1 12 A Short History of the Sikhs.
2 The £>ikh kingdom, at the time of its greatest
3 expansion under Ranjit Singh, included, besides this
4 triangle, the states of Kashmir and Jammu, on the
5 northern side of the above-mentioned base line ; the
6 districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, and Bannu,
7 which make up the present North-West Frontier
8 Province ; and the district of Derajat,1 lying between
9 the Indus and the Sulaiman mountains. The Punjab
10 is divided into five sections by the branches of the
11 Indus. These sections are called doabs (do, two, and
12 db, water), and their names, taken in order from
13 west to east, are the Sagar, the Jetch, the Rechna,
14 the Bari, and the Jalandhar Doabs.2 The Bari
15 Doab, between the Ravi and the Beas, is the real
16 home of the Sikhs, and the history of their nation
17 centres round its three chief cities, Lahore, Amritsar,
18 and Multan.
19 South of the Himalayas, the Punjab consists of
20 one vast alluvial plain, broken only by the wide and
21 often shifting channels of its five rivers. These in
22 winter are but insignificant streams, but when the
23 mountain snows begin to melt, their waters rise
24 and overflow the surrounding country for miles on
25 either side, rendering the tracts thus inundated
26 1 Derajat (the land of deras or camps) was the camping-ground of
27 many of the early Afghan invaders of India. Their halting-places
28 often developed into towns, some of which — such as Dera Ismail
29 Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Fatteh Khan — still bear the names
30 of Afghan chiefs.
31 2 The positions of the doabs may be easily remembered, as the
32 name of each is composed of letters taken from the names of the
33 two rivers by which it is enclosed. Thus the Bari Doab is between
34 the Beas and the Ravi ; the Rechna is between the Ravi and the
35 Chenab ; the Jetch is between the Jhelum and the Chenab ; and
36 the Bist Jalandhar is between the Beas and the Sutlej. The
37 names were invented by the Emperor Akbar.