Punjab: The Land of Five Rivers

Nadeem,
Thank you for sharing this interesting article about what to see in Punjab. Yes, Punjab is truly blessed with rivers and mountains and historical sites. Punjab is incomplete without Amritsar, Panipat, Sirhind, Simla, and other places in the east. Sutlej and Beas are definitely two of the fiver rivers - Jhelum, Chenab, and Ravi being the other three. Counting the Indus as one of the five is not historically correct. In ancient times, there may have been a land of 7 rivers - when you count Ganga and Yamuna also. :) Also, from a modern perspective one cannot ignore Jullundur, Patiala, Ambala, and Ferozpore.

Any time you break something in half, you are left with only half the beauty, half the value, half the power, and half the effect.

#4 {``Kalar Kahar was probably formed less than 15 million years ago (not 600 million!!) ``}

One thing this guy really knows something about is old age. I guess he was right there witnessing the formation of Kalar Kahar.

Urstruly#30:

The sikhnis your relatives talked about were from the same area; the sikhnis you saw could be from anywhere in Punjab or other parts of India. So, your relaitves may not have been wrong.

Re: # 34

During that time, when I was growing up, it was hard for me to imagine that sikhs once lived among us. Until my teenage years when I saw the first live sikh on the mountain, the only sikh I knew was my great aunt. Legend had it that she elopped with the Colonel Sahib- my great uncle when he was stationed in Amritsar. What an elegant woman she was - at 75 or 80 when I saw her she seemed to be made out of flour dough; with her hair absolutely white as snowhite and an imported havana cigar in her hand she looked like Queen Elizabeth.

``This article is about ``The Land of Five Rivers``, which is Western Punjab, which is in Pakistan.

Sorry.``

Zeemax got a compartment in his Metric geography exam. Sutlej and Beas are in east Punjab.

The article was not bd at all, too bad the Author did not mention the village of Bhaun which has given birth to many famous and notable people..MS Oberoi of Oberoi hotels is from Bhaun.

Punjab (pre `47)

#30

Sikhs were not protesting for cutting wood or anything like that. If you look at the painting, there are lot of utensils etc. Actually, this train carried group of sikhs led by newly formed SGPC (Shiromani Gurudwra Prabandhak Committe) who were going to protest against the British backed mahant of the gurudwara Nankana Sahib and many local sikhs gathered at Hasan Abdal with langar for the travelling sikhs. The local govt. refused stop the train. It was then that the local sikhs decided to stop the train by all means and they decided to lay on the tracks. The train stopped after passing over some. This was the first major incident which occured during the gurudwara reforms movement. 120 of the pilgrim agitators were slain within the premises of the gurudwara with the support of the goons of the mahant (Sewa Das)provided by the british govt.

Re: # 31
drlokraj

My information about the picture is also from a sikh website, which tells a slightly different acoount. Anyway thanks for the information.

#27 pindi girls today are mere brats compared to the heavenly things of the 1960`s!!

#25 - Indeed. I have spent hours thinking over the reasons for why Pindi girls are the most beautiful in Pakistan. I came to this conclusion that Pindi is the melting pot of punjabis, kashmiris and pathans. And hence the phenomena of seeing heart-stoppingly beautiful girls coming out of those old and shabby houses in the interior of Pindi.

Regardless of the reason, on many of my visits to Pakistan I find myself roaming Moti bazaar where girls come with their mothers for shopping.

Re: # 27

Sometimes I really miss my daur-e-jahiliyat :)

Urstruly#21:

Ah, those oranges! Yes, I had a bagful of them on my way from Taxila to Sirkup and Jaulian (a corruption, no doubt of Ja-walian because of a large number of walis in that area, Punja Saheb is supposed to be a place where Guru Nanak encountered one of those walis).

You are unduly harsh on those poor people trying to sustain an ancient art and craft of making statues and idols. Yes, they should be trained, but to improve the quality of their products, not to extinguish their virsa.

BTW, I was offered fantastic deals on ``genuine`` excavated idols.

Re: # 26

The following picture is another gem of this area, the Gurdwara Punja sahib in Hasan abdal. This portrait is of an incident that happened in 1920s when British prevented Sikhs from cutting the wood in the area and they protested by lying down on the railway tracks. The area has not changed much despite explosive construction, most of it still remains below the treeline.



If you look closely on the very top of the mountain there is a building which is the Mousoleum of Baba Wali Qadhari. Legend has it that there was a querrel beween Baba Wali Qandhari and Guru Nanak on the water rights in the area. The querrel reached to a point when Baba Wali threw a rock the size of a buick to crush Guru sahib from the top of that mountain. Guru sahib fielded the rock with his bare hands and stopped it from rolling down. The very point where this rock was stopped a water spring emerged which runs to this day. The imprint of Gurus hand can be seen on the rock to this day.

This picture is in fact a mirror image, meaning what is on right is in reality on the left. It doesn`t show but this is quite a steep mountain, which me and my friend used to climb quite often. It is no ordinary climb; it is a three hour back breaking climbing. Me and my friends usually used to climb the mountain during the sikh pilgrimage time with water bottles and cups and used to offer water to the huffed and puffed sikhs climibing up or down the mountain; but the actual reason was to socialize with sikhs and their families especially the sikhnis. It was my parents who always told me that the sikhnis were some of the prettiest girls ever. But I am sorry to say, and I do not want to offend anyone, most of the sikhnis I met on the mountain were malnutritioned and bloodless; which I found quite shocking - the myth created in my mind by my parents was tarnished.

Re: # 30
Is there one can see such pictures of long gonr time, they are evocative.
I will real like see such old pictures. Some good pictures of long gone era can be found in Winton Churchill work ``history of english speaking people``

I agree with everything Drlokraj said and also compliment the writer, although it mostly seems to be from a tourism site. I was born in a village near khewra and ketas and, so, have a special place in my heart for these areas.


nazarhayatkhan:

When I visited the Mohenjodaro musesum, a thought came to me that maybe, the Indus Valley Civilization did not vanish but merely morphed/evolved into another phase. The gods may have been precursor of some of the vedic gods, like Shiva and the artifiacts are quite recgnizable as the precursors of those that were used in Punjab until recent times.


zeemax:
uba and lokraj are right. As long as Kashmir is in India, all five rivers of Punjab originate there; in fact so does Sindh in Ladakh. Sutlun, Beas and Ravi, of course, flow through East Punjab as well.

#1 - I sugget the title for Rawalpindi should be be replaced to ``Rawalpindi - Along whose narrow streets live the most beautiful girls in Pakistan`` :)

yeah, i wrote the above sentence with a smile on my face...