The Great Sanātani Conversion

PROLOGUE: THE MIRROR IN THE BLOOD

Book 4: The Great Sanātani Conversion: How the Hindu Heartland of the Sapta-Sindhu Became Pakistan—And Why 240 Million People Still Carry the Names, Clans, and DNA of Their Vedic Ancestors

Author: Anand Dubey

---

इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या ।
असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ॥
तृष्टामया प्रथमं यातवे सजूः सुसत्वा रसाया श्वेत्या त्या ।
त्वं सिन्धो कुभया गोमतीं क्रुमुं मेहत्न्वा सरथं याभिरीयसे ॥

"O Gaṅgā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Śutudrī (Sutlej), and Paruṣṇī (Ravi), accept this hymn of mine!
O Marudvṛdhā joined with Asiknī (Chenab), O Ārjīkīyā joined with Vitastā (Jhelum) and Suṣomā (Sohan), listen to my call!
O Sindhu (Indus), rushing forth in the same chariot with the Kubhā (Kabul River), the Suvāstu (Swat), the Gomatī (Gomal), and the Krumu (Kurram)—with them you advance in sovereign majesty!"
— Ṛgveda Saṁhitā, Maṇḍala 10, Sūkta 75 (Nadīstuti Sūkta, Verses 5–6)

---

I. The Stones Above the Indus

High on a limestone spur of the Khasor Range in Dera Ismail Khan District, where the waters of the Sindhu (Indus) break out of the salt-streaked gorges of Mianwali into the scorching plains of Derajat, stand the silent, wind-carved ruins of two ancient mountain citadels.

The local tribesmen call them Kāfir Koṭ—"The Fortress of the Infidels."

Climb through the breached cyclopean walls of North Kāfir Koṭ at dawn, when the first gold light strikes the western bank of the Indus, and you do not find an Arab ribat, a Persian caravanserai, or a Turkic garrison. You stand before five monumental Hindu temples of the seventh to tenth centuries CE, built of honey-colored kanjur stone fitted together without mortar. Their soaring Nāgara spires (śikharas) are carved with delicate gavākṣa sun-windows, blooming lotuses, āmalaka crown-stones, and pilastered niches that once held sandstone images of Mahādeva Śiva, Sūrya, Viṣṇu, and Durgā Mahiṣāsuramardinī. For four hundred years before Mahmud of Ghazni’s horsemen ever crossed the Khyber Pass, conch shells sounded from these ramparts across the Indus at sunrise, and Sanskrit hymns echoed off the cliffs.

Travel two hundred miles northeast across the Salt Range to the emerald karst lake of Kaṭās Rāj (Kaṭākṣa Rāja / ancient Siṃhapura) in Chakwal District. Here, surrounded by a ring of seventh-to-tenth-century Hindu Shahi sandstone temples, lies the spring-fed pool formed—according to sacred tradition—from the tear shed by Lord Śiva as he wandered grief-stricken across the earth carrying the body of Satī. It was on the banks of this very pool in the Salt Range that the Mahābhārata (Vana Parva) locates the immortal dialogue of the Yakṣa-Praśna, where Dharmarāja Yudhiṣṭhira answered the riddles of Dharma to revive his four fallen Pandava brothers. When the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang visited this sanctuary in 630 CE, he recorded its crystal-clear waters, its painted cloisters, and its ascetics smeared with sacred ash.

Travel south to Multan—ancient Mūlasthāna—where the Prahlādpurī Mandir stood for millennia on the fort mound honoring the manifestation of Bhagavān Narasiṃha to save the child-sage Bhakta Prahlāda, and where the Golden Āditya Sun Temple drew pilgrims from every corner of Bhāratavarṣa until Emperor Aurangzeb demolished it in the late seventeenth century. Travel west to the volcanic mud-cones and desert canyons of the Hingol River in Balochistan, where the supreme Śakti Pīṭha of Mātā Hiṅglāj Devī—the spot where the crown of Goddess Satī’s head (Brahmarandhra) fell—has been venerated for thousands of years inside a mountain cavern. Travel north to the cedar-forested Neelum Valley (Kiṣaṅgaṅgā) of Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where the towering stone staircase of Śāradā Pīṭha rises above the confluence of the Madhumatī and Śāradā streams—once the supreme university-shrine of Goddess Sarasvatī where Ādi Śaṅkarācārya ascended the Sarvajña Pīṭham (Throne of Omniscience) and where the Śāradā script of northern India was born.

Every single one of these foundational sanctuaries of Sanātana Dharma stands today inside the borders of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

---

II. The Paradox of the Living Bloodline

Yet the most powerful witness to Pakistan’s Sanātani heritage is not carved in the silent stone of Kāfir Koṭ, Kaṭās Rāj, or Śāradā Pīṭha.

It is flowing in the veins—and stamped upon the very surnames—of the 240 million human beings who live between the Khyber Pass and the Arabian Sea today.

Open a telephone directory, an electoral roll, an army promotion list, or a land-revenue register (Jamābandī) anywhere in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Jhang, Multan, Mirpur, or Hyderabad (Sindh), and read the family names aloud:

• Bajwa, Cheema, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Gondal, Ranjha, Tarar, Chattha, Dhillon, Sahi, Ghuman, Goraya, Kahlon, Hanjra, Randhawa — the great Jat brotherhoods of the Punjab Doabs.
• Janjua, Bhatti, Chauhan, Rathore, Sial, Tiwana, Khokhar, Noon, Kharal, Manj, Minhas, Chib, Jarral, Mangral, Chadhar, Joya, Wattu, Khichi, Dahar, Langah — the royal Rajput and Kṣatriya houses of the Salt Range, the Five Rivers, and the Jammu hills.
• Khatana, Chechi, Chauhan, Poswal, Kasana, Bains, Gorsi, Kalas — the ancient pastoral-warrior Gurjara (Gujjar) clans of Gujrat, Jhelum, and Hazara.
• Soomro (Soomra), Sammo (Samma), Abro, Junejo, Jadeja/Jareja, Channa, Mahar, Mangrio, Unar, Jokhio — the indigenous Sindhi Sammat Rajput and Jat tribes of the lower Indus valley.
• Sehgal, Sethi, Vohra, Chawla, Duggal, Puri, Kapur, Khanna — the urban Khatrī, Arorā, and Bhāṭiā merchant lineages preserved among converted Punjabi and Sindhi Khojas, Memons, and Śeikhs.

Cross the Radcliffe Line twenty miles east of Lahore into Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Jammu, Hoshiarpur, Bikaner, or Kutch, and you will meet millions of Hindus and Sikhs carrying the exact same clan names (Gotras), speaking the exact same dialects, singing the exact same harvest ballads, and tracing their ancestry to the exact same founding forefathers:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           ONE BLOODLINE, TWO SIDES OF THE RADCLIFFE LINE (1947)              │
├────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┤
│ CLAN / GOTRA       │ WEST OF RADCLIFFE LINE    │ EAST OF RADCLIFFE LINE      │
│                    │ (Modern Pakistan)         │ (Modern India)              │
├────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ BAJWA / CHEEMA /   │ Punjabi Muslim Jats of    │ Punjabi Sikh & Hindu Jats   │
│ SANDHU / VIRK /    │ Sialkot, Gujranwala,      │ of Amritsar, Gurdaspur,     │
│ WARRAICH / GILL    │ Sheikhupura & Sargodha    │ Jalandhar & Ludhiana        │
├────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ BHATTI / RATHORE / │ Punjabi & Sindhi Muslim   │ Hindu & Sikh Bhati, Chauhan │
│ CHAUHAN / MINHAS / │ Rajputs of Pindi Bhattian,│ & Dogra Minhas Rajputs of   │
│ JANJUA / JARRAL    │ Chakwal, Jhelum & Mirpur  │ Jaisalmer, Jammu & Kangra   │
├────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ KHATANA / CHECHI / │ Muslim Gujjars of Gujrat, │ Hindu & Sikh Gujjars of     │
│ POSWAL / KASANA    │ Jhelum, Rawalpindi, Hazara│ Jammu, Himachal, Haryana, UP│
├────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ SOOMRO (PARMAR) /  │ Sindhi Muslim Sammat      │ Hindu Parmar, Sodha &       │
│ SAMMO (YADUVANSHI) │ tribes of Thatta, Badin,  │ Jadeja Rajputs of Thar,     │
│ / JADEJA           │ Larkana & Sanghar         │ Barmer, Jaisalmer & Kutch   │
└────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

For seventy-five years, state-sponsored ideological engineering in Pakistan has attempted to bury this biological and historical reality beneath an artificial Middle Eastern veneer. Generation after generation of Pakistani schoolchildren have been taught through mandatory Mutāla‘a-e-Pākistān (Pakistan Studies) textbooks that their history began in 712 CE when the seventeen-year-old Umayyad Arab general Muḥammad bin Qāsim invaded Sindh. In this state-manufactured mythology, the five thousand years of civilization that preceded 712 CE—the Ṛgveda, Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Takṣaśilā, Maharishi Pāṇini, Ācārya Cāṇakya, the Gandhāran Buddhas, the Hindu Shahi emperors, and Maharaja Dāhir Sen—are treated as the history of a "foreign enemy."

Even more absurdly, millions of indigenous families across Pakistan were encouraged over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to discard their Hindu clan histories and invent fabricated Śajaras (genealogical trees) claiming descent from Quraishī Arabs, Baghdadī Pīrs, Ghaznavid Turks, or Bukhāran Sayyids. As the nineteenth-century British census commissioner Sir Denzil Ibbetson dryly observed, a popular proverb in the Punjab mocked this overnight fabrication of foreign ancestry:

"Last year I was a Julāhā (weaver); this year I am a Śeikh; and next year, if the harvest is good, I shall be a Sayyid."

In the twenty-first century, the hard science of genome-wide autosomal DNA sequencing has delivered the final, unanswerable verdict on this state fiction. Landmark peer-reviewed genomic studies led by Harvard Medical School geneticist David Reich (Nature, 2009), Priya Moorjani (American Journal of Human Genetics, 2013), and Vagheesh M. Narasimhan, Nick Patterson, and David Reich (Science, 2019—analyzing ancient DNA extracted directly from Iron Age and historic human skeletons buried in the Swat Valley of Pakistan between 1200 BCE and 1000 CE) have proven beyond a shadow of scientific doubt that 98% to 99.5% of the genetic ancestry of Pakistan’s population is indigenous South Asian.

A Punjabi Muslim Jat or Rajput in Lahore or Rawalpindi, a Sindhi Muslim Sammat farmer in Larkana, a Saraiki villager in Multan, a Hindkowan in Abbottabad, a Pahari Chib or Jarral in Mirpur, and a Śinā-speaking Dard in Gilgit do not carry the autosomal genome of the Arabian Peninsula or the Mongolian steppe. They carry the exact same blend of Indus Valley Civilization (Iran_N + AASI) and Ancestral North Indian DNA as the Hindus and Sikhs of northern and western India.

They are not the descendants of the invaders who conquered the Sapta-Sindhu.
They are the biological children of the indigenous Sanātanis—Vedic Hindus and Buddhists—who were conquered, taxed, besieged, enslaved, and systematically converted across thirteen hundred years.

---

III. The Question This Book Answers

If 99% of Pakistan’s population descends from indigenous Hindus and Buddhists who inhabited the wealthiest, most learned, and most sacred river valley of the ancient world, how and why did they convert?

For decades, polite academic orthodoxy in Western and South Asian universities has peddled what might be called the "Tea-Party Theory of Conversion." According to this sanitized fable, the military invasions of the Umayyads, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khaljis, Tughlaqs, Timurids, Arghuns, Mughals, and Durranis had nothing to do with religious conversion. Instead, we are asked to believe that millions of proud Kshatriya Rajputs, warrior Jats, learned Brahmins, wealthy Lohana and Khatri merchants, and devoted Buddhist monks spontaneously abandoned their millennia-old Dharma because they were charmed by the egalitarian poetry of wandering Sufi mystics or wished to escape the Hindu caste system.

The primary historical sources—written in Arabic and Persian by the conquerors, court chroniclers, Qazis, and emperors themselves—tell a radically different story.

When we open the Chachnāma (Fateḥnāma-i-Sindh), Al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-Buldān, Al-‘Utbī’s Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī, Gardīzī’s Zayn al-Akhbār, Minhāj-i-Sirāj’s Ṭabaqāt-i-Nāṣirī, Ziyā’uddīn Baranī’s Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, Sultan Fīrūz Shāh Tughlaq’s own memoir Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, Amīr Tīmūr’s Malfūẓāt-i-Tīmūrī, Emperor Bābur’s Bāburnāma, Yūsuf Mīrak’s Maẓhar-i-Shāhjahānī (1634 CE), Aurangzeb’s Fatāwā-i-‘Ālamgīrī, Seth Nāomal Hotchand’s Memoirs, and the house-to-house ethnographic surveys of Sir Denzil Ibbetson (1881), Major John Biddulph (1880), and H.A. Rose (1911), the "peaceful, voluntary conversion" myth disintegrates upon contact with documentary evidence.

