Pune

“ Poin was a very petty chief, who followed in war the impure chief of Bhirkot, but was himself pure, and called himself a Sirnet, saying that he came from the mountains south-west from the Yamuna. Poin is situated on a high hill, where much snow falls, and there is intense cold. At this capital were only 120 houses, and the whole in the territory amounted to only 2000; but there were iron and copper mines in the country, and the Raja, for his share of the revenue, had 4000 rupees a year. ”

“ All the great cities of Hindustan are situated on the banks of a river ; Muttra, Kanauj, Allahabad, and Benares are examples, which might easily be supplemented. It Is, therefore, suggested that it was found necessary to move the cities of Delhi to the north-east, to follow the river, which once flowed not so very far from Old Delhi, but has gradually set further and further east — a process which is going on to-day, the extent of which has been considerable, even during the last century. ”

“ There is a faquir's establishment on the top, and the view on either side is very fine. That looking down over the plain past Rijaori and Nowshera—over the several wave-like lines of inferior hills into the plains of the Punjab of limitless extent, lost only in vapour and distance—is grand from its great extent, and beautiful in its varied features as in its colouring.
The other side presents the masses of the Pir Panjal, covered with snow. This range is of bold massive proportions, and affords the traveller a truly sublime picture of mountain scenery. ”

“ The clustering villages are thick in some parts—so thick that they jostle each other continuously. There is nothing 102 of the drab Punjab about these villages. They are white-walled and outwardly clean, and in at least one ancient garden there is a fair imitation of a Kashmir pavilion set at the end of a white eye-blinding pathway, leading straight and stiff between rows of cypress, and blotched in spring with inky splashes of fallen mulberries. ”

“ Clearly the 140 or 150 li refers to the distance of Vaisâli from the Ganges; and so the accordance with my views is perfect.
Not far from the stûpa flows the Punpun river. Along its banks, at about 2 miles from Bhagwânganj, near a small village, are the remains of a stone and brick temple about 40 feet square: only a part of the basement of the temple, marked by a line of moulded stones, exists: the stone is granite roughly dressed into a plain moulding.
A mile or mile and a half further north aloiig the Punpun is a large mound about 45 feet square and 25 feet high. ”

“ A journey of nine hundred miles, still over these broad plains of India, will bring us to the city of Agra, which, like Delhi, stands not on the Ganges, but on its great tributary, the Jumna. It is an important city, containing over forty thousand inhabitants. ”

“ On the 19th of January I left the famous town of Agra, in the company of Mr. Law, in order to visit the still more celebrated city of Delhi, which is 122 miles from Agra. There is an excellent post-road all the way.
The country between Agra and Delhi continues tolerably unchanged; there is no elevation to be seen. Far and wide, cultivated land alternates with heaths and sandy moors, and the miserable villages or small towns which lie on the road, excite no desire to delay the journey even for a moment.
A long and handsome chain bridge crosses the Jumna near the town of Gassanger. ”

“ There are a multitude of things to be seen on the way, and it would be hard to surpass in interest the drives about Delhi. Endless are the antiquarian remains that are scattered about the plain for miles around, They are all ruins of old Delhis, for nine separate cities have at different times been built and abandoned within a radius of twenty miles of the present one. Thus, as you drive along, the ruin of an old fort, or the remains of a city wall, are pointed out to you as Delhi number four or Delhi number eight. ”

“ The name Punjab, a Persian word denoting five-waters, refers to this river-system. The total area of all kinds amounted to one hundred and thirty-five thousand square miles, and the population to just twenty millions; both area and population being exclusive of the Cashmere kingdom. The climate is much the same as that of the Delhi territory already described, except that the winter is sharper and longer while the autumn is more feverish. The people, consisting chiefly of Moslems and Sikhs, was quite the strongest, manliest and sturdiest that the British had ever had to deal with in India. ”

