CHAPTER XVI
EXPORTS AND IMPORTS
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
HISTORY—PRE-MUHAMMADAN PERIOD, 500 B.C.—1000 A.D.
In Hindu period relations of Panjáb were with western kingdoms.—The large tract included in the British province of the Panjáb which lies between the Jamna and the Ghagar is, having regard to race, language, and past history, a part of Hindustán. Where "Panjáb" is used without qualification in this section the territories west of the Ghagar and south of Kashmír are intended. The true relations of the Panjáb and Kashmír during the Hindu period were, except for brief intervals, with Persia, Afghánistán, and Turkistán 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 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.