What emerges instead is a 1,300-year, multi-generational machinery of coercion operated through Six Interlocking Engines:

1. The Sword-and-Slave-Market Pardon (Kalima Immunity): During military sieges from Debal (712 CE) and Waihind (1001 CE) to Thatta (1365 & 1520 CE), Dipalpur (1398 CE), Bajaur (1519 CE), and Kafiristan (1896 CE), defeated defenders and hundreds of thousands of enslaved women and children were offered a stark binary choice: execution or sale in the slave markets of Ghazni, Kandahar, and Bukhara—or immediate legal manumission and survival upon reciting the Kalima.
2. The Fiscal Guillotine (Jizya Poll-Tax + 50% Kharāj Land Tribute): In the rain-scarce Indus basin, where survival depended entirely on riverine inundation and Persian-wheel (Rahaṭ) wells directly monitored by state cavalry, non-Muslim peasant families were crushed under a 50% gross agricultural tribute (Kharāj) plus a graded per-head poll tax (Jizya). Whenever drought struck, defaulting Hindu farmers had their lands confiscated and their wives and children seized as revenue slaves—unless the family head recited the Kalima, which instantly canceled all Jizya arrears, as Sultan Fīrūz Shāh Tughlaq openly boasted in his Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī.
3. Imperial Hostage-Princes & Sanad Succession Politics: Whenever two Hindu Rajput royal brothers or cousins in the Salt Range, Potohar, Chibhal (Mirpur-Bhimber-Rajouri), or Sindh disputed a throne, the Delhi Sultanate or Mughal court granted the royal Sanad, military cavalry, and Jāgīr revenue rights exclusively to the claimant who agreed to convert to Islam and surrender a son as a court hostage—pulling his dependent clan vassals into nominal Islam over the next two generations.
4. The State-Backed Khānqāh-Jāgīr Canal & Land Monopoly: The great Sufi shrines (Dargāhs) of Multan, Uch Sharif, Pakpattan (Ajodhan), and Jhang were not apolitical hermitages; they were massive feudal corporations endowed by the Sultanate and Mughal state with thousands of acres of tax-free In‘ām and Madad-i-Ma‘āsh riverine estates. For pastoral Hindu Jat, Rajput (Sial, Wattu, Joya, Kharal), and Gujjar tribes transitioning to settled canal agriculture between 1300 and 1750 CE, becoming a Murīd (disciple) of a state-backed Pīr was the price of land tenure and immunity from state slave-raids.
5. The Qāzī Blasphemy & Forced Circumcision Trap: As documented by eyewitnesses Seth Nāomal Hotchand and Sir Richard Francis Burton under the Kalhora and Talpur Mīrs of Sindh (1701–1843 CE), if a Hindu Lohana or Bhatia accidentally uttered a single Arabic word in the bazaar (such as saying Rassī [rope] and having two Muslim bystanders swear before the Qāzī that he had uttered Rasūl [Prophet]), he was dragged to court, pinned down, forcibly circumcised on the spot, fed beef broth, and turned into a Sindhi Muslim Śeikh (Nau-Muslim).
6. Feudal Debt-Bondage (Peśgī) & The Essential Services Trap: From the nineteenth century right through the 1947 Partition—when Pakistan invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Ordinance to physically block hundreds of thousands of Dalit and Vālmīki (Chūhṛā) Hindus from evacuating to India—landless Hindu farmhands and sanitation workers were coerced by feudal Zamīndārs* into becoming Muslim Musallīs*** simply to draw water from village wells and survive.

And what is the most astonishing proof that these conversions were driven by external survival pressures rather than inward spiritual rejection of Sanātana Dharma?

For four to six hundred years after their nominal conversion, the converted clans of Pakistan refused to let go of their Hindu ancestors.

Right up to the 1881 and 1911 British censuses, millions of Muslim Rajputs, Jats, and Gujjars in Jhelum, Gujrat, Sialkot, Shahpur, Montgomery, and Mirpur still maintained hereditary Mirāsī and Bhāṭ genealogists who recited written Vaṁśāvalī scrolls tracing their ancestry to Bhagavān Śrī Rāma, Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa, and the Pāṇḍava brothers. Muslim Rajput families in the Salt Range and Jammu hills still invited their ancestral Brahmin Purohits alongside the Qāzī to tie the sacred wedding thread (Kaṅganā) and calculate the Hindu astrological Muhūrta. Muslim Chib Rajputs of Bhimber and Mirpur still traveled in 1875 to the tomb of their Hindu founder Rāja Chib Chand to offer the ceremonial Hindu scalp-lock (Choṭī) of their newborn sons. And converted Muslim Śins of Gilgit still refused in 1880 to drink cow's milk, touch beef, or wear calfskin leather out of ancient Hindu reverence for Gau-Mātā.

This book is the complete, unvarnished chronicle of that 1,300-year erasure—and the forensic recovery of the sacred memory (Smṛti) that the sword could never fully sever.

---

PART I: CRADLE OF THE VEDAS — BEFORE THE SWORD CROSSED THE INDUS

---

Chapter 1: Sapta-Sindhu — The River-Hymns of the Ṛgveda & The Kingdoms of the Seven Rivers

सुषोमायाम् आर्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ।
सिन्धुर् ह हिरण्ययीम् अमवान् अश्वदावतीम् सुवासाः सुकृताम् अपः ॥

"Rich in noble steeds is the Sindhu, rich in golden chariots, rich in resplendent robes, rich in gleaming gold,
Youthful,exhaustless, and auspicious—she flows across the plains clothing the earth in abundance!"
— Ṛgveda Saṁhitā, Maṇḍala 10, Sūkta 75, Verse 8

---

I. Where the Ṛgveda Was Sung: The Geography of the Nadīstuti Sūkta

To understand the magnitude of what was lost when the Indus basin was severed from Sanātana Dharma, one must begin with a geographical truth that modern maps obscure:

The territory of modern-day Pakistan was not a distant frontier or peripheral borderland of ancient Hindu civilization. It was its original womb.

When the ancient Ṛṣis—Viśvāmitra, Vasiṣṭha, Bharadvāja, Vāmadeva, Atri, Gṛtsamada, Kaṇva, and Sindhukṣit Praiyamedha—composed the hymns of the Ṛgveda Saṁhitā, the oldest living sacred text of humanity, the landscapes they looked upon were the rivers, snow peaks, valleys, and plains of what is today Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

They called this sacred homeland Sapta-Sindhu ("The Land of the Seven Rivers").

In the seventy-fifth hymn of the Tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛgveda—the celebrated Nadīstuti Sūkta ("Hymn in Praise of the Rivers"), composed by the sage Sindhukṣit ("Dweller by the Sindhu")—the poet enumerates the rivers of his homeland in strict geographical sequence from east to west, culminating in the mighty Sindhu (Indus) and its western Afghan-Frontier tributaries:

1. Śutudrī (Sutlej) — flowing past modern Bahawalpur, Lodhran, and Multan.
2. Paruṣṇī (Ravi) — flowing past modern Lahore (Lavapurī), Sheikhupura, Sahiwal, and Harappa; it was on the banks of the Paruṣṇī in modern West Punjab that King Sudās* of the Tṛtsu-Bharata clan fought the famous Dāśarājña Yuddha (Battle of the Ten Kings, Ṛgveda* 7.18), the defining political event of the Vedic age.
3. Asiknī (Chenab) — flowing past Sialkot, Gujrat, Wazirabad, Chiniot, and Jhang.
4. Vitastā (Jhelum) — flowing from Kashmir through Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Mangla, Jhelum, and Bhera.
5. Marudvṛdhā — the combined stream or upper Jammu-Kashmir tributary (Maruwardwan) joining the Chenab.
6. Suṣomā (Sohan River) — flowing across the Potohar Plateau past Rawalpindi and Chakwal into the Indus; celebrated in the Ṛgveda (8.64.11) for its sacred Soma rituals.
7. Ārjīkīyā (Haro River) — flowing through modern Abbottabad (Hazara) and Attock (Taxila) into the Indus.
8. Sindhu (Indus) — the supreme artery of the Vedic world, praised across eight verses for its roaring torrents descending from the Himalayas through Gilgit (Daradadeśa), Attock, Kalabagh, Derajat, and Sindh to the ocean (Samudra).
9. Kubhā (Kabul River) — flowing from Kabul and Jalalabad through the Khyber hills past Charsadda (Puṣkalāvatī), Peshawar (Puruṣapura), and Nowshera to join the Indus at Hund (Udabhāṇḍapura).
10. Suvāstu (Swat River) — literally "Of Fair Dwellings" (Su-Vāstu), flowing through Mingora, Udegram, and Chakdara in modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Ṛgveda 8.19.37).
11. Krumu (Kurram River) — flowing through modern Parachinar (Kurram Agency), Thal, and Bannu (Ṛgveda 5.53.9 & 10.75.6).
12. Gomatī (Gomal River) — literally "Abounding in Sacred Cows," flowing through South Waziristan, Tank, and Dera Ismail Khan into the Indus (Ṛgveda 10.75.6).
13. Mehatnu & Kṣudrā — tributary streams of the Derajat-Waziristan frontier joining the Indus.

Every single western tributary praised in Ṛgveda 10.75.6—the Kubhā, Suvāstu, Krumu, Gomatī, Suṣomā, and Ārjīkīyā—lies 100% inside modern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. When a modern resident of Peshawar, Swat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Gujrat, Lahore, or Sukkur drinks water from his local river, he is drinking from a river whose very name is an ancient Sanskrit prayer.

---

II. The Sacred Geography Concordance of Pakistan

To make this civilizational continuity unmistakable, the table below maps twenty-six major rivers, cities, and regions of modern Pakistan to their documented Vedic, Epic, and Classical Sanskrit names:

---

III. From Mehrgarh and Mohenjo-daro to the Four Great Vedic Kingdoms

Even before the compilation of the Ṛgveda Saṁhitā, the archaeological record of Pakistan demonstrates an unbroken, organic civilizational continuum stretching back to 7000 BCE at Mehrgarh (on the Bolan River in Balochistan), Kot Diji (Khairpur, Sindh), Rehman Dheri (Dera Ismail Khan), Harappa (Sahiwal, Punjab), and Mohenjo-daro (Larkana, Sindh).

Every material hallmark excavated from these Indus-Sarasvatī sites lives on directly in Sanātana Dharma today: * The Paśupati / Yogīśvara Seal (Mohenjo-daro, Seal 420): Depicting a three-faced deity seated in the classic Yogic Mūlabandha / Padmāsana posture, crowned with a horn-trident headdress and surrounded by animals—the unmistakable archetype of Śiva Paśupati ("Lord of Creatures") and Mahāyogī*. * Sindūr in the Parting of the Hair (Nausharo / Mehrgarh, c. 2800–2600 BCE): Terracotta female figurines excavated in Balochistan bear bright red vermilion (sindūr) painted directly along the central parting of the hair (māṅg)—the exact marital emblem worn by Hindu women across millennia. * The Svastika, Sacred Pīpal (Aśvattha) Leaf, Śiva-Liṅga Stones, and Fire Altars (Agnikuṇḍas): Ubiquitous across Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and Rehman Dheri, together with terracotta figurines in the classical Praṇāma / Namaste* posture (hands folded at the heart).

During the Brāhmaṇa, Upaniṣadic, and Epic eras (Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata), the soil of modern Pakistan formed the four premier kingdoms of northern Bhāratavarṣa—celebrated in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad (4.1) as the land where the purest Sanskrit was spoken and where scholars from the Gangetic plain traveled to master higher Vedic ritual:

1. Gāndhāra (Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swat & Rawalpindi-Taxila)

In the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa (Uttara Kāṇḍa, Sarga 101), Bhagavān Śrī Rāma’s brother Bharata marches to the northwest at the invitation of his maternal uncle Yudhājit (King of Kekaya), establishes peace across the Indus, and founds two radiant twin capitals Named after his two sons, Takṣa and Puṣkala:

तक्षं तक्षशिलायां तु पुष्कलं पुष्कलावते ।
गन्धर्वदेशे रुचिरे गान्धारविषये च सः ॥
"Bharata installed his son Takṣa as ruler in Takṣaśilā (Taxila, east of the Indus), and his son Puṣkala in Puṣkalāvatī (Charsadda, west of the Indus in the Peshawar valley), inside the radiant land of Gāndhāra."

In the Mahābhārata, Queen Gāndhārī—daughter of King Subala of Gāndhāra—hails from this very Peshawar-Rawalpindi heartland.

2. Kekaya (The Salt Range, Jhelum, Chakwal, Sargodha & Gujrat)

Situated between the Sindhu (Indus), Vitastā (Jhelum), and Asiknī (Chenab), the kingdom of Kekaya (with its capital at Rājagṛha / Girivraja, identified by Sir Alexander Cunningham with Girjāk / Jalālpur on the Jhelum River) was the ancestral home of Queen Kaikeyī, mother of Prince Bharata in the Rāmāyaṇa. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (5.11–24), the philosopher-king Aśvapati Kaikeya rules over this Salt Range-Jhelum realm, famously declaring to five visiting Brahmin sages:

"In my kingdom of Kekaya there is no thief, no miser, no drunkard, no man without a sacrificial fire (Anāhitāgni), no ignorant person, no adulterer, and hence no adulteress!"

