c. The Upper Swát Canal, which was opened in April 1914, was a more ambitious project, involving the tunnelling at the Málakand of 11,000 feet of solid rock. The commanded area is nearly 450,000 acres, including 40,000 beyond our administrative frontier. The estimated cost is Rs. 18,240,000 or over £1,200,000 and the annual irrigation expected is 381,562 acres.

CHAPTER XIV

Harvests.—There are two harvests, the autumn or kharíf, and the spring or rabí. The autumn crops are mostly sown in June and July and reaped from September to December. Cotton is often sown in March. Cane planted in March and cut in January and February is counted as a kharíf crop. The spring crops are sown from the latter part of September to the end of December. They are reaped in March and April. Roughly in the Panjáb three-fifths of the crops belong to the spring harvest. In the N.W.F. Province the proportion is somewhat higher. In Kashmír the autumn crop is by far the more important.

Rotations.—The commonest rotation in ordinary loam soils is to put in a spring and autumn crop in succession and then let the land lie fallow for a year. Unless a good deal of manure is available this is the course to follow, even in the case of irrigated land. Some poor hard soils are only fit for crops of coarse rice sown after the embanked fields have been filled in the monsoon by drainage from surrounding waste. Other lands are cropped only in the autumn because the winter rainfall is very scanty. Flooded lands are often sown only for the spring harvest.

Cattle, Sheep, and Goats.—In 1909 there were in the British districts of the Panjáb 4¼ million bullocks and 625,000 male buffaloes available to draw 2,169,000 ploughs and 288,000 carts, thresh the corn, and work a quarter of a million wells, besides sugar, oil, and flour mills. The cattle of the hills, N.W. Panjáb, and riverain tracts are undersized, but in the uplands of the Central Panjáb and S.E. districts fine oxen are used. The horned cattle share 18 millions of pasture land, much extremely poor, with 4 million sheep and 5½ million goats. Hence the enormous area devoted to fodder crops.

Zones.—Six zones can be distinguished, but, as no district is wholly confined to the mountain zone, it must for statistical purposes be united to the submontane zone:

Mountain and Submontane Zones.—In the Mountain Zone the fields are often very minute, consisting of narrow terraces supported by stone revetments built up the slopes of hills. That anyone should be ready to spend time and labour on such unpromising material is a sign of pressure of population on the soil, which is a marked feature of some hill tracts.

Below 8000 feet the great crop is maize. Potatoes have been introduced near our hill stations. The chief pulse of the mountain zone is kulath (Dolichos biflorus), eaten by the very poor. Wheat ascends to 8000 or 9000 feet, and at the higher levels is reaped in August. Barley is grown at much greater heights. Buckwheat (úgal, trúmba, dráwí), amaranth (chauláí, ganhár, sariára), and a tall chenopod (bathu) are grown in the mountain zone. Buckwheat is common on poor stony lands.

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 canals 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 charí, i.e. jowár grown for fodder, are also important. Some further information about Kashmír agriculture will be found in a later chapter. For full details about classes of cultivation and crops in all the zones Tables II, III and IV should be consulted.

North Central Panjáb Plain.—The best soils and the finest tillage are to be found in the North Central Zone. Gujrát 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 class in Ludhiána and Jalandhar, where heavily manured maize is followed by a fine crop of wheat, and cane is commonly grown. In parts of Siálkot and Gujrát 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 charí. 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. Kharíf 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 Pesháwar and Bannu, where the conditions involve a considerable divergence from the type of this zone, practically no canal 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 Mianwálí the Indus valley is a fine tract, but the harvests fluctuate greatly with the extent of the floods. The Thal in Mianwálí to the south of the Sind Ságar 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 canals 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 canals 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 canals, 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 kharíf crops, but is worth sowing with gram in the spring harvest. The expense is small, and a lucky season means large profits. In Dera Ghází Khán 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 jowár.

The South-Eastern Plains.—In the south-eastern Panjáb except in Hissár and the native territory on the border of Rájputána, the rainfall is from 20 to 30 inches. In Hissár 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 bájra 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 canals, and the great canal crops are wheat and cotton. This is the zone in which famine conditions are still most to be feared.

