Lehal Library

9 The Sikh Homeland coming up the riven, from Sindh and caravans from Baluchistan and Persia. There were also several towns like Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Wazirabad, Gujarat, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Saidpur now called Eminabad, Pak Pattan, Kasur, Sialkot, Ludhiana, and Sirhind, whose various fonunes rose and fell with those of their feudal overlords (or, as in the case of Pak Pattan, with the popularity of the religious order of which it was the centre). Nothing remains of the extensive forests which once covered large parts of the Pmtjab. Up to the 16th century there were jungles in the nonh where rhinoceros' (and probably elephants) were found. In Central Punjab there was the notorious /,akhi (the forest of a hw1dred thousand trees),x which gave Sikh outlaws refuge from their oppressors. There were equally dense forests in the Jullundur Doab and one long belt of woodland stretching from Ludhiana to Kamal. Up to the middle of the 19th century these forests teemed with wildlife: lions, tigers, leopards. panthers, bears, wolves, hyenas. wild boars, nilga:i. and many varieties of deer. The flora and fauna survived the incursions of foreign annies but succumbed to the incliscriminate felling of trees and slaughter of game in the 19th and the preser>• century. The desert with its camels and goats-the only animals which can thrive on cacti and thorny scmb---are a phenomenon of recent tintes. Antiquity Indologists are not agreed on Lhe age of Indian civilization except that it is among the oldest in the world and that its cradle was in the Pu~jab. 7 In l he lliihtll" /1:iimii tl1e Mughal conqueror Babar who im-a<led India in Al) lfi26 writes of hunting rhinoceros in the Punjab. 8 In the Kh11/ifsat-Ul·T(lluarilth, &~an Rai, who lived in the latter pan of tht· 17th century. desc1iht'd Lht: lakhl in the following words: 'Every year tht' noods m·e1·spn·a<l the land far and wide, and when the water subsides so many jungles spring up all m·er t11is cou1111y owing 10 the gn,at moistw·c, that a pedesuia11 has grcm dillicullv in trn,·elling. How then can a rider?· (I.~- Sarkar. Fnll of th~ ,\.lug/111/ empire, 1, 104.)