1791.—"Il était au moment de s'embarquer pour l'Angleterre, plein de perplexité et d'ennui, lorsque les brames de Bénarés lui apprirent que le brame supérieur de la fameuse pagode de Jagrenat ... était seul capable de resoudre toutes les questions de la Société royale de Londres. C'était en effet le plus fameux pandect, ou docteur, dont on eût jamais oui parler."—B. de St. Pierre, La Chaumière Indienne. The preceding exquisite passage shows that the blunder which drew forth Macaulay's flaming wrath, in the quotation lower down, was not a new one.
1798.—"... the most learned of the Pundits or Bramin lawyers, were called up from different parts of Bengal."—Raynal, Hist. i. 42.
1856.—"Besides ... being a Pundit of learning, he (Sir David Brewster) is a bundle of talents of various kinds."—Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, ii. 14.
1860.—"Mr. Vizetelly next makes me say that the principle of limitation is found 'amongst the Pandects of the Benares....' The Benares he probably supposes to be some Oriental nation. What he supposes their Pandects to be I shall not presume to guess.... If Mr. Vizetelly had consulted the Unitarian Report, he would have seen that I spoke of the Pundits of Benares, and he might without any very long and costly research have learned where Benares is and what a Pundit is."—Macaulay, Preface to his Speeches.
1877.—"Colonel Y——. Since Nain Singh's absence from this country precludes my having the pleasure of handing to him in person, this, the Victoria or Patron's Medal, which has been awarded to him, ... I beg to place it in your charge for transmission to the Pundit."—Address by Sir R. Alcock, Prest. R. Geog. Soc., May 28.
"Colonel Y—— in reply, said: ... Though I do not know Nain Singh personally, I know his work.... He is not a topographical automaton, or merely one of a great multitude of native employés with an average qualification. His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia than those of any other living man, and his journals form an exceedingly interesting book of travels. It will afford me great pleasure to take steps for the transmission of the Medal through an official channel to the Pundit."—Reply to the President, same date.
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.), (3) Chenāb, ancient Chandrabāgha and Āsiknī. Ptolemy preserves a corruption of the former Sanskrit name in Σανδαβάλ, but it was rejected by the older Greeks because it was of ill omen, i.e. probably because Grecized it would be Ξανδροφάγος, 'the devourer of Alexander.' The alternative Āsiknī they rendered Ἀκεσίνης. (4) Rāvī, the ancient Airāvatī, Ὑάρωτης (Strabo), Ὑδραώτης (Arrian), Ἄδρις or Ῥούαδις (Ptol.). (5) Biās, ancient Vipāsā, Ὕφασις (Arrian), Βιβάσιος (Ptol.). This excluded the Sutlej, Satadru, Hesydrus of Pliny, Ζαράδρος or Ζαδάδρης (Ptol.), as Timur excludes it below. We may take in the Sutlej and exclude the Indus, but we can hardly exclude the Chenāb as Wassāf does below.
No corresponding term is used by the Greek geographers. "Putandum est nomen Panchanadae Graecos aut omnino latuisse, aut casu quodam non ad nostra usque tempora pervenisse, quod in tanta monumentorum ruina facile accidere potuit" (Lassen, Pentapotamia, 3). Lassen however has termed the country Pentepotamia in a learned Latin dissertation on its ancient geography. Though the actual word Panjāb is Persian, and dates from Mahommedan times, the corresponding Skt. Panchanada is ancient and genuine, occurring in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. The name Panj-āb in older Mahommedan writers is applied to the Indus river, after receiving the rivers of the country which we call Punjaub. In that sense Panj-nad, of equivalent meaning, is still occasionally used. [In S. India the term is sometimes applied to the country watered by the Tumbhadra, Wardha, Malprabha, Gatprabha and Kistna (Wilks, Hist. Sketches, Madras reprint, i. 405).]
We remember in the newspapers, after the second Sikh war, the report of a speech by a clergyman in England, who spoke of the deposition of "the bloody Punjaub of Lahore."
B.C. x.—"Having explored the land of the Pahlavi and the country adjoining, there had then to be searched Panchanada in every part; the monkeys then explore the region of Kashmīr with its woods of acacias."—Rāmāyaṇa, Bk. iv. ch. 43.