“ The Ganges and the Jumna are the great rivers that permeate it. As before, we give the names of the most familiarly known divisions or districts—Delhi, Meerut, Allygurh, Rohilcund, Bareilly, Shahjehanpoor, Bijnour, Agra, Furruckabad, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Futtehpore, Benares, Gorukhpore, Azimghur, Jounpore, Mirzapore, Ghazeepore; and if to these we add the names of towns not indicated by the names of their districts—such as Simla, Sirhind, Umballa, Loodianah, Shahabad, Buxar—it will be seen how many places noted more or less in Indian affairs lie within this province or lieutenant-governorship. ”

“ The Kangra Valley of the southern Punjab is in itself of great interest — a district of small broken hills usually well clothed with jungle and of rich cultivation, and presenting a great contrast to the deadly plains of the true Punjab, so close to it. The average elevation of the valley is about 2000 feet above the sea, though there are, of course, small points which exceed this by 1000 feet or so; but the feature which gives special character to this district is the great wall of the Dhaoli Dhar range, which bounds the valley on the north, and may best be called the outer Himalaya. ”

“ It is a new existence to any one coming from the depressing monotony of the interminable plains of the Punjab.
I had a long time to wait at Dupchin before any of my followers arrived; so I took a snooze under a pine tree adjoining a fine stream, at which I had slaked my thirst. The whole of my effects did not arrive until about five o'clock. There was no village, no house here, it being simply used as a camp ground, for which it offered some facilities—a level surface, wood and water in abundance—food we had brought with us. ”

“ At the north-eastern angle of that frontier, the Dihang river, the connecting link between the Tsanpo of Tibet and the Brahmaputra of Assam, bursts through the main axis of the range. At the opposite or north-western angle, the Indus in like manner pierces the Himalayas, and turns southwards on its course through the Punjab. This wild region is in many parts impenetrable to man, and nowhere yields a passage for a modern army. Ancient and well-known trade routes exist, by means of which merchandise from the Punjab finds its way over heights of 18,000 ft. ”

“ North of Mathr'a Delhi is the only important town on its banks. The Jamna is crossed by railway bridges between Delhi and Meerut and between Ambala and Saharanpur.
Changes in Rivers.— Allusion has already been made to the changes which the courses of Panjab rivers are subject to in the plains. The Indus below Kalabagh once ran through the heart of what is now the Thai desert. We know that in 1245 a.d. Multan was in the Sind Sagar Doab between the Indus and the united streams of the Jhelam, Chenab, and Ravi. ”

“ But to us the temples and the sacred pools seem nothing by comparison with the mighty monuments of Buddhism, which local wiseacres have erroneously named the Pandu-Lena or caves of the Pandavas. We drive out in the fresh morning air along the trunk road, which extends southwards of the holy city like a grey ribbon streaked by two parallel lines of lighter colour where the wheels of the bullock-carts have ground the hard metal into dust; and hard by the fifth milestone we come face to face with three stark hills, standing solitary out of the plain. ”

“ Towns.—There are three large towns in the Nepal valley, Katmandu, the capital, said to contain approximately 50,000 inhabitants, Patan and Bhatgaon about 30,000 each. The houses are from two to four storeys in height, built of brick and tiled. The windows and balconies are of wood, and some are elaborately carved. There are numerous handsome temples in all the towns, the majority of which are pagoda-shaped and built of brick, with roofs of copper, which is sometimes gilt. The streets are narrow, and they, as well as the squares, are all paved with brick or stone. ”

“ The one river brings down to it a stream of traffic from Kumaon, Rohilcund, Furruckabad, Cawnpore, Futtehpoor, and the southwestern districts of Oude; while the other brings down that from Kurnaul, Roorkee, Meerut, Delhi, Muttra, Agra, Calpee, and a wide range of country in Rajpootana, Bundelcund, and the Doab. On the other sides, too, it has an extraordinary number of large military and commercial towns within easy reach (in peaceful times) , such as Lucknow, Fyzabad, Sultanpore, Goruckpore, Azimghur, Jounpoor, Benares, Ghazeepore, Mirzapore, Dinapoor, and Patna. ”