3. Madra (Madradeśa — Sialkot, Gujranwala, Narowal & Sheikhupura)

Centered in the fertile Rechna Doab between the Chenab and the Ravi, with its fortified capital at Śākala (modern Sialkot), the kingdom of Madra gave Bhārata two of its most revered figures: Queen Mādrī (mother of the Pandava twins Nakula and Sahadeva) and her brother Mahārāja Śalya of Sialkot, who served as the final commander-in-chief of the Kaurava army at Kurukṣetra, as well as the luminous princess Sāvitrī (daughter of King Aśvapati of Madra), whose victory over Yama (the Lord of Death) is recited by Hindu women across India to this day.

4. Sindhu-Sauvīra (Sindh, Multan, Bahawalpur & Derajat)

Stretching from Mūlasthāna (Multan) and Uch down the lower Indus through Alor (Rohri) and Brahmanabad to the Arabian Sea delta at Debal, the twin kingdom of Sindhu-Sauvīra was famous in Vedic and Epic literature for its swift Sindhu war-horses, its maritime trade with Mesopotamia, and its great warrior kings.

These four kingdoms—Gāndhāra, Kekaya, Madra, and Sindhu-Sauvīra—are the exact geographical provinces of modern Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North-West Punjab, Central Punjab, and Sindh/South Punjab). Their inhabitants did not vanish into thin air. Their bloodline became the people of Pakistan.

---

Chapter 2: The Universities and Sacred Citadels — Takṣaśilā, Śāradā Pīṭha, Mūlasthāna, Kaṭās Rāj & Hiṅglāj

नमस्ते शारदे देवि काश्मीरपुरवासिनि ।
त्वामहं प्रार्थये नित्यं विद्यादानं च देहि मे ॥

"Salutations to You, O Goddess Śāradā, dwelling in the sacred land of Kaśmīra (Neelum Valley)!
To You I pray each day: bestow upon me the gift of supreme knowledge."
— Traditional Śāradā Vandana recited before initiating a child into learning

---

I. Takṣaśilā (Taxila) and Śālātura (Swabi): Where the Grammar, Statecraft, and Medicine of Civilization Were Codified

Twenty miles northwest of modern Rawalpindi and Islamabad, nestled in a lush valley watered by the Tamrā Nālā stream at the foot of the Margalla Hills, lie the vast stone ruins of Takṣaśilā (Taxila)—spanning the Bhir Mound, Sirkap, Sirsukh, Dharmarājikā, Jauliāñ, and Mohṛā Morādu.

For more than a thousand years (c. 700 BCE – 500 CE), Takṣaśilā stood as the premier intellectual metropolis of the ancient world. Listed in Buddhist Jātaka texts and Hindu Itihāsa as the supreme seat of the Three Vedas (Trayī-Vidyā) and the Eighteen Branches of Science and Arts (Aṣṭādaśa-Vidyāsthāna)—including Dhanurveda (military science), Āyurveda (medicine and surgery), Vyākaraṇa (linguistics), Arthaśāstra (political economy), astronomy, law, and sculpture—Takṣaśilā drew princes, philosophers, and physicians from across Asia.

Consider the monumental intellects who walked the streets of what is today Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Rawalpindi District:

1. Maharṣi Pāṇini (c. 5th–6th Century BCE) — Born in Swabi District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: Just forty miles northwest of Taxila, on the right bank of the Indus near Hund in modern Swabi District (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), stands the village of Lahor—ancient Śālātura. Here was born Pāṇini (revered in Sanskrit literature as Śālāturīya, "the man of Śālātura"). In his 3,959 algebraic rules (Sūtras)* of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, Pāṇini constructed the most complete, context-free generative grammar in human history—a formal meta-language with recursion, boolean logic, and phonetic matrices (Śivasūtras*) that modern computer scientists recognize as the direct precursor of the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) used to design programming languages. When Xuanzang visited Śālātura (Lahor, Swabi) in 630 CE**, he saw a statue erected in honor of Maharṣi Pāṇini and noted that the local children of the town still studied his grammar with fierce devotion.
2. Ācārya Cāṇakya / Kauṭilya (4th Century BCE) — Professor of Statecraft at Takṣaśilā: It was at Takṣaśilā that the Brahmin polymath Viṣṇugupta Cāṇakya taught political economy and military strategy, recruited the young Candragupta Maurya, organized the liberation of the northwest from the Greek satraps of Alexander of Macedon, and composed the Arthaśāstra—the foundational treatise of Indian geopolitical realism (Rājadharma, Maṇḍala Theory, and Ṣāḍguṇya).
3. Maharṣi Caraka & Jīvaka Komārabhacca — Masters of Āyurveda and Surgery: It was in the medical colleges of Takṣaśilā and the herbal slopes of Gandhāra that Jīvaka (physician to Lord Buddha and King Bimbisāra) learned cranial and abdominal surgery, and where Caraka* compiled the Caraka Saṁhitā***, the encyclopedia of internal medicine, anatomy, embryology, and clinical diagnostics.
4. Mahārāja Janamejaya’s First Public Recitation of the Mahābhārata: According to the Ādi Parva of the Mahābhārata, it was at Takṣaśilā—during the great court assembly of Emperor Janamejaya (son of Parīkṣit and great-grandson of Arjuna)—that Sage Vaiśampāyana, chief disciple of Maharṣi Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, publicly recited the 100,000 verses of the Mahābhārata for the very first time in history.

Think about that historical fact: the Mahābhārata was first recited to humanity in Rawalpindi District, Pakistan.

---

II. Śāradā Pīṭha (Neelum Valley, POJK): The Throne of Omniscience

High in the cedar-clad Neelum Valley (ancient Kiṣaṅgaṅgā Valley) of Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, just ten miles from the Line of Control at the confluence of the Kiṣaṅgaṅgā (Neelum), Madhumatī, and Śāradā streams, stands a roofless, towering red-sandstone cella raised on a massive plinth of sixty-three stone steps: Śāradā Pīṭha.

Before its desecration and eventual isolation after October 1947, Śāradā Pīṭha was revered across the entire subcontinent from Kanyakumari to Kashmir as one of the eighteen Mahā-Śakti Pīṭhas (where the right hand of Goddess Satī fell) and the supreme seat of Devī Śāradā (the cosmic embodiment of Sarasvatī, Śakti, and Para-Vāk).

• Al-Bīrūnī (1030 CE, Kitāb al-Hind, Vol. I, p. 117) wrote of Śāradā Pīṭha that it was one of the four most venerated sanctuaries in all of India—alongside the Sun Temple of Multan, the Viṣṇu Cakrasvāmin Temple of Thanesar, and the Somnāth Temple in Gujarat.
• Kalhaṇa (1148 CE, Rājataraṅgiṇī, Book I & IV) and the Kashmiri poet Bilhaṇa (Vikramāṅkadevacarita) celebrated Śāradā Pīṭha as the fountainhead of scholarship, boasting that "even the women of that land speak Sanskrit and Prakrit as fluently as their mother tongue."
• Ādi Śaṅkarācārya (8th Century CE) walked all the way from Kerala to the Neelum Valley to debate the assemble scholars of northern India at the four-doored Sarvajña Pīṭham (Throne of Omniscience) of Śāradā Pīṭha—opening its southern door, which had never before been unlocked.
• Śrī Rāmānujācārya (11th Century CE) traveled from Srirangam in Tamil Nadu to the library of Śāradā Pīṭha in the Neelum Valley to consult the ancient manuscript of Bodhāyana’s Vṛtti on the Brahma Sūtras before composing his immortal Śrī-Bhāṣya.
• Swami Nand Lal Ji (d. 1947), the last resident Kashmiri Pandit saint of Śāradā Pīṭha, remained at the shrine until the tribal invasion of October 1947 forced the evacuation of the last sacred Mūrtis to Tikker in Kupwara. Today, every morning when Kashmiri Pandits anywhere in the world begin their daily prayers, they still face the Neelum Valley in POJK and chant: "Namaste Śārade Devi Kāśmīrapuravāsini..."

---

III. Mūlasthāna (Multan), Kaṭās Rāj (Chakwal) & Hiṅglāj (Makran): The Immortal Triangle of Devotion

Across the plains and mountains of Pakistan stood a vast sacred network of Tīrthas (pilgrimage centers) that anchored the spiritual life of North-West India for three millennia:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         THE SACRED SANĀTANI PILGRIMAGE NETWORK OF PRE-ISLAMIC PAKISTAN       │
├──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┤
│ SACRED TĪRTHA        │ DISTRICT / PROVINCE      │ DEITY & CLASSICAL TRADITION│
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. ŚĀRADĀ PĪṬHA      │ Neelum Valley, POJK      │ Devī Śāradā / Sarasvatī;   │
│                      │                          │ 18 Mahā-Śakti Pīṭhas       │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 2. KAṬĀS RĀJ         │ Chakwal (Salt Range),    │ Lord Śiva's Tear Pool &    │
│    (Siṃhapura)       │ West Punjab              │ Yudhiṣṭhira's Yakṣa-Praśna │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 3. TILLĀ JOGIĀN      │ Jhelum (Salt Range),     │ Supreme Monastery of Guru  │
│    (Bālnāth Tilla)   │ West Punjab              │ Gorakhnāth & Nāth Yogīs    │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 4. GORAKHATRĪ        │ Peshawar City,           │ Gandhāran Sanctuary of     │
│                      │ Khyber Pakhtunkhwa       │ Guru Gorakhnāth            │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 5. MŪLASTHĀNA        │ Multan City,             │ Golden Āditya Sun Temple & │
│    (Prahlādpurī)     │ South Punjab             │ Bhagavān Narasiṃha Mandir  │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 6. RĀMA TAKHT        │ Takht-i-Sulaiman (Daraz- │ Ancient Shrine of Śrī Rāma │
│    (Kāfirkot Axis)   │ inda / D.I. Khan Border) │ & the Kāfir Koṭ Temples    │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 7. ŚIVASTĀNA         │ Sehwan Sharif,           │ Ancient Śiva-Rudra Citadel │
│    (Sehwan)          │ Sindh                    │ & Rāja Bhartṛhari Cave     │
├──────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 8. MĀTĀ HIṄGLĀJ DEVĪ │ Hingol National Park,    │ 51st Śakti Pīṭha (Crown of │
│    (Hiṅgulā Pīṭha)   │ Lasbela, Balochistan     │ Goddess Satī's Head)       │
└──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┘

In Multan (Mūlasthāna), the Golden Āditya Sun Temple was one of the wonders of the ancient world. When Xuanzang visited Mau-lo-san-pu-lu (Mūlasthānapura) in 641 CE, he beheld a magnificent temple housing a golden image of the Sun God (Sūrya / Āditya) adorned with rare gems, where kings and nobles from across the Five Rivers offered lamps, flowers, and perfumes, and where Devadāsīs maintained perpetual music and lamp-offerings, alongside a great hospital and almshouse (Puṇyaśālā) that fed the poor for free. Three centuries later, the Arab geographer Al-Iṣṭakhrī (c. 951 CE) and Al-Bīrūnī (1030 CE) described the Multan Sun idol sitting upon a throne of plastered brick, draped in red Morocco leather, with two fiery red rubies for eyes and a golden crown upon its head. It was also at Multan’s adjacent Prahlādpurī Mandir that the festival of Holikā Dahan and Holi was celebrated with unique devotion as the very birthplace of Bhakta Prahlāda.

In the Salt Range of Jhelum and Chakwal, atop the 3,200-foot summit of Tillā Jogiān (called Jogi Tilla or Bālnāth-kā-Tilla by Emperors Akbar and Jahangir in the Ā’īn-i-Akbarī and Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī), stood the supreme Maṭha of Guru Gorakhnāth and the Kānphaṭā Nāth Yogīs—where Prince Bhartṛhari of Ujjain, Pūran Bhagat of Sialkot, Rānjhā of Takht Hazara, and Guru Nānak Dev Jī all climbed to meditate in the stone caves overlooking the Jhelum River.

And on the remote Makran coast of Balochistan, in a narrow canyon of the Hingol River, stood the cave sanctuary of Mātā Hiṅglāj Devī (Hiṅgulā). According to the Tantra Cūḍāmaṇi, when Lord Viṣṇu’s Sudarśana Cakra severed the body of Satī into fifty-one sacred pieces to calm Lord Śiva’s cosmic Tāṇḍava, the very first and highest portion—the Brahmarandhra (crown of the skull)—fell at Hiṅgulā in Balochistan. For thousands of years, Kṣatriya Rajputs (including the Soomras, Sammas, Charans, Bhatias, Lohanas, and Khatris), Nāth Yogīs, and Gosains walked barefoot across the scorching deserts of Sindh and Lasbela—carrying the red Chhaṛī staff and enduring raids by desert bandits—to bow before the self-manifested (Svayambhū) stone of Mātā Hiṅglāj. So deep was the indigenous reverence for this shrine that even after the Brahui and Baloch tribes of Kalat and Lasbela were converted to Islam, they continued to visit the cave of Mātā Hiṅglāj, calling it Nānī Mandar ("The Shrine of the Maternal Grandmother") and offering red cloth and coconuts at the threshold of the Hindu Goddess of their ancestors!

