0000 à1469: HISTORICAL LAND : ‘5 – AAB’ :
PUNJAB : * ANCIENT LAND OF THE FIVE RIVERS:
The Punjab:
- Till date
- has seen
- so far :
- The great Aryan
- and Sythian swarms
- which in successive waves of migration left their arid plateaux
- for the distant fruitful plains of India,
The conquering armies
- of Alexander the Great, all the way from Macedonia;
- The peaceful Chinese pilgrims;
- in search of the sacred scriptures of their faith,
- The Muhammadan invaders,
- who came, driven by lust of territory and pride of creed,
- to found one of the greatest Muhammadan empires
- the world has ever seen,
The devastating hordes: led successively by
- Qutlugh,
- Timur,
- Nadir Shah,
- and Ahmad Shah Abdali,
The armies
- of Babur and of Humayan all alike entered India
- across the wide plains of the five rivers: the ‘5 Aab’
- from which the Old Ancient Land of the Punjab takes its name.
This great central watershed
- which constitutes the eastern portion of the Punjab
- has ever been
- the battlefield of India.
Its eastern valley west of the Jumna
- was in prehistoric times
- the scene of that conflict which, described in the
- Mahabharata,
Forms
- the main theatre of operations to witness: first
- this incident of one of the oldest epics
- in existence;
While in later days it witnessed the successive struggles: which gave: India first: to the:-
- Muhammadans: who transferred the Empire of Hindustan from the Lodi Afghan to the
- Mughal dynasty:
[ postscript:- and later to witness:the fall of the Mughals to the ]
[ Mahrattas: at Panipat; & then in turn: the shaking of their power later to the ]
[ Sikhs: who in turn, seeing the atrocities on the white women/children in 1857 Indian Mutiny]
[ abandoned Dehli to the: British: who thus became the masters of British Empire in India. ]