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

CHAPTER XV

Handicrafts.—The chief handicrafts of the province are those of the weaver, the shoemaker, the carpenter, the potter, and the worker in brass 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 coarse strong fabric known as "khaddar" with a single warp and weft. "Khes" is a better article with a double warp and weft. "Súsí" is a smooth cloth with coloured stripes used for women's trousers. A superior kind of checked "khes" known as "gabrún" is made at Ludhiána. 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 "lungís" or turbans of cotton with silk borders are made at Ludhiána, Multán, Pesháwar, and elsewhere. Effective cotton printing is carried on by very primitive methods at Kot Kamália and Lahore. Ludhiána and Lahore turn out cotton darís or rugs. Coarse woollen blankets or loís are woven at various places, and coloured felts or namdas are made at Ludhiána, Khusháb, and Pesháwar. Excellent imitations of Persian carpets are woven at Amritsar, and the Srínagar carpets do credit to the Kashmírís' artistic taste. The best of the Amritsar carpets are made of pashm, the fine underwool of the Tibetan sheep, and pashmína is also used as a material for choghas (dressing-gowns), etc. Coarse woollen cloth or pattu is woven in the Kángra hills for local use. At Multán 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, Baháwalpur, Multán, and other places. The phulkárí or silk embroidery of the village maidens of Hissár and other districts of the Eastern Panjáb, and the more elaborate gold and silver wire embroideries of the Delhi bazárs, are excellent. The most artistic product of the plains is the ivory carving of Delhi. As a wood-carver the Panjábí is not to be compared with the Kashmírí. His work is best fitted for doorways and the bow windows or bokhárchas commonly seen in the streets of old towns. The best carvers are at Bhera, Chiniot, Amritsar, and Batála. 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 Hoshyárpur is good, as is the lacquer-work of Pákpattan. The papier maché work of Kashmír has much artistic merit (Fig. 55), and some of the repoussé silver work of Kashmír is excellent.

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

Factories.—The factory industries of the Panjáb are still very small. In 1911 there were 268 factories employing 28,184 hands. The typical Panjáb 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 Dháriwál in the Gurdáspur district. There were in 1911 fifteen flour mills, ten ironworks, three breweries, and one distillery.

Joint-Stock Companies.—The Panjáb 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 passed 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

Trade.—In 1911-12 the exports from the Panjáb, excluding those by land to Central Asia, Ladákh, and Afghánistán, were valued at Rs. 27,63,21,000 (£18,421,000), of which 61 p.c. went to Karáchí 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 Karáchí. 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 Karáchí. Cotton piece goods (Foreign 22, Indian 8½ 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 Afghánistán, Central Asia, and Ladákh 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

Normal division into petty kingdoms and tribal confederacies.—The normal state of the Panjáb 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 Gandhára, corresponding to Pesháwar and the valley of the Kábul river, Urasa or Hazára, where the name is still preserved in the Orash plain, Táxila, which may have corresponded roughly to the present districts of Ráwalpindí and Attock with a small part of Hazára, Abhisara or the low hills of Jammu, Kashmír, and Trigartta, with its capital Jalandhara, which occupied most of the Jalandhar division north of the Sutlej and the states of Chamba, Suket, and Mandí. 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 Chenáb, and of Sophytés (Saubhutí) 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, Ráví.

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 Kábul valley, to October, 325, when he started from Sindh on his march to Persia through Makrán. Having cleared his left flank by a campaign in the hills of Buner and Swát, he crossed the Indus sixteen miles above Attock near Torbela. The King of Táxila, whose capital was near the Margalla pass on the north border of the present Ráwalpindí district, had prudently submitted as soon as the Macedonian army appeared in the Kábul valley. From the Indus Alexander marched to Táxila, 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 passage 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 Karrí plain under the low hills of Gujrát. Here, somewhere near the line now occupied by the upper Jhelam Canal, 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 Chenáb (Akesines), stormed Sángala, a fort of the Kathaioi on the upper Ráví (Hydraotes) and advanced as far as the Biás (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 Panjáb he had hard fighting with the Malloi on the lower Ráví, 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 Afghánistán.

Maurya Dominion and Empire of Aşoka, 323-231 B.C.—Chandra Gupta is the Sandrakottos, to whose capital at Pataliputra (Patna) Seleukos sent Megasthenes in 303 B.C. The Greek ambassador 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, Aşoka, 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. Aşoka 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 Táxila. One of the rock edicts is at Mansehra in Hazára and another at Sháhbázgarhí in Pesháwar. From this time and for many centuries the dominant religion in the Panjáb 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 Panjáb slipped from the feeble grasp of Aşoka's successors, and for four centuries it looked not to the Ganges, but to the Kábul and the Oxus rivers.