---

Chapter 3: The Golden Frontier — Gāndhāra, Uḍḍiyāna (Swat), Kapiśā & Sindh in the Eyes of Faxian and Xuanzang (400–645 CE)

उड्डीयाने महापीठे वज्रयोगिनि संस्थिते ।
सुवास्तुतीरसंभूते पद्मसम्भव नमोऽस्तु ते ॥

"In the supreme sacred seat of Uḍḍiyāna (Swat Valley), where Vajrayoginī abides,
To You who were born upon the banks of the Suvāstu (Swat) lake, O Padmasambhava, salutations unto You!"
— Classical Sanskrit-Tibetan Invocation to Guru Padmasambhava of Uḍḍiyāna (Swat)

---

I. The Twin Flowering of Vedic Dharma and Mahāyāna Buddhism

Between the third century BCE (when Emperor Aśoka the Great carved his Fourteen Major Rock Edicts in Kharosthi script onto the granite boulders of Shāhbāzgaṛhī in Mardan District and Mānsehrā in Hazara District) and the seventh century CE, the northwest of the subcontinent witnessed one of the most luminous artistic, philosophical, and spiritual syntheses in human history.

Across Gāndhāra (the Peshawar basin, Charsadda, Mardan, Takht-i-Bāhī, Swabi, and Taxila), Uḍḍiyāna (the Swat, Buner, Dir, and Bajaur valleys), Kapiśā-Kābul, Daradadeśa (Gilgit-Chilas), and Sindh, Vedic Hinduism (Śaivism, Vaiṣṇavism, Sūrya-worship, and Śāktism) and Buddhism (Sarvāstivāda, Mahāyāna, Sammitīya, and Vajrayāna) flourished side by side inside the same families and royal houses.

The kings of the Kuṣāṇa, Kidārite, Alchon/Nezak, Paṭola Śāhi, Turk Śāhi, Rāi, and Cac (Chach) dynasties minted gold and silver coins depicting Lord Śiva (Oēšo) holding the trident (Triśūla) alongside his bull Nandī, Skanda-Kārttikeya (Mahāsena), Sūrya, Ardhanārīśvara, and Śākyamuni Buddha (Boddo).

Out of this Gandhāran workshops of Taxila, Takht-i-Bāhī, Sahri-Bahlol, Jamal Garhi, Butkara (Mingora, Swat), and Charsadda emerged the world-renowned Gandhāra School of Art—where grey-blue schist stone and lime stucco were sculpted into serene images of the Bodhisattvas Maitreya and Avalokiteśvara, and where the greatest philosophers of Mahāyāna Buddhism were born:

• Ācārya Asaṅga & Ācārya Vasubandhu (4th Century CE, born in Puruṣapura / Modern Peshawar): Born into a learned Brahmin family of Peshawar (Puruṣapura), the two brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu founded the Yogācāra (Vijñānavāda / Mind-Only) school of philosophy—writing the Abhidharmakośa and Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra right in the heart of modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, works that shaped the intellectual life of India, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan for sixteen centuries.
• Guru Padmasambhava / Guru Rinpoche (8th Century CE, born in Uḍḍiyāna / Modern Swat Valley): Born near the lotus lake of Dhanakośa in the Swat Valley (Uḍḍiyāna), Padmasambhava became the supreme master of Vajrayāna Tantra and was invited by Emperor Trisong Detsen in the eighth century to establish Buddhism in Tibet, where he is revered by millions to this day as the "Second Buddha" (Gu-ru Rin-po-che). For every Tibetan, Bhutanese, Ladakhi, and Himalayan Buddhist on earth, the Swat Valley of Pakistan (Orgyen / Uḍḍiyāna) is literally a holy land on par with Bodh Gaya.

---

II. Eyewitness Testimony Before the Storm: What Faxian (400 CE) and Xuanzang (630–641 CE) Saw

We do not have to guess what Pakistan looked like on the eve of the seventh- and eighth-century Arab invasions. We possess the meticulous, mile-by-mile eyewitness diaries of the Chinese Buddhist scholars Faxian (Fa-Hien, c. 400–402 CE) and Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang, 630–641 CE, Datang Xiyuji / Buddhist Records of the Western World), who walked through every province of modern Pakistan just decades before the first Arab armies reached the Bolan Pass (644 CE) and Debal (711 CE).

Let us walk with Xuanzang across the landscape of seventh-century Pakistan:

1. Uḍḍiyāna (The Swat Valley — Wu-chang-na)

Entering Swat (Suvāstu), Xuanzang described a fertile alpine paradise carpeted with orchards, saffron fields, and ringing temple bells: * Along both banks of the Suvāstu (Swat) River stood 1,400 Buddhist monasteries (Saṅghārāmas), which had once housed 18,000 monks. * The people of Swat spoke an Indic language closely akin to Sanskrit, wore white cotton robes, abhorred capital punishment, and revered both Mahāyāna/Mantra-yāna Buddhism and scores of Hindu Deva temples. * Modern Italian archaeological excavations led by Giuseppe Tucci and Luca Maria Olivieri (ISMEO) at Barikot (Bazira), Butkara I, Udegram, and Amluk-dara in Swat have unearthed the exact stupas, Vihāras, and late-Kushan/Shahi Hindu Vishnu-Shiva temples that Xuanzang saw with his own eyes.

2. Gāndhāra (Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan & Hund — Kien-t'o-lo)

Descending into the Peshawar basin, Xuanzang recorded: * Over 1,000 Buddhist monasteries and stupas and more than 100 Hindu Deva temples across the valley. * Outside the southeastern gate of Puruṣapura (Peshawar) stood the towering Kaniṣka Mahā-Stūpa (at modern Shāh-jī-kī-Ḍherī), rising over 400 feet into the sky with a twenty-five-ringed gilded copper pinnacle, beside a sacred Pīpal tree where scholars debated Dharma. * Fifty li northeast of Charsadda (Puṣkalāvatī), high on a mountain peak in modern Mardan/Swabi (Kashmir Smast / Bhīmā Devī Parvata), stood the famous shrine of Bhīmā Devī (a fierce manifestation of Goddess Durgā, consort of Īśvara Mahādeva), containing a natural self-manifested (Svayambhū) dark-blue stone image of the Goddess. Beneath the mountain stood a grand Maheśvara (Śiva) Temple tended by Pāśupata ash-smeared ascetics, visited by pilgrims from every corner of India!

3. Takṣaśilā (Taxila), Siṃhapura (Katas Raj), Urāśā (Hazara) & Śākala (Sialkot)

Crossing the Indus at Udabhāṇḍapura (Hund, Attock), Xuanzang walked through: * Takṣaśilā (Taxila), Urāśā (modern Abbottabad / Mansehra in Hazara District), and Siṃhapura (modern Kaṭās Rāj in Chakwal)—recording its turquoise spring ponds, Buddhist stupas of Aśoka, and ascetics practicing rigorous penance. * Moving across the Jhelum and Chenab into Ṭakka-deśa / Panjab (Cheh-ka) and Śākala (Sialkot), he documented hundreds of Hindu Deva temples and Buddhist monasteries thriving across the agricultural heartland of the Five Rivers.

4. Sindh (Sin-tu), Mūlasthāna (Multan) & Armābel (Lasbela, Balochistan)

Travelling down the Indus into Sindh, Multan, and coastal Balochistan (O-fan-ch'a / Avanda & Lang-ka-lo / Makran): * In Sindh, Xuanzang counted several hundred Buddhist monasteries housing over 10,000 monks of the Sammitīya school alongside over 300 Hindu Deva temples (primarily Pāśupata Śaiva and Sūrya shrines). * In Armābel / Lasbela & Makran (Balochistan), right up to the Persian border, he recorded over 100 Buddhist monasteries (6,000 monks) and several hundred Pāśupata Śaiva temples—stating explicitly that the script and spoken language of coastal Balochistan in 641 CE were "only slightly different from those of India."

Look at that complete seventh-century balance sheet: from Chitral, Gilgit, and Swat down through Peshawar, Taxila, Hazara, Chakwal, Sialkot, and Multan to Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Thatta, Kalat, and Makran, 100% of the population of what is now Pakistan was Hindu and Buddhist. There was not a single mosque, khanqah, or Arab settlement anywhere in the Indus basin.

---

Chapter 4: The Verdict of 21st-Century Genomics — Why the "Arab/Turkic Ancestry" Myth Is a Biological Fiction

नासतो विद्यते भावो नाभावो विद्यते सतः ।
उभयोरपि दृष्टोऽन्तस्त्वनयोस्तत्त्वदर्शिभिः ॥

"Of the unreal (falsehood) there is no endurance, and of the real (truth) there is never any cessation;
the final boundary between both has been seen by the knowers of reality."
— Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā, Chapter 2, Verse 16

---

I. The State-Manufactured Myth of Foreign Blood

When Pakistan was carved out of British India in August 1947 on the ideological premise of the "Two-Nation Theory"—the claim that Indian Muslims constituted a completely separate nation incapable of coexisting with Hindus—the new state faced an acute historical and psychological problem.

Unlike nations defined by geography, language, or shared ancestry, every province of West Pakistan shared its rivers, languages, folk epics, music, agricultural calendar, and clan surnames (Gotras) with India. If a young Pakistani in Lahore, Rawalpindi, or Karachi realized that his own great-great-grandfather was a Hindu named Rām Chand Bajwa, Rāi Śaṅkar Siāl, Rājā Mal Dev Janjuā, or Seth Premchand Lohāṇā, the ideological wall of perpetual hostility against "Hindu India" would crack from within.

To prevent that realization, Pakistan’s state apparatus—culminating in General Zia-ul-Haq’s post-1977 curriculum overhaul—constructed what historian Prof. K.K. Aziz in his landmark critique The Murder of History in Pakistan (1993) exposed as a systematic falsification of national origins.

Two mutually reinforcing myths were drilled into public consciousness: 1. The "Foreign Conqueror Bloodline" Myth: That Pakistanis are largely the biological descendants of Arab soldiers who marched with Muḥammad bin Qāsim, Persian Sayyids and Quraishīs from Baghdad and Mashhad, Turkic warriors of Mahmud of Ghazni, and Chagatai Mughals from Samarkand. 2. The "Ancient Anti-Indian Divide" Myth: That the Indus Valley has always been biologically and civilizationally distinct from the rest of India, closer to the Middle East and Central Asia than to the Gangetic plain.

For seventy years, this myth was protected by the absence of empirical biological testing. Anyone could print a gilded family tree (Śajara-e-Nasab) claiming descent from Caliph ‘Alī, ‘Abbās, Abū Bakr, Khālid bin Walīd, or Amīr Tīmūr, and no one could test the claim in a laboratory.

Then came the genomic revolution of the twenty-first century.

---

II. The Four Landmark Genomic Studies (2002–2019)

Between 2002 and 2019, international consortia of population geneticists at Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB, Hyderabad), and Quaid-i-Azam University (Islamabad) sequenced high-density genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), Y-chromosomal paternal lineages, mitochondrial maternal lineages, and ancient DNA (aDNA) from hundreds of individuals across every province and ethnic group of Pakistan and India.

Four peer-reviewed studies in particular shattered the foreign-ancestry myth forever:

1. David Reich, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson, Alkes L. Price & Lalji Singh, "Reconstructing Indian Population History," Nature 461 (2009), pp. 489–494

Analyzing 560,123 autosomal SNPs across South Asian populations, the Harvard-MIT-CCMB team discovered that virtually all populations of the Indian subcontinent—including those of Pakistan—are formed from a shared admixture of two foundational ancestral components: Ancestral North Indians (ANI) and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), both deeply rooted in the subcontinent for thousands of years prior to the Islamic era.

2. Priya Moorjani, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Nick Patterson et al., "Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India," American Journal of Human Genetics 93 (2013), pp. 422–438

Using linkage disequilibrium (ROLLOFF / ALDER) to date when the foundational genetic mixture of South Asian populations occurred, the authors proved that the genetic formation of northwest and northern South Asian populations took place between 1,900 and 4,200 years ago (c. 2200 BCE – 100 CE), followed by a shift to strict endogamy within caste and clan (Jāti / Gotra) groups during the classical Hindu period—long before the seventh-century rise of Islam.

3. Vagheesh M. Narasimhan, Nick Patterson, Priya Moorjani, Iosif Lazaridis, Mark Lipson, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, David Reich et al., "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia," Science 365, eaat7487 (September 6, 2019)

This monumental study—co-authored by 117 scientists worldwide—extracted and sequenced ancient DNA directly from 523 ancient human skeletons, including hundreds of skeletons excavated from Iron Age, Gandhara Grave Culture, Mauryan, Kushan, and Hindu Shahi era cemeteries in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan (1200 BCE – 1000 CE) at Loebanr, Udegram, Barikot, Butkara, Katelai, and Aligrama, alongside an Indus Valley Civilization skeleton from Rakhigarhi.

The findings of the 2019 Science study are a bombshell for anyone who still believes the textbook myth: * The ancient pre-Islamic inhabitants buried in the Swat Valley of Pakistan (1200 BCE – 500 CE) already possessed the exact three-way ancestral profile (Indus Periphery [Iran_N-related + AASI Ancient Ancestral South Indian] + Steppe Pastoralist [MLBA]) found in modern-day Northwest Indian and Pakistani Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims! * When modern Punjabi Muslims, Sindhi Muslims, Kashmiri Muslims, Potoharis, Saraikis, Hindkowans, Kohistanis, and Kalash are plotted on a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or modeled using qpAdm, they cluster directly on top of Indian Punjabi Hindus, Sikhs, Kashmiri Pandits, Dogras, Haryanvi Jats, and Rajasthani/Kutchi Rajputs—and far away from Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, Turks, or Uzbeks.