“ The country to the west and south-west of the Midland, in which this outer group of languages was spoken, included the modern Punjab, Rajputana and Gujarat. In process of time the population of the Midland expanded and carried its language to its new homes. It occupied the eastern and central Punjab, and the mixed (or “intermediate”) language which there grew up became the modern Panjabi. To the west it spread into Rajputana, till its progress was stopped by the Indian desert, and in Rajputana another intermediate language took rise and became Rajasthani. ”

“ Rivers.—With the exception of the Kunhar river, which flows down the Kagan valley to the Jhelum, the whole drainage of the province eventually finds its way into the Indus. The Indus enters the province between tribal territory and Hazara district. After leaving Hazara it flows in a southerly direction between the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, till it enters Mianwali district of the Punjab, from which it emerges to form again the eastern boundary of the province. ”

“ PUNJAUB, n.p. The name of the country between the Indus and the Sutlej. The modern Anglo-Indian province so-called, now extends on one side up beyond the Indus, including Peshāwar, the Derajāt, &c., and on the other side up to the Jumna, including Delhi. [In 1901 the Frontier Districts were placed under separate administration.] The name is Pers. Panj-āb, 'Five Rivers.' These rivers, as reckoned, sometimes include the Indus, in which case the five are (1) Indus, (2) Jelam (see JELUM) or Behat, the ancient Vitasta which the Greeks made Ὑδάσπης (Strabo) and Βιδάσπης (Ptol.) ”

“ The dismal streets just inside the western wall of Delhi were already astir when we clattered through them. Native quarters in India never present such a scene of unredeemed squalor as at daybreak, before the sunlight has lit up their rich colouring. ”

“ Before, my eyes again as I sit here in this quiet walled French garden, the great space before the Jumna Musjid at Delhi reappears, as I saw it in the evening stillness against a glowing sky of gold, and the memory of countless worshippers within, praying with a devotion no European displays. And then comes a memory of that long reef of staircases and temples and buildings, the ghats of Benares, in the blazing morning sun, swarming with a vast multitude of multicolored people and the water also swarming with brown bodies. ”

“ Delhi is on the Jumna River, which you saw in the early morning. This stream has its entire course in Hindustan, and is the principal tributary of the Ganges. Both of these rivers are sacred with the natives. The Jumna rises in the Himalayas, at a height of nearly eleven thousand feet, and of course it is a mountain torrent at its upper waters. After a run of eight hundred and sixty miles, it falls into the Ganges about three miles below Allahabad. ”

“ Having seen most of the sights of Agra (and it has a goodly share of its own) , and having made the necessary preparations for the conveyance to Bombay of our party, now four in number, we took our departure from the handsome and hospitable residence of the Lieutenant-Governor, on the evening of the 9th of March, and drove in our buggies by moonlight over rather a wild country, in rather a wild manner, arriving at the station, where our palanquins were to meet us, a little before midnight.
An Indian coolie’s powers of endurance are marvellous. ”

“ CHAPTER II. Journey to the Grand Pawnee Village.—Old Indian Female.—Chief’s Lodge.—Indian Feasts.—Kioway Female.
As soon as we emerged from the crowd that had surrounded us, we perceived the plain between us and the village swarming with the rest of its inhabitants. It appeared as if every man, woman, and child had looked upon the day of our arrival, as one of jubilee. The boys had thrown aside their bows and arrows, the females had abandoned their drudgery, and the old men had ceased their songs of former victories, to paint themselves up for the festival. ”

“ Just one furlong ahead the road has a slight rise, and here were the walls of Jahanpanah, made to join the city of Siri to Old Delhi ; their remains extend towards the Kutb Minar, which has been for some time occasionally discernible between the trees bordering the road.
At mile ten, just where there is a garden, a sharp rise in the road marks the line of the walls of Old Delhi, dating back many centuries, certainly over eight. Some low mounds within the walls are, probably, the remains of houses of mud, built each on the site of former houses, which the tropical rains had dissolved. ”