Ancient & Medieval Punjab — PPSC previous year questions

The name Punjab comes from Persian. 'Panj' means five and 'āb' means water. So Punjab is the land of five rivers – the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The name came into use in the Mughal period. In the Vedic age the region was called Sapta Sindhu, the land of seven rivers. Greek accounts called it Pentapotamia.

In the Rig Veda the Punjab region is called Sapta Sindhu, the 'land of seven rivers' (the Indus, its five tributaries and the Saraswati). The Greeks knew it as Pentapotamia, and the Persian name 'Punjab' (panj-ab, five waters) came into use in the medieval period, especially under the Mughals.

Akbar shifted his court to Lahore in the mid-1580s to guard the north-western frontier and ruled from there till 1598, rebuilding the Lahore Fort in burnt brick. Agra and Fatehpur Sikri were his earlier capitals; Ambala, Lucknow and Kabul were never Mughal capitals.

The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta was in India from 1333 to about 1342, during the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He uses the name 'Panjab' in his Rihla. This is one of the earliest recorded uses of the word. Alberuni came with Mahmud of Ghazni in the early eleventh century. Marco Polo travelled in the thirteenth century. Abdur Razzak visited Vijayanagara in the fifteenth century.

In the Mahabharata period Punjab was called Panchnad, the land of five rivers. In the Rigvedic period it was 'Sapta Sindhu' (land of seven rivers), the Greeks called it 'Pentapotamia', and the Persian-derived 'Panj-Aab' came into use in the Mughal period.

Jahangir's Tomb is at Shahdara Bagh near Lahore (1), Shamsher Khan's tomb is at Batala in Gurdaspur (2), the tombs of Muhammad Momin and Haji Jamal are at Nakodar in Jalandhar (3), and Humayun's Tomb is in Delhi (4). > A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3 → code 2, 4, 1, 3.

Daulat Khan Lodhi was the Governor of Punjab (Lahore) under Sultan Ibrahim Lodhi. Unhappy with Ibrahim, he invited Babur to invade, which led to the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Guru Nanak Dev Ji had earlier worked at the Sultanpur Lodhi store-house under Daulat Khan.

Alexander founded Bucephala (Boukephala) on the bank of the Jhelum (Hydaspes) in 326 BCE, after the battle with Porus. He named it after his horse Bucephalus, which died there. He founded the sister city Nicaea across the river to mark the victory. Ravi, Chenab and Beas are the other Punjab rivers he crossed or reached. At the Beas his army refused to go further.