4. Raheel Qamar, Qasim Ayub, Aisha Mohyuddin et al., "Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in Pakistan," American Journal of Human Genetics 70 (2002), pp. 1107–1124 (plus Subsequent High-Resolution Autosomal & Y-DNA Studies of Pakistani Castes and Syeds)

Even on the strictly paternal Y-chromosome, Pakistani populations are overwhelmingly dominated by the classic indigenous South Asian / Indo-Aryan paternal haplogroups: * R1a1a-M17 / Z93 (and downstream L657): The signature paternal lineage shared at peak frequencies (35%–70%) among Indian Brahmins, Kshatriya Rajputs, Hindu/Sikh Jats, Khatris, Kashmiri Pandits, and Pakistani Punjabi Jats, Rajputs, Pashtuns, Sindhis, and Kalash. * L-M20 (L1a / L1c): The ancient Indus Valley / Harappan agriculturalist haplogroup shared by Hindu and Sikh Jats, Gujjars, Nair/Kongu castes, and Pakistani Jats, Gujjars, Baloch, and Sindhis. * H-M69 & R2-M124: Deeply indigenous Indian subcontinent paternal lineages born inside India 30,000+ years ago, present across every Pakistani caste from Karachi to Rawalpindi. * J2a-M410 (Indus / Neolithic Iranian-Harappan subclades): Ancient Bronze-Age Indus Valley lineages shared equally with Indian Hindus. * Conversely, the true Arabian Peninsula signature haplogroup J1-M267 (J-P58) sits at less than 1% to 3% across the general population of Pakistan—and subsequent genetic testing of self-declared South Asian "Syed", "Qureshi", and "Sheikh" families (Belle et al., 2010) revealed that the vast majority carry indigenous Indian R1a-Z93, H-M69, L-M20, and R2-M124 Y-chromosomes and 98%+ indigenous South Asian autosomal DNA!

---

III. The Complete Genomic Evidence Matrix

The table below summarizes the peer-reviewed autosomal and paternal genetic findings across the major demographic groups of modern Pakistan:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│     GENOME-WIDE AUTOSOMAL & HAPLOGROUP IDENTITY OF PAKISTANI POPULATIONS     │
│     (Sources: Reich et al. Nature 2009; Narasimhan et al. Science 2019)      │
├──────────────────────────┬──────────────┬───────────┬────────────────────────┤
│ PAKISTANI ETHNIC /       │ INDIGENOUS   │ ARABIAN   │ CLOSEST GENETIC TWINS  │
│ REGIONAL GROUP           │ SOUTH ASIAN  │ PENINSULA │ IN AUTOSOMAL PCA /     │
│                          │ AUTOSOMAL %  │ ADMIXTURE │ qpAdm MODELING         │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 1. PUNJABI MUSLIMS       │ 98.5%–99.5%  │  < 1.0%   │ Indian Punjabi Hindus, │
│    (Jat, Rajput, Gujjar, │              │           │ Sikhs, Haryanvi Jats,  │
│    Arain, Awan, Sheikh)  │              │           │ Khatris & Dogras       │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 2. SINDHI MUSLIMS        │ 97.5%–99.0%  │  < 2.0%   │ Sindhi Hindus (Lohana, │
│    (Sammat: Soomro,      │              │           │ Bhatia, Amil) & Kutchi │
│    Sammo, Abro, Junejo)  │              │           │ Jadeja/Sodha Rajputs   │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 3. SARAIKI / MULTANI     │ 98.5%–99.5%  │  < 1.0%   │ Multani Hindu Aroras,  │
│    MUSLIMS (South Punjab)│              │           │ Bhatias & Khatris      │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 4. POTOHARI, PAHARI &    │ 99.0%–99.8%  │  < 0.5%   │ Jammu Dogra Rajputs,   │
│    CHIBHALI (POJK)       │              │           │ Kangra Katoch Rajputs  │
│    (Janjua, Chib, Jarral)│              │           │ & Kashmiri Pandits     │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 5. KASHMIRI MUSLIMS      │ 99.2%–99.8%  │  < 0.5%   │ KASHMIRI PANDITS       │
│    (Valley & Diaspora)   │              │           │ (Saraswat Brahmins) —  │
│                          │              │           │ 100% Same Gene Pool    │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 6. HINDKOWANS, SWATIS,   │ 98.5%–99.5%  │  < 1.0%   │ Iron-Age Swat Ancient  │
│    KOHISTANIS & SHINA    │              │           │ DNA (1200 BCE–500 CE)  │
│    DARDS (KP & Gilgit)   │              │           │ & Kalash of Chitral    │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 7. PASHTUNS (Peshawar,   │ 95.0%–98.0%  │  < 1.5%   │ Gandhara Grave Culture │
│    Swat, Bannu, Quetta)  │ (Indo-Iranian│           │ aDNA, Tajiks, Kalash & │
│                          │ / Gandharan) │           │ North-West Indians     │
├──────────────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ 8. KALASH OF CHITRAL     │ 100.0%       │   0.0%    │ Unadmixed Ancient      │
│    (Bumburet, Rumbur)    │ Indigenous   │           │ North-West Indian      │
│                          │ Indo-Aryan   │           │ Reference Population   │
└──────────────────────────┴──────────────┴───────────┴────────────────────────┘

---

IV. What the DNA Proves About History

Pause and reflect upon what those numbers mean in human terms.

When an invading army of ten thousand horsemen from Damascus, Ghazni, Fergana, or Kandahar conquered a densely populated river valley of ten to fifteen million indigenous Hindu and Buddhist farmers, artisans, merchants, and warriors, the invaders did not replace the population. They formed a tiny military-aristocratic crust of less than one percent at the top of society.

The remaining 99 percent of the population—the ancestors of today’s 240 million Pakistanis—were the native children of the Sapta-Sindhu: * Their ancestors chanted the Gāyatrī Mantra beside the Vitastā, Asiknī, Paruṣṇī, and Sindhu. * Their ancestors built the stone temples of Kaṭās Rāj, Kāfir Koṭ, Mūlasthāna, and Śāradā Pīṭha, and carved the serenity of the Buddha into the cliffs of Swat and Taxila. * Their ancestors fought for 226 years (644–870 CE) at the Bolan and Khyber passes, died beside Mahārāja Dāhir Sen at Rawar (712 CE), charged Mahmud of Ghazni’s elephants under Mahārāja Jayapāla and Ānandapāla (1001–1008 CE), defended Nandana to the last drop of blood under Bhīmapāla (1014 CE), and avenged the slaughter of their kinsmen by assassinating Sultan Muḥammad Ghorī at Dhamiak (1206 CE).

And then, broken across centuries by the six relentless engines of military terror, slave-taking, Jizya starvation, hostage-prince coercion, Khānqāh land monopolies, and blasphemy-circumcision traps, their surviving descendants were forced to recite the Kalima—until, generations later, the children of the victims were taught to revere the very conquerors who had enslaved their forefathers and to hate their own unconverted brothers across the border.

How that 1,300-year transformation was executed—battle by battle, tax decree by tax decree, province by province, and clan by clan—is the story to which we now turn in Part II.

PART II: THE FRONTIER WALL & THE FIRST FIVE CENTURIES OF SIEGE (644–1206 CE)

"For two hundred and twenty-six years, while the banners of the Caliphate swept effortlessly from the Pyrenees of Spain to the Oxus of Central Asia, they broke again and again against three mountain walls guarded by Sanātani warriors: Kaikana in Balochistan, Zabulistan in southern Afghanistan, and the Hindu Shahi citadel of Kabul. India did not fall in a day; its frontier bled for five centuries so that the heartland beyond the Ravi and the Yamuna might live."

---

CHAPTER 5

The 226-Year Frontier Stand That Saved India — Kaikana (Bolan Pass), Zabulistan & Kabul (644–870 CE)

धर्मेण शासितो राष्ट्रं न जहाति स्वकं पदम् । प्राणैरपि परित्रातुं सीमान्तं यतते सदा ॥

dharmeṇa śāsito rāṣṭraṃ na jahāti svakaṃ padam | prāṇair api paritrātuṃ sīmāntaṃ yatate sadā ||

"A realm governed by Dharma never surrenders its sacred ground; even at the cost of life itself, its guardians stand forever at the frontier." — Classical Sanskrit Nīti Maxim of the North-Western Sīmānta (Frontier)

I. The Great Anomaly of Early World History

In the standard historiography taught across both Western academies and South Asian classrooms, the early expansion of the Arab Caliphate is presented as an unstoppable geopolitical avalanche. Within a single generation of the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632 CE, the armies of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphs shattered two world empires. Byzantine Syria fell between 634 and 638 CE; Egypt capitulated between 639 and 642 CE; the whole of North Africa was overrun up to the Atlantic coast of Morocco by 709 CE; and Visigothic Spain was conquered from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees in barely three years (711–714 CE). To the east, the mighty Sassanid Empire of Persia—which had fought Rome on equal terms for seven centuries—was broken at al-Qadisiyyah (636 CE) and Nahavand (642 CE), its last emperor Yazdegerd III hunted down at Merv in 651 CE. Within fifteen years, an ancient Zoroastrian civilization stretching from the Euphrates to the borders of Khorasan was politically extinguished.

Yet the moment the victorious Arab armies reached the western mountain wall of the Sapta-Sindhu—the triple frontier of Makran-Kaikana (modern Balochistan), Zabulistan (modern Ghazni, Zabul, and Kandahar), and Kabul-Kapisa (the Kabul Valley and Hindu Kush)—the avalanche stopped dead in its tracks.

Consider the chronological reality that colonial and Pakistani state historians have systematically excised from public memory: the first Arab naval and overland reconnaissance against the Indian frontier occurred in 636 CE (against Thana and Debal) and 644 CE (at the Battle of Rasil on the western banks of the Indus borderlands during the caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab). Yet Kabul did not fall until 870 CE—a staggering 226 years later—and the Punjab plains east of the Indus (Waihind/Attock and Lahore) were not breached until 1001–1021 CE, more than 360 years after the first Arab horsemen sighted the frontier of Al-Hind.

Why did it take the Caliphate fifteen years to swallow the whole of Sassanid Iran and three years to conquer Christian Spain, yet more than three and a half centuries to force the passes of Balochistan, Afghanistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa?

The answer is recorded not in Hindu panegyrics, which were largely burned along with the royal libraries of Alor, Kabul, and Waihind, but in the candid, often anguished pages of the invaders' own earliest Arabic and Persian chronicles: Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri's Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān (The Book of the Conquests of Lands, c. 869 CE), Ibn al-Athir's Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, Al-Tabari's Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk, Ali Kufi's Chachnāma (1216 CE translation of an 8th-century Arabic original), and the anonymous 11th-century Persian chronicle Tārīkh-i-Sīstān. Across these texts emerges a portrait of ferocious, organized, multi-generational Sanātani resistance waged by the ancestors of the very people who today inhabit Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and eastern Afghanistan.

flowchart TD
    CAL["Rashidun, Umayyad & Abbasid Caliphates<br/>(Damascus, Kufa, Basra & Baghdad)"]
    CAL -->|"Southern Coastal Route (711–712 CE)"| DEBAL["Sindh Maritime & River Corridor<br/>Debal, Rawar, Brahmanabad, Alor"]
    CAL -->|"Central Mountain Route (644–700 CE)"| KAIKANA["1. KAIKANA (Al-Qiqan / Kalat & Bolan Pass)<br/>Defended by Hindu Jats (Zutt) & Meds<br/>6 Arab Expeditions Repulsed (658–680 CE)"]
    CAL -->|"Helmand-Arghandab Route (653–870 CE)"| ZABUL["2. ZABULISTAN (Rukhkhaj / Zamindawar / Ghazni)<br/>Defended by the Zunbil Dynasty (Surya/Zun Worshippers)<br/>Destroyed Ubaidullah's 'Army of Destruction' (698 CE)"]
    CAL -->|"Khyber-Ghorband Route (664–870 CE)"| KABUL["3. KABUL & KAPISA (Kabulistan / Gandhara)<br/>Defended by Turk Shahi & Hindu Shahi Emperors<br/>Held for 226 Years Until Saffarid Treachery (870 CE)"]

---

II. The First Reconnaissance and the Warnings of Caliph Umar (636–644 CE)

As early as 636 CE (15 AH), Uthman ibn Abi al-As al-Thaqafi, the Arab governor of Bahrain and Oman, dispatched naval squadrons across the Arabian Sea against Thana (near Mumbai), Bharuch (Broach), and the sacred port of Debal on the सिंधु (Sindhu) delta. At Debal, the Chach-era Hindu garrison marched out of the fortified coastal citadel and routed the Arab landing force. Eight years later, in 644 CE (23 AH), Suhail ibn Adi and Hakam ibn Amr al-Taghlibi pushed through Kirman into Makran—then the westernmost dependency of the Hindu Rai and Chach Kingdom of Sindh—where the Hindu king of Sindh dispatched a frontier army that fought fiercely at Rasil.

