The first Homo Sapiens from the West had now started settling in this fertile geography and begun to bring their unique social orders to the land creating the Ancient Punjab…
The early human civilizations of the land of Punjab made innumerable mud and brick villages built on the ruins of older villages. Agricultural implements made of copper and bronze have been found in mounds on both sides of the river Indus which prove the existence of organized rural communities dating back to 25,000 to 20,000 BC.
Archaeological remains of ancient Indus valley civilizations for example the civilization of Mohenjo-Daro has unearthed sculptures, pottery, jewelry, fabrics, and other relics showing that the people of the Indus Valley had attained a high degree of civilization. They used some form of hieroglyphics, lived in multistoried houses with marble baths; their craftsmen made goods which were sold as far away as Mesopotamia; and they had evolved some form of religion around the worship of a mother goddess.
These cities flourished between 2500 BC and 1500 BC but were ultimately destroyed by the people known as the Aryans who began to infiltrate into Sindh and the Punjab about fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ.
The Aryans, who were tall and fair, drove out the darker skinned inhabitants and occupied most of northern Hindustan. Meanwhile in the south of India the Dravidian race dominated who were darker skinned with their own language family.
The newcomers to the north were a pastoral people with a religion and a language of their own which were Indo-Aryan based. Both the language and religon were further developed in their new lands of Punjab. It was in the Punjab that Vedic Hinduism was evolved, and many of the great works of Sanskrit literature written.
The Aryans were followed by other races. The Persians (521–485 BC) and then Greek (326 BC) armies under Alexander the Great crossed the Indus and swept on as far as the River Beas. Many Indo-Scythian tribes followed for example the Kshatriya tribes bringing clan names such as the “Kambojah”, a royal Scythian clan. This surname as well as many others are even used today among Hindu, Sikh and Muslims with slight variations.
When the dust raised by the invading armies had settled, the Indian Guptas spread their benevolent rule over the country. For some centuries they were able to block the gaps in the mountains and keep out other invaders. However, by 500 AD, the pressure from Central Asia became too great and once more the gates to Punjab were forced open to let in the Mongoloid Huns.
The Huns were eventually subdued and expelled by Vardhana. His son Harsha was the last great Indian ruler of the Punjab. After Harsha’s death in 647 AD, the empire disintegrated and races living across the Sulaiman and Hindu Kush mountains began to pour in once more. The new conquerors who came belonged to diverse tribes but had one faith: they were Muslims.
The golden age of Islam brought Sufism, and the early Sufi poets brought the script of Shahmukhi which had evolved from the Perso-Arabic script. “Shah-mukhi” translates to ‘from the king’s mouth’ and was used as the conventional writing style across Punjab.
Thereafter the Afghans came like the waves of an incoming tide, each wave advancing further inland into Punjab. Between the succession of Afghan invasions came the terrible visitation in 1398 of the Mongol, Taimur, an invasion from which northern India did not recover for many decades.
A hundred years later Babar, who was one of Taimur’s descendants, started dreaming of an empire in India. This takes us up to the early 14th Century and shows how the ethnic pattern of the Punjab has changed with every new conquest…
Jhoty 