By this time the People of Punjab were diverse; in the north-west stretching along the Indus were the warring tribes of the Islamic faith and the northern fringe running along the foothills of the Himalayas were the domains of Hindu princes who had fled the plains due to the Muslim onslaughts.
Here they burnt incense to their gods and preserved their society in which the Brahmin and Kshatriya exploited the lesser castes. In the rest of the Punjab, the countryside was inhabited by Jats and Rajput agricultural tribes, while the cities where inhabited by the trading Banias, Mahajans, Suds, and Aroras.
In all cities, towns, and villages there were the dark descendants of the aboriginals who were considered beyond the caste system, forced to do the dirtiest work, and then condemned as untouchables. In addition to all these were nomadic tribes of gypsies wandering across the plains in their donkey caravans, with their hunting dogs and herds of sheep and goats.
Until the 15th century the Punjab had only two important cities, Lahore, which was the seat of most governments, and Multan in the south, which had a busy market dealing with commerce coming up the rivers from Sindh and caravans from Persia. Up to the middle of the 19th century the forests of Punjab teemed with wildlife including lions, tigers, leopards, wolves and many varieties of deer.
The Punjab, being the main gateway into India, was the perpetual field of battle and the first home of all the conquerors. Few invaders, if any, brought wives with them, and most of those who settled in their conquered domains acquired the local women. Thus, the blood of many conquering races came to mingle, and many alien languages—Arabic, Persian, Pushto, and Turkish—came to be spoken in the land.
The aboriginals of the land were subjected to the Vedantic, Jain, and Buddhist religions of the Aryans, and to the Islamic faith of the Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Persians, and Afghans. Out of this mixture of blood and speech were born the Punjabi people and their language. There also grew a sense of expectancy that out of the many faiths of their ancestors would be born a new faith for the people of the Punjab themselves.
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The spirit of Punjabi nationalism first manifested itself in Majha region, the heart of the Punjab, and among the people who were deeply rooted in the soil. Although the founders and many of the leaders of the movement were not agriculturists, its backbone was the Jat peasantry of the central plains.
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The Jats home was the northern plains of India and they were of Aryan decent. They brought with them certain institutions, the most important being the paṅcāyat, an elected body of five elders, to which they pledged their allegiance. Every Jat village was a small republic made up of people of kindred blood. They were as conscious of absolute equality between themselves as they were of their superiority over the men of other castes who earned their livelihood as weavers, potters, cobblers, or scavengers.
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The relationship of a Jat village with the state was that of a semi-autonomous unit paying the state a fixed sum of revenue. These Punjabis would plough the fertile lands with a sword girdled round their waist ready to defend their villages from foreign invaders which would inevitably come as they had centuries before.
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By the end of the 15th century, the different races who had come together in the Punjab had lost the nostalgic memories of the lands of their birth and begun to develop an attachment to the land of Punjab. The growth of a Punjabi consciousness was the evolution of one common tongue from a babel of languages.
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Although the Punjabis were sharply divided into Muslims and Hindus, attempts had been made to bring about an understanding between the two faiths and a certain desire to live alongside each other had grown amongst the people. It was left to Guru Nanak and his nine successors to harness this spirit and shape the Punjab in a direction never seen before.
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I hope you enjoyed this video, I tried to keep a clear story however in reality there was a whole lot of history that I didn’t get to mention for example the rise and evolution Hinduism and Islam and how it affected the people of Punjab but that can be left for another time.
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I also hope I pronounced the names correctly as some of them were challenging. please leave a like and leave a comment of what you found interesting and let me know what you would like in the future. Thank you very much for watching.
Jhoty 