When Hakam ibn Amr sent an envoy named Suhhar al-Abdi to Medina with captured war elephants and asked Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab for permission to cross into the heartland of Sindh and Hind, the Caliph interrogated the messenger about the nature of the country and its defenders. As recorded verbatim by Al-Baladhuri in the Futūḥ al-Buldān (Part IX, Futuḥ al-Sind):

"He replied: 'O Commander of the Faithful! Its water is scarce, its fruits are poor, and its thieves [guerrilla warriors] are bold; if a small army goes there, it is annihilated, and if a large army goes there, it starves to death!' Whereupon Umar forbade him to invade it, and wrote to his governors: 'By Allah, I shall never send a Muslim army into that land as long as I live.'" — Al-Baladhuri, Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān (ed. M.J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1866, p. 432)

When Caliph Uthman succeeded Umar in 644 CE, he commissioned Abdullah ibn Amir, governor of Basra, to send an intelligence officer, Hakim ibn Jabalah al-Abdi, into Sindh and Balochistan (c. 649 CE). Upon returning from his reconnaissance of Makran, Kalat, and lower Sindh, Hakim delivered an even more famous intelligence report to Caliph Uthman, preserved in both Al-Baladhuri and the Chachnāma:

"Water is dark and scarce; the fruit is bitter and poisonous; the ground is stony and hard; the earth is saline; and the inhabitants are valiant and treacherous! A small force will be wiped out before it reaches them, and a massive army will perish of hunger!" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, 1900, p. 58); Al-Baladhuri, Futūḥ al-Buldān (p. 432)

For nearly fifteen years, this report froze major imperial offensives. The "bold warriors" who turned the rocky defiles of Balochistan into a graveyard for Arab cavalry had a specific name in the Arabic chronicles: the Jats (Al-Zutt) and Meds (Al-Mayd) of Kaikana (Al-Qīqān).

---

III. Kaikana (Kalat & the Bolan Pass): How the Hindu Jats and Meds Crushed Six Arab Armies (658–680 CE)

To understand the strategic geography of the 7th century, one must look at a relief map of Balochistan. Between the Iranian plateau and the Indus Valley stand the Kirthar and Central Brahui ranges. Any army seeking to bypass the scorching coastal desert of Makran and march into the fertile plains of Sindh and Multan had to pass through the highland plateau of Kalat and the narrow, towering gorge of the Bolan Pass descending into Sibi and Kachhi.

In the 7th century CE, this crucial mountain citadel was known in Sanskrit and Prakrit as Kaikāṇa (Chinese Ki-kiang-na in Xuanzang's 641 CE Si-Yu-Ki; Arabic Al-Qīqān), centered around modern Kalat (Kalāt-i-Sewā), Mastung, Quetta, and the Bolan Pass. When the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang documented Fa-la-na (Bannu) and Ki-kiang-na (Kaikana) in 641 CE, he noted that the region was rich in sheep and famous for breeding the finest war-horses in North-West India, governed by independent clan chiefs allied with the Brahman Emperor Chach of Alor. According to the Chachnāma and Al-Baladhuri, the mountain fortresses of Kaikana were defended by the indigenous Hindu Jats (Jatān) and Meds—fierce pastoral-martial horsemen and foot-archers who worshipped Shiva and Hinglaj Devi (whose sacred Shakti Peetha lay to their south in Lasbela).

During the caliphate of Ali ibn Abi Talib, in 658–659 CE (38–39 AH), the Arab general Al-Harith ibn Murrah al-Abdi led the first large-scale volunteers' army into Kaikana. Capturing initial plunder in the outer valleys, Al-Harith pushed deeper into the Kalat-Bolan passes. Three years later, in 662 CE (42 AH), the Jats and Meds of Kaikana sprang a devastating trap in the mountain defiles. Al-Baladhuri records the outcome in a single chilling sentence:

"Al-Harith ibn Murrah al-Abdi advanced into the country of Al-Qiqan [Kaikana], and there the people of Qiqan gathered against him in the passes and slew him together with all those who were with him, save a very few who escaped." — Al-Baladhuri, Futūḥ al-Buldān (p. 433)

The annihilation of Al-Harith's entire army stunned Damascus. Once Caliph Muawiyah I consolidated the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 CE, he made the subjugation of Kaikana a top military priority of the empire. Between 664 and 680 CE, Damascus and Basra launched no fewer than five major punitive expeditions against the Hindu Jats of Kaikana:

1. The Expedition of Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufrah (664 CE / 44 AH): Marching from Kabul and Bannu (Bannah and al-Ahwar), Al-Muhallab encountered eighteen Turkish/Shahi and Jat horsemen on the Kaikana frontier who fought on foot after cutting the legs of their own horses until every man died.
2. The Disaster of Abdullah ibn Sawar al-Abdi (667 CE / 47 AH): Caliph Muawiyah appointed the veteran commander Abdullah ibn Sawar al-Abdi with an elite force of 4,000 cavalry specifically equipped to break Kaikana. Initially seizing war-horses that he sent as trophies to Muawiyah, Abdullah returned to establish a permanent garrison in Kaikana. In 667 CE, the Hindu king of Kaikana summoned a massive tribal levy of Jats and Meds from across the Kalat plateau and the Bolan hills. Surrounding the Arab camp at night, the Jats overwhelmed the invaders in hand-to-hand combat. Abdullah ibn Sawar was slain on the battlefield, his entire army was routed or killed in the passes, and the survivors fled back to Makran. As the Chachnāma records:

   "The Turks and Jats of Kaikana assembled in vast numbers, blocked the mountain passes on every side, and fell upon Abdullah bin Sawar. A terrible battle ensued from morning till evening; Abdullah bin Sawar stood his ground until he was slain, and the whole army of Islam was put to flight, abandoning their camp and baggage to the infidels of Kaikana." — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 62–64)

3. The Expedition of Sinan ibn Salamah al-Hudhali (668–670 CE / 48–50 AH): A devout warrior who took an oath to divorce his wife if he did not conquer the frontier, Sinan reached Makran and attempted to penetrate Kaikana through Khuzdar (Qusdar), only to be killed or forced back when the local population revolted.
4. The Death of Rashid ibn Amr al-Judaydi (c. 672 CE / 52 AH): Dispatched by Ziyad ibn Abihi, governor of Iraq, Rashid ibn Amr invaded Kaikana and briefly extracted tribute from Khuzdar, but when he marched against the mountain stronghold of the Meds and Jats at Mid/Kaikana, they ambushed and killed Rashid ibn Amr in battle.
5. The Defeat of Al-Mundhir ibn al-Jarud al-Abdi (c. 680 CE / 61 AH): Dying of illness at Khuzdar while attempting yet another campaign against the unconquered highlands.

For over half a century, the Bolan Pass remained bolted shut. Even when Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in 711–712 CE, he did not dare march through the Bolan Pass or the Kaikana highlands where six Arab armies had been butchered; instead, he crept along the barren coastal sands of Makran and Lasbela (Armabel) hugging the Arabian Sea with naval supply ships! And in Kalat itself, the indigenous Hindu Sewa Dynasty (Kalāt-i-Sewā, documented in the Baluchistan District Gazetteer: Sarawan & Kalat, 1907, pp. 27–31) continued to rule the plateau for centuries thereafter.

---

IV. Zabulistan & Kabul: The Zunbils, the Shahis, and the "Army of Destruction" (653–870 CE)

If the Jats of Kaikana barred the central gate of the Bolan Pass, the northern gates of Zabulistan (the Helmand, Arghandab, Tarnak, and Ghazni valleys of southern Afghanistan) and Kabul-Kapisa (the Kabul, Logar, Panjshir, and Gandhara valleys) witnessed one of the longest, fiercest military epics in human history.

In the 7th to 9th centuries CE, Afghanistan was neither Arab nor Islamic, nor was it culturally separate from India. As Arab geographers Al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawqal, and Al-Biruni unanimously attested, Kabul and Zabulistan were universally recognized as the western borderlands of Al-Hind (India). Two closely allied royal dynasties—often intermarried as cousins—defended these twin realms:

1. In Kabul, Kapisa (Bagram), Laghman, and Gandhara (Peshawar–Hund): The Kabul Shahi Emperors—initially the Buddhist-Hindu Turk Shahi (Khingala / Barhatigin) dynasty claiming descent from Kanishka and reigning from Kapisa and the Bala Hissar of Kabul, and from c. 843–870 CE onward the Brahman Hindu Shahi Dynasty founded by Kallar (Lalliya). Upon his coronation in Kabul, every Shahi Emperor had to travel to the ancient coronation baths at Peshawar/Udabhandapura and worship at the great royal temples of Subahar (Su-Vihāra) and Asamayi (Āśāmayī) in Kabul.
2. In Zabulistan (Zamindawar, Rukhkhaj/Kandahar, and Ghazni): The rulers bearing the hereditary royal title Zunbil (Rutbil / Zentbil). The Zunbils and their subjects worshipped the great Indic-Iranian solar and mountain deity Zun (Aditya / Śiva-Sūrya), whose magnificent temple stood atop Mount Jabal al-Zun in Zamindawar (northern Helmand). As described by Xuanzang (who visited the shrine as Sunagir in 641 CE) and Al-Baladhuri (Futūḥ al-Buldān, pp. 393–394), the golden idol of Zun had eyes made of two priceless rubies and was approached through courtyards where thousands of Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims shaved their heads and offered gold, silver, and incense.

Between 653 CE (33 AH), when Abd al-Rahman ibn Samurah first marched from Sistan into Zamindawar, and 870 CE, the Zunbils of Zabulistan and the Shahis of Kabul fought a coordinated war of strategic defense spanning nine generations. Their master strategy—documented in rich detail in the Tārīkh-i-Sīstān and Al-Tabari—exploited the jagged topography of the Hindu Kush and Suleiman mountains:

• Whenever an overwhelming Arab army marched out of Zaranj (Sistan) or Bust during the summer campaign season, the Zunbil or the Kabul Shah would fight delaying actions at the river crossings, evacuate the plains of Kandahar (Rukhkhaj) or lower Kabul, and draw the Arab cavalry deep into the narrow mountain gorges toward Ghazni, Gardez, or the Ghorband pass.
• Once the autumn snows began to fall and the invaders were thirty days' march from their bases in Sistan, the Hindu and Buddhist mountain garrisons closed the passes behind them, rolled boulders down the cliffs, cut off every grain convoy, and systematically annihilated or ransomed the trapped imperial armies.

A. Key Campaigns of the 217-Year War for Kabul and Zabulistan

---

V. 698 CE: How the Zunbil and the Kabul Shah Destroyed Al-Hajjaj's "Army of Destruction" (Jaysh al-Tawāwīs)

Of all the battles fought along the Afghan-Indian frontier prior to 1000 CE, none sent a greater shockwave through the Islamic world than the 698 CE (79 AH) catastrophe of Ubaidullah ibn Abi Bakrah—an event recorded in detail by Al-Tabari (Tārīkh, Vol. XXII, pp. 150–162), Al-Baladhuri (Futūḥ al-Buldān, pp. 398–400), and the Tārīkh-i-Sīstān (pp. 111–115).

In 697 CE, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi, the iron-fisted Umayyad viceroy of Iraq and the East, grew enraged that the Zunbil of Zabulistan and the Shahi king of Kabul were paying neither tribute nor homage to Damascus. Al-Hajjaj sent a blistering order to his governor in Sistan, Ubaidullah ibn Abi Bakrah:

"March against him with all the Muslims who are with you, and do not return until you have laid waste his land, demolished his fortresses, slain his fighting men, and enslaved his offspring!" — Al-Tabari, Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk (sub anno 79 AH / 698 CE); Al-Baladhuri, Futūḥ al-Buldān (p. 398)

Leading a magnificent army of 20,000 to 25,000 veteran soldiers from the elite regiments of Kufa and Basra, Ubaidullah marched out of Bust into Zamindawar and Rukhkhaj (Kandahar). Executing their classic frontier strategy, the Zunbil and the Kabul Shah withdrew before the Arab vanguard, driving away every herd of cattle and burning the fodder along the route until Ubaidullah's army had advanced eighteen farsakhs (nearly 60 miles) into the narrow mountain gorges just south of Kabul and Ghazni.

Then the trap snapped shut.

Combined forces of the Zunbil and the Kabul Shah occupied every mountain ridge and choked the passes behind the Arab army with felled trees and stone breastworks. Cut off from water and grain, pelted day and night by arrows and boulders from the heights, Ubaidullah's soldiers were reduced to slaughtering and eating their own war-horses and pack mules. In desperation, Ubaidullah offered the Zunbil 500,000 to 700,000 dirhams, placed three of his own sons and leading Arab nobles as hostages in the Zunbil's hands, and swore a solemn treaty never to invade Zabulistan again as long as he governed Sistan.

When Ubaidullah announced this surrender to his officers, the proud veteran commander of the Kufan contingent, Shuraih ibn Hani al-Harithi—an elderly companion who had fought alongside Caliph Ali at Siffin—refused to retreat in humiliation. Crying out, "Who seeks martyrdom with me?", Shuraih led a corps of Arab horsemen in a desperate charge against the Sanātani mountain lines. The Zunbil's warriors stood like a wall of granite: Shuraih ibn Hani and almost his entire detachment were cut down to the last man.

