, town and district of the province of the Pand̲j̲āb. 1. The town is situated a few miles W. of the D̲j̲amnā R. in 29°41′ N. 76°59′ E. and 73 miles (117 km.) north of Dihlī. It was in British times the administrative centre of a district of the Pand̲j̲āb, but historically and ethnologically it belongs to Hindustan rather than the Pand̲j̲āb. It is now in the Ambiala division of the Hariana province of the Indian Republic. In 1961 its population was 72,109. ¶ The language commonly used by the inhabitants is a dialect of Western Hindī. It is no doubt a place of great antiquity, a…

( Fērōzpūr ). A district in the Pand̲j̲āb which takes its name from the principal town. It forms part of the D̲j̲aland̲h̲ar division, lying between 29° 55′ and 31° 9′ N. and 73° 52′ and 75° 26′ E. Area 3202 sq. m. Until 1947, the principal Muslim tribes of the district were Rād̲j̲pūts, Arains, Dogars and Wattus, and also an ascetic tribe known as Bodla, believed to possess powers of incant…

(or k̲h̲izr in India), is in many part of India identified with a river-god or spirit of wells and streams. He is mentioned in the Sikandar-nāma as the saint who presided over the well of immortality. The name was naturalised in India, and Hindus as well as Muslims reverence him; it is sometimes converted by Hindus into Rād̲j̲a Ḳidār. On the Indus the saint is often identified with the river, and he is sometimes to be seen as an old man clothed in green. A man who escapes drowning is spoken of as evading K̲h̲wād̲j̲a K̲h̲izr (Temple, Legends of the Panjāb , i, 221). In a po…

, name of a tract lying between the River Indus to the east and the Sulaymān Mountains to the west, including the modern districts of Dēra Ismāʿīl K̲h̲ān and Dēra G̲h̲āzī K̲h̲ān. The name Dērad̲j̲āt is a supposed Persian plural of the Indian word d́ēra , “tent, encampment”, and means the “country of the deras ”, that is, of the three towns Dēra Ismāʿīl K̲h̲ān, Dēra G̲h̲āzī K̲h̲ān, and Dēra Fatḥ K̲h̲ān, founded by Balōč leaders in the early 10th/16th century. (See balōčistān ). These three towns were all close to the R. Indus, and have been liable to damage by erosion; hence th…

, province of Pākistānī Balūčistān extending from 27° 53′ to 29° 35′ N. and from 67° 11′ to 68° 28′ E. It forms a level plain enclosed on the north and east by the southern Sulaymān range and on the west by the Kirthār Ranges. To the south it is open, being bounded by the plain of northern Sindh. The history of the region is more closely connected with that of Sindh than that of Balūčistān. Its chief town, Kandābīl (probably Gandāwa) is said to have been taken by the Brāhman Rāy Čač in the 7th century A.D., and to have been despoiled by the Arabs many times after the conquest. The region later ¶ passed into…

(Sanskrit Kanaakubd̲j̲a; known to the Arabic geographers as Ḳannawd̲j̲, Ḳinnawd̲j̲, the latter form used also in Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam ), town in Farruk̲h̲ābād district, Uttar Prades̲h̲, India, 27°3’ N., 79°56’ E., formerly also the surrounding district. It has been identified, not beyond question, with Ptolemy’s Κάναγορα/Κάναγοζα; it is certainly referred to in the travels of Fa-Hsien (A.D. 405) as a city under the Guptas, and as a capital and great Buddhist centre at the time of Hsüan Tsʾang’s travels, circa A.D. 641, when under the great Harṣavardhana it had become the chief …

(i) geography. The country now known as Afg̲h̲ānistān has borne that name only since the middle of the 18th century, when the supremacy of the Afg̲h̲ān race became assured: previously various districts bore distinct appellations, ¶ but the country was not a definite political unit, and its component parts were not bound together by any identity of race or language. The earlier meaning of the word was simply “the land of the Afg̲h̲āns”, a limited territory which did not include many parts of the present state but did comprise larg…