Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/100

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92 PUNJAUB Christianity in the province in 1872 was 1,870, of whom 14 were ordained ministers, and 707 were communicants. There are two colleges in the Punjaub affiliated to the university of Calcutta : one at Lahore, with 52 students in 1872-'3; the other at Delhi, attended by 36 students. The government maintains three normal schools and aids six others ; of high schools it supports six and assists ten. There is a special educational institution at Ambala for instructing the wards of the government and the sons of natives of rank ; and the gov- ernment also manages an Anglo- Arabic school at Delhi endowed by a native nawaub. The entire number of government primary or vil- lage schools in the province is 1,046, having an average daily attendance of 51,251 pupils, in addition to which there are 188 aided schools of the same class with an average attendance of 20,825. There are 345 schools for girls, of which 91 are wholly sustained by the govern- ment, while the rest receive aid from it. No insignificant educational influence is exerted by the central museum at Lahore, which is visited by nearly 50,000 persons annually. There are 14 newspapers in the province, all j printed in native languages except two, which are in English. In 1872-'3, 344 books were published. About 20,000 men are employed as police, more than half the number being Mohammedans. There are 34 jails ; a ticket- of-leave system exists, and the prisoners are employed in industrial pursuits. The number ! of government hospitals and dispensaries is j 116, including the Mayo hospital connected with the medical school at Lahore. A system of elementary medical instruction has been in- troduced for native physicians, who are sup- plied with the requisite medicines and paid for their services in times of epidemic. In a mili- tary sense, the position of the Punjaub is more important than that of any other province of India, lying as it does in the very highway of invasion from the interior of the Asiatic conti- nent. A large British force is constantly garri- soned there; in 1872-'3 it consisted of 35,885 men, with 97 field guns. In addition to this, the lieutenant governor had under his orders a frontier force of 12,416 troops, principally Sikhs, Gorkhas, and natives of the Punjaub. The government of the province is adminis- tered by a lieutenant governor, whose official residence is at Lahore. The highest judicial authority is vested in a chief court composed of a barrister and a civilian judge. In ad- dition to Lahore, the chief towns are Delhi, Peshawer, Amritsir, Arabala or Umballa, Ra- wulpindi, Mooltan, Ferozepore, Leia, and Dera Ismail Khan. In the year 327 B. C. Alexan- der the Great invaded the Punjaub, crossed the Indus, Jhylum (anc. Hydaspes), Chenaub (Ace- sines), and Ravee (ffydraotes), and marched to the right bank of the Beas or of the Sutlej (to either of which the ancient name Hyphasix may be referred), which was the limit of his advance eastward. At that time the country was ruled by a Hindoo monarch named Taxiles in the west, and by a sovereign called Porus, whose dominions extended from the Jhylum to Delhi. After the Greek invasion the whole appears to have become a part of the kingdom of Maghada, which existed until about 195 B. C. For many centuries subsequently the history of the Punjaub is enveloped in much doubt and obscurity. About A. D. 1000 Mooltan appears as a Mohammedan state, though it is not clear how it became so. At this period Mahmoad of Ghuzni invaded India from Afghanistan, subjugated the Punjaub, and made Lahore the seat of his dynasty, which came to an end in 1186. It was afterward subject to numerous different chieftains, principally Afghans, who ruled it until it was invaded and pillaged by Timour and his army in 1398. The Mogul dynasty was finally established over the coun- try by his lineal descendant Baber in 1526. Humayun, son and successor of Baber, lost the province temporarily, but recovered it in 1555 from his Afghan rival, Shere AH Khan. The Punjaub was the scene of a considerable insurrection in 1709-'! 1 on the part of the Sikhs, who had long been persecuted by their Mohammedan rulers, and it was quelled with some trouble by Bahadoor Shah, who had not long previously succeeded his father Aurung- zebe on the throne. In 1752 the Afghan king Ahmed Shah Abdalli entered the province, exacted contribution from its inhabitants, and a few years later forced the Mogul emperor to cede it to him. Soon afterward the grow- ing power of the Sikhs was manifested by a fresh uprising in the districts E. of the Jhy- lum. The Afghan dynasty terminated in 1809, and by that time Runjeet Singh, the greatest chieftain of the Sikhs, had acquired Lahore and controlled the larger portion of the prov- ince through a confederacy of the various Sikh clans within its boundaries. He endeav- ored to force the Sikh hill states E. of the Sutlej into this confederacy, and only yielded his claim to their allegiance upon the advance of a British army to the banks of the river. He reigned till 1839, and in the interval con- quered Mooltan, Peshawer, and the Derajat district beyond the Indus. A period of an- archy followed the death of his son and suc- cessor Khuruk Singh in 1840, and the Sikhs finally determined to invade the British terri- tories in India. Thus, in 1845, began the first Sikh war, in which were fought the battles known as those of the Sutlej. The Sikh forces were defeated with heavy loss, and in 1846 the English took possession of the Ja- landhar doab and the Sikh territories on the left bank of the Sutlej, and undertook tho guardianship of the young Maharajah Dhu> leep Singh, a grandson of Runjeet Singh and then a minor.. In 1848 the disaffection of the chieftains led to the second Sikh war, in which the most celebrated battle was fought at Chillianwallah, where the English were nearly defeated ; but the result of the contest