Those who attempted to stagger back through the scorching deserts and freezing passes toward Bust perished by the thousands. According to Al-Tabari and the Tārīkh-i-Sīstān, out of the entire army, only about 5,000 emaciated survivors reached Bust alive, and many of those died the moment they ate bread after weeks of starvation. Ubaidullah ibn Abi Bakrah himself collapsed and died of grief and exhaustion at Bust before reaching Zaranj. Across Iraq and Syria, this expedition went down in history under the bitter name Jaysh al-Fanā' ("The Army of Annihilation / Destruction").

Even more remarkably, when Al-Hajjaj raised an even grander force the following year (699–700 CE)—equipping 40,000 soldiers in gleaming armor at a cost of two million dirhams, famous as the "Peacock Army" (Jaysh al-Tawāwīs) under the noble Kinderite general Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath—and ordered Ibn al-Ash'ath to push relentlessly into Zabulistan without halting for winter, the Arab soldiers rebelled! Knowing that marching deep into the Zunbil's mountains in winter meant certain death, Ibn al-Ash'ath concluded a military alliance with the non-Muslim Zunbil (promising that if his rebellion succeeded, Zabulistan would be forever exempt from tribute, and if it failed, the Zunbil would grant him asylum) and marched his 40,000 troops back to Iraq to overthrow Al-Hajjaj and Caliph Abd al-Malik!

---

VI. 870 CE: The Saffarid Treachery at Kabul and the Plunder of the Subahar and Asamayi Temples

For another 170 years after the destruction of Ubaidullah's army, Zabulistan and Kabul stood unconquered. Arab geographers writing in the 9th and 10th centuries marveled at the wealth and sanctity of the Hindu and Buddhist shrines of Afghanistan:

1. The Subahar (Su-Vihāra / "Auspicious Monastery-Temple") near Kabul: A vast royal temple-monastery complex set amid gardens south of Kabul, housing monumental murtis cast in gold, silver, and brass inlaid with jewels.
2. The Asamayi (Āśāmayī — Goddess of Hope, a manifestation of Maa Durga/Bhavani) Temple on Koh-i-Asamayi in the heart of Kabul: Where an eternal sacred flame (Akhand Jyoti) burned in reverence to the Mother Goddess protecting the Kabul valley.
3. The Great Sūrya (Sun) Temple of Sakawand (Sakāvanda) in the Logar Valley (between Ghazni and Kabul): Described by Al-Biruni and Muhammad Awfi (Jawāmi' al-Ḥikāyāt) as one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage shrines of the northwest, to which devout Hindus traveled from every corner of Punjab, Sindh, and Kanauj to offer worship to the Sun God.

How, then, did this 226-year bastion of Kabul and Zabulistan finally fall in 865–870 CE (251–256 AH)? Not in open battle on an equal field, but through calculated diplomatic treachery orchestrated by Yaqub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, the ruthless coppersmith-turned-warlord who founded the Saffarid dynasty of Sistan.

As explicitly recorded in the Tārīkh-i-Sīstān (ed. Malik al-Shu'ara Bahar, Tehran, 1935, pp. 205–216) and Ibn al-Athir, in 865 CE Yaqub ibn al-Layth marched against the reigning Zunbil (Kabk / Firuz) near Bust and Rukhkhaj, slaying him in a sudden cavalry strike and massacring thousands of his soldiers. Five years later, in 870 CE (256 AH), Yaqub advanced up the Tarnak and Logar valleys via Ghazni (where he demolished the ancient walls of Zabul) toward Bamiyan and Kabul.

Knowing how many armies had perished besieging the formidable mountain citadel of Kabul—which was now ruled by the newly established Brahman Hindu Shahi dynasty (founded by Kallar / Lalliya, the former Brahman Prime Minister who had replaced the last Turk Shahi king Lagaturman around 843–850 CE, as immortalized by Al-Biruni in Kitāb al-Hind, Vol. II, pp. 10–13)—Yaqub sent envoys proposing a solemn peace parley and personal interview outside the gates.

According to the Persian chronicles (later recounted by Muhammad Awfi and Firishta), Yaqub concealed armed horsemen and weapons beneath his retinue's robes during the diplomatic meeting. When the unsuspecting Shahi ruler/governor of Kabul stepped forward with his courtiers to seal the truce, Yaqub's soldiers drew their hidden blades, murdered the royal guards on the spot, seized the king in chains, and stormed through the open gates of Kabul before the garrison could raise the drawbridges!

What followed was an orgy of iconoclasm and plunder that echoed all the way to the court of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu'tamid in Samarra and Baghdad:

• Yaqub's troops sacked the royal Subahar (Su-Vihāra) temple and the shrines of Bamiyan and Kabul, smashing the stone sanctuaries and ripping fifty massive idols of pure gold and silver from their pedestals.
• As recorded verbatim by the great Arab historian Al-Tabari (Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk, Vol. XXXVI, sub anno 256 AH / 870 CE, and 257 AH / 871 CE):

  "In this year [256/257 AH], messengers arrived from Yaqub ibn al-Layth carrying fifty idols of gold and silver which he had taken from Kabul, to be presented to the Caliph Al-Mu'tamid, who ordered them to be sent to Mecca so that the pilgrims might behold them and praise Allah for the victory over the polytheists." — Al-Tabari, Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk (Series III, p. 1841)

• A decade later, around 896–900 CE, Yaqub's brother and successor Amr ibn al-Layth (along with his governor Fardaghan in Zabulistan) marched into the Logar Valley, stormed the sacred Sun Temple of Sakawand, slaughtered its Brahmin priests, smashed the sacred Sūrya murti to pieces, and looted treasures so vast that the Tārīkh-i-Sīstān boasted their value exceeded millions of dirhams.

Yet even the fall of Kabul in 870 CE did not break the spirit of the Hindu Shahis. Rather than submit to Saffarid rule, Emperor Lalliya (Kallar) and his successor Samantadeva / Kamaluka evacuated their court eastward down the Kabul River (Kubhā*) to their impregnable river-capital of Udabhāṇḍapura (Waihind, modern Hund in Swabi/Attock District on the west bank of the Indus). In fact, when Yaqub and Amr's governors were distracted in Khorasan, the Hindu Shahis repeatedly counter-attacked across the Khyber Pass to recapture Kabul and Laghman—so much so that the 10th-century Arab geographer Al-Istakhri (Kitāb al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik, c. 951 CE) and Ibn Hawqal recorded that while a Muslim garrison held the military citadel of Kabul, the city itself remained full of Hindus, and the Shah of Kabul still had to come in person to Kabul to be crowned according to ancient Hindu rites* before returning to his capital at Waihind!

What had those 226 years of blood and sacrifice at Kaikana, Zabulistan, and Kabul (644–870 CE) achieved for India?

They had saved the entire civilization of the Gangetic and central Indian plains during the exact two centuries when the Caliphate was at the zenith of its unified global power. By the time Kabul was breached in 870 CE, the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad had already fractured into warring regional emirates, and inside India the mighty Gurjara-Pratihara Emperors (Nagabhata II and Mihira Bhoja), the Rashtrakutas, and the Karkota/Utpala Emperors of Kashmir (Lalitaditya Muktapida and Avantivarman) had consolidated formidable empires capable of defending the heartland.

Every Indian who today reads the Upanishads, visits a temple in Kashi or Ujjain, or speaks an Indo-Aryan language owes an eternal debt to the forgotten Jats and Meds of Kaikana (Balochistan) and the Zunbils and Shahis of Zabul and Kabul (Afghanistan)—the ancestors of modern Pakistanis and Afghans who died in the mountain snows so that Sanātana Dharma would not suffer the fate of Sassanid Persia.

---

CHAPTER 6

712 CE — The Fall of Debal, Martyrdom of Maharaja Dahir Sen, Mass Jauhar of Rani Bai, and the Extinction of Sindhi Buddhism

वरं प्राणपरित्यागो मानभङ्गेन जीवनात् । अग्नौ प्रविश्य शुद्ध्यन्ति वीराङ्गनाः कुलव्रताः ॥

varaṃ prāṇaparityāgo mānabhaṅgena jīvanāt | agnau praviśya śuddhyanti vīrāṅganāḥ kulavratāḥ ||

"Better the surrender of life itself than living in dishonor; entering the sacred fire, heroic women uphold the eternal vow of their lineage." — Classical Dharma-Vīra Subhāṣita on Balidān and Jauhar

I. The Myth of "Day One" in Pakistani State Textbooks

Open any state-mandated Pakistan Studies (Mutala-e-Pakistan) textbook printed in Lahore, Islamabad, or Karachi over the past half-century, and the first chapter on the birth of Pakistan does not begin with the Rigvedic hymns composed on the banks of the Sindhu, nor with the brick citadels of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, nor with Maharishi Panini's Ashtadhyayi at Takshashila. Instead, as the late Pakistani historian Prof. K.K. Aziz documented in his devastating study The Murder of History in Pakistan (1993), official Pakistani history begins in 712 CE when the seventeen-year-old Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim al-Thaqafi stormed the port of Debal and slew Maharaja Dahir Sen, the last Hindu emperor of Sindh.

In this state-manufactured fairy tale, Maharaja Dahir is portrayed as a "cruel, unpopular foreign tyrant," and Muhammad bin Qasim is depicted as a gentle, humanitarian liberator whom the oppressed Buddhist and Hindu masses of Sindh welcomed with open arms, voluntarily embracing Islam in gratitude for his justice.

Not a single syllable of this textbook fable survives contact with the two primary Arabic-Persian historical sources that actually recorded the conquest of Sindh:

1. The Chachnāma (Fathnāma-i-Sind): Written in Arabic in the 8th century CE from the family traditions of the Arab qazis of Alor (specifically Musa ibn Yaqub al-Thaqafi) and translated into Persian by Ali ibn Hamid ibn Abi Bakr al-Kufi at Uch and Alor in 1216 CE (definitively translated into English by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, The Chachnamah, An Ancient History of Sind, Karachi: Commissioner's Press, 1900, and excerpted in Sir H.M. Elliot & Prof. John Dowson, The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. I, 1867, pp. 131–211).
2. Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān (The Book of the Conquests of Lands, pp. 435–446) by the 9th-century Baghdad historian Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. 892 CE).

When we read what Ali Kufi and Al-Baladhuri actually wrote—in the conquerors' own celebratory words—the "humanitarian liberation" of 712 CE dissolves into a forensic record of 14 preexisting failed Arab invasions of Sindh, financial war-profiteering by Umayyad viceroy Al-Hajjaj, the three-day unconditional slaughter of every adult male refusing conversion at Debal, the mass Jauhar of Rani Bai and the women of Rawar, the cold-blooded execution of 6,000 to 16,000 defenders at Brahmanabad, the shipment of tens of thousands of Sindhi women and children as slaves to Iraq, and the systematic fiscal and institutional strangulation that wiped Sindhi Buddhism off the face of the earth.

---

II. Before 711 CE: The Flourishing Hindu-Buddhist Kingdom of Sindh and the 14 Failed Expeditions

Before Muhammad bin Qasim set foot in Makran in 711 CE, the kingdom of Sindh (Sindhu-Sauvīra) stretched from the borders of Kashmir and Kanauj in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south, and from the Kirthar mountains of Kalat (Kaikana) in the west to the desert of Marwar in the east. Its magnificent imperial capital was Alor (Aror) near modern Rohri and Sukkur on the ancient Hakra-Indus bed, flanked by regional provinces centered at Brahmanabad (in modern Sanghar District), Siwistan (Śivastāna, modern Sehwan Sharif), Iskandah / Uch, and Mūlasthāna (modern Multan).

For over two centuries (c. 489–632 CE), Sindh had been ruled by the indigenous Hindu-Buddhist Rai Dynasty (Rai Diwaji, Rai Sahiras I, Rai Sahasi I, Rai Sahiras II, and Rai Sahasi II), succeeded in 632 CE by the learned and valorous Brahman prime minister Maharaja Chach, who ascended the throne upon the death of Rai Sahasi II, consolidated the frontier from Makran to Multan, and was succeeded first by his ascetic brother Maharaja Chandar (r. 671–679 CE, a devout patron of Buddhist monks and Hindu Brahmins alike) and then by Chach's heroic son Maharaja Dahir Sen (r. 679–712 CE).

Far from being a backward tyranny, 7th-century Sindh was an affluent maritime and agrarian civilization where Vedic Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Solar (Sūrya) worship, and Sammitiya/Mahayana Buddhism flourished side by side. When Xuanzang traveled through Sindh (Sin-tu) and Multan (Mūlasthānapura) in 641 CE, he recorded hundreds of Buddhist monasteries (Sangharamas) housing over 10,000 Buddhist monks, alongside scores of ornate Deva Temples of Maheshvara (Shiva) and the Aditya Sun God, noting that the river valleys produced abundant wheat, millet, gold, silver, copper, and cattle.

Nor was the invasion of 711 CE a sudden reaction to a single pirate attack on Arab ships off Debal. As the Chachnāma and Al-Baladhuri make clear, the Umayyad Caliphate had already launched fourteen separate naval and overland raids against Sindh and Kaikana between 636 and 710 CE. When Maharaja Dahir rightfully refused to take responsibility for independent Med and Bawarij sea-pirates operating off the uncontrolled mouth of the Indus delta, two successive Umayyad commanders dispatched by Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf to storm Debal—Ubaidullah ibn Nabhan and Budail ibn Tahfah al-Bajali (c. 710–711 CE)—were met at the gates of Debal by Maharaja Dahir's brave young son Prince Jaisiah (Jaisimha) with 4,000 cavalry and elephants. Both Arab armies were routed, and Budail ibn Tahfah was slain in combat when his horse bolted into the Hindu ranks (Chachnāma, pp. 72–74; Al-Baladhuri, p. 436).

Enraged by the death of Budail and eager to refill the Umayyad imperial treasury, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf petitioned Caliph Al-Walid I in Damascus for permission to mount a massive imperial invasion of Sindh. When Caliph Al-Walid hesitated due to the enormous financial cost and past disasters on the Indian frontier, Al-Hajjaj wrote a guarantee that exposes the naked economic motive of the campaign:

"Al-Hajjaj wrote to the Caliph guaranteeing that he would return to the central treasury double the amount expended out of the public funds on the expedition against Hind... And Al-Hajjaj expended sixty million dirhams on Muhammad bin Qasim, and Muhammad sent back to him one hundred and twenty million dirhams!" — Al-Baladhuri, Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān (p. 440)

---

III. Autumn 711 – Spring 712 CE: The Betrayal of the Red Flag and the Three-Day Massacre of Debal

Equipped with 6,000 elite Syrian horsemen from Damascus, 6,000 camel-riders from Iraq, 3,000 Bactrian baggage camels, and five heavy siege catapults—including a giant manjaniq named Al-Arūs ("The Bride") that required 500 men to pull its ropes and arrived by sea along with naphtha fire-throwers—Muhammad bin Qasim marched through Makran, sacked Armabel (modern Bela in Lasbela, Balochistan) and Qanzbur (Panjgur), and laid siege to the sacred port city of Debal (identified with Banbhore near Karachi/Thatta) in the autumn of 711 CE.

At the center of Debal stood a towering stone and brick Shiva/Deva Temple (Budh), rising 120 feet into the sky and surmounted by a tall mast flying four streaming flags of red silk that billowed in the sea breeze. For days, the Hindu garrison led by Dahir's governor Jahin Budh defended the stone ramparts of Debal with ferocious courage, repulsing every Arab sally.

Then came the first act of treason recorded in the Chachnāma. A Brahmin priest or caretaker from inside the temple slipped out of the besieged fortress to Qasim's camp, seeking personal safety and reward, and betrayed the psychological and architectural secret of the citadel:

"A Brahmin came out of the fortress of Debal and asked for quarter from Muhammad bin Qasim, saying: 'I have learned from our astrological books that this country will be conquered by the army of Islam. The temple of Debal is a talisman; as long as the red flag flies atop the dome of the great temple, the people of this city will never lose heart and the fort will never be taken. Order your catapult-master to strike down the mast and tear the red banner to pieces!'" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 81–83; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, p. 157)

Qasim promised his chief engineer Ja'wanah ten thousand dirhams if he could shatter the temple mast with Al-Arūs. Shortening the front timber prop of the giant catapult by two spans and aiming straight at the pinnacle of the temple, Ja'wanah hurled three massive boulders. The first stone struck the base of the flagpole; the second cracked the stone finial; and the third shattered the sacred mast, sending the crimson banner plunging into the dust.

Dismayed by the fall of their sacred standard, the defenders made a desperate sortie from the gates, only to be pushed back as Arab scaling parties swarmed up the walls from four sides. What happened the moment Muhammad bin Qasim's soldiers breached Debal is recorded without apology by both Al-Baladhuri and Ali Kufi:

"Muhammad bin Qasim ordered the doors of the temple to be broken open... No quarter was given to the inhabitants of Debal; for three whole days a general massacre (Qatl-i-Ām) was carried out by the sword. The governor of Dahir fled, and the priests (Sadana) of the temple were put to the sword. Every male above the age of seventeen who refused to embrace Islam was slain, and their women and children were taken captive. Seven hundred beautiful maidens who were devoted to the service of the temple (Devadasis / noble daughters) were seized along with their ornaments of gold and jewels... Muhammad bin Qasim marked out a quarter for the Muslims, built a mosque on the site of the demolished temple, and settled 4,000 Muslim colonists there." — Al-Baladhuri, Futūḥ al-Buldān (pp. 437–438); Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (pp. 83–85)

Out of the plunder and human captives of Debal alone, one-fifth (Khums—including 75 temple maidens and heaps of gold) was shipped immediately by sea to Al-Hajjaj in Iraq, while the remaining four-fifths of the enslaved women and children were distributed among the soldiers of the Umayyad army.

---

IV. June 16, 712 CE: The Supreme Balidān of Maharaja Dahir Sen and the Mass Jauhar of Rani Bai at Rawar

From Debal, Muhammad bin Qasim marched northward up the western bank of the Indus toward Nerunkot (modern Hyderabad) and Siwistan (Sehwan). Here a stark divide appeared between the rural Hindu Kshatriya/Rajput-Jat warriors and certain urban Buddhist monastic heads (Samanis). At Nerunkot, while the governor was away at Alor, the head Buddhist monk (Bhandarkan Samani) secretly negotiated with Al-Hajjaj and Qasim, opening the city gates and supplying grain to the Arab army in exchange for a promise that his commercial monastery would be spared (Chachnāma, pp. 87–90). At Siwistan (Sehwan), by contrast, the Hindu prince Bachehra (son of Chandra and cousin of Maharaja Dahir) rejected the pleas of the local Buddhist Samanis to surrender:

"The Samanis (Buddhists) sent a message to Bachehra saying: 'Our religion is one of peace and quietness, and fighting and shedding blood is forbidden to us. The Arab army is powerful; let us make a treaty of capitulation with them.' Bachehra refused with indignation and fought fiercely for seven days until the Buddhist townspeople secretly sent word to Muhammad bin Qasim that the Hindu garrison was exhausted." — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 91–94)

Even worse was the treason of Moka bin Basaya, a disgruntled frontier chieftain of Bet who defected to Muhammad bin Qasim in exchange for a promised grant of territory worth 100,000 dirhams, providing the boats and ropes needed to construct a pontoon bridge across the roaring Indus (Mihran) at Rawar (near modern Nawabshah/Badin).

When Arab-born mercenary Muhammad Harun or local advisors urged Maharaja Dahir Sen to either prevent the crossing or send his family away to safety in Hind while waging a war of attrition, the sixty-year-old Hindu monarch gave a reply that rings through thirteen centuries of Indian history like a clash of bronze:

"My nobles and warriors are standing before me; if I show weakness or flee before the invaders, what will the kings of Hind say of Dahir? My ancestors built this kingdom with their blood, and I will either crush this Arab army in open battle or lay down my head upon the soil of Sindh!" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (pp. 119–124)

For five days in the scorching heat of Ramadan 93 AH (June 11–16, 712 CE), the battle raged on the plains before Fort Rawar. On the fifth and final day—Thursday, 10th Ramadan 93 AH (June 16, 712 CE)—Maharaja Dahir Sen mounted his towering white war-elephant, flanked by two royal princesses in his howdah who handed him arrows and betel leaf, and led 10,000 mailed Kshatriya horsemen and 30,000 foot-soldiers directly into the heart of the Syrian formations.

So ferocious was Dahir's personal charge that the Arab left wing broke in panic, and Qasim himself had to dismount and rally his terrified Syrian guards while crying out for water. With his own bow and curved sword, Maharaja Dahir slew scores of Arab horsemen. As the Chachnāma relates verbatim from the eyewitness testimony of an Arab warrior who faced him:

"As the battle grew fierce, King Dahir drove his white elephant into the very center of the army of Islam, fighting with such valor that no man dared approach within reach of his sword or arrows. At that critical hour, an Arab naphtha-thrower (naffāt) shot a blazing naphtha arrow that struck the cotton canopies of Dahir's howdah and set it on fire. Terrified by the flames, the elephant plunged out of control into the shallow waters of the Indus lake. Even then, King Dahir leaped from the elephant's back onto the ground and fought on foot with his sword drawn against a ring of Arab horsemen until an arrow struck him in the neck and he fell martyred at sunset." — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 137–140; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, pp. 169–170)

Maharaja Dahir's severed head was identified by his Brahmin attendants from the silk thread tied around his locks and dispatched, pickled in myrrh and camphor, to Al-Hajjaj in Wasit and Caliph Al-Walid in Damascus.

Yet the battle of Rawar was not over. Inside the stone ramparts of Rawar Fort, Maharaja Dahir's heroic sister-queen Rani Bai (Rani Ladi / Mai) refused to surrender to the slave-takers. Gathering 15,000 Hindu warriors who had retreated into the fort, Rani Bai climbed the battlements in armor and hurled stones, boiling oil, and arrows upon the besieging Arabs while Prince Jaisiah withdrew to organize the defense of Brahmanabad.

When Qasim's sappers undermined the foundation towers of Rawar Fort and breached the walls, Rani Bai assembled all the noble Kshatriya and Hindu women and children of Rawar inside a vast timber mansion in the citadel courtyard. Recording the first documented mass Jauhar in the history of the Islamic invasions of India, the Chachnāma states:

"When Rani Bai, the sister-wife of Dahir, saw that the fort was breached and that there was no hope of deliverance from the hands of the Arabs, she gathered all the royal women and the wives of the Thakurs inside a house, saying: 'God forbid that we should fall into the hands of these cow-eating strangers and lose our chastity and honor! Let us purify ourselves in the sacred fire and join our husbands in heaven!' Whereupon they poured oil upon the wood, kindled the flames, and burned themselves to ashes." — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, p. 142; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, p. 172)

Storming the smoking ruins of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim executed 6,000 surviving fighting men inside the fort and seized 30,000 women, children, and dependents as slaves, sending the royal fifth (Khums) to Al-Hajjaj (Chachnāma, p. 143).

---

V. The Six-Month Siege of Brahmanabad, Alor, and Multan, and the Tragic Martyrdom of Princesses Surya Devi and Parmal Devi

From Rawar, Qasim marched against the great twin metropolis of Brahmanabad (located in modern Sanghar District, where archaeologist Henry Cousens later excavated mounds of charred human bones, crushed skulls, and burned brick walls). Defended by 40,000 citizens inside the walls while Prince Jaisiah harassed Arab supply lines from the desert with a flying column of cavalry, Brahmanabad held out for six full months (July–December 712 CE) until four mercantile elders inside the city secretly negotiated to open a gate at a scheduled hour in exchange for their own property.

When the Arab army poured through the betrayed gate of Brahmanabad, every man bearing arms refused to lay down his sword. The Chachnāma records the slaughter in cold numerical detail:

"When the town was taken, all the fighting men were immediately put to the sword. According to some reliable narrators, six thousand fighting men were slain, while others state that sixteen thousand warriors were beheaded at the gates of Brahmanabad, and all their dependents, women, and children—numbering thirty thousand—were made slaves." — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 156–161; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, p. 179)

At Brahmanabad, Qasim captured Maharaja Dahir's surviving widow Rani Ladi (whom Qasim forcibly married) and Dahir's two young virgin daughters, Princess Surya Devi and Princess Parmal Devi (Pari-Mal Devi). Following the fall of the imperial capital Alor (defended by Dahir's son Fufi) and the hard-fought siege of Mūlasthāna (Multan) in 713 CE—where Qasim's army was reduced to eating donkey meat for two months until a defector pointed out the subterranean water channel feeding the fort, after which 6,000 temple warriors were executed and 23,000 women and children enslaved alongside the looting of 40 bhar (roughly 13,200 pounds) of pure gold from the subterranean vault beneath the Aditya Sun Temple (earning Multan the Arabic nickname Farj Bayt al-Dhahab, "Frontier House of Gold", per Al-Baladhuri, p. 440)—Qasim sent Princesses Surya Devi and Parmal Devi in chains to Caliph Al-Walid I (and his successor Sulayman) in Damascus as part of the imperial fifth.

What happened in the Caliph's palace in Damascus (715 CE) is immortalized in the closing pages of the Chachnāma (pp. 192–196). Summoned to the Caliph's bedchamber after a brief rest, the eldest sister, Princess Surya Devi, resolved to avenge the murder of her father Maharaja Dahir, the burning of Rani Bai, and the enslavement of her people. Looking the Caliph directly in the eye, she declared:

"O King! May your life be long, but I am not worthy of the Caliph's bed, because your general Muhammad bin Qasim kept my sister and me for three days in his own camp and dishonored us before sending us to you!" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (p. 193)

Blinded by jealous rage (and aided by the political faction of the new Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik, who hated Al-Hajjaj's clan), the Caliph immediately signed a royal decree ordering that Muhammad bin Qasim, wherever he was found (at Udabhandapura/Multan), be sewn alive inside the raw hide of a freshly slaughtered cow or ox, nailed into a wooden chest, and carried back to Syria.

Finding the decree bearing the Caliph's personal seal, the seventeen-to-twenty-year-old conqueror of Sindh stepped into the raw cowhide, suffocated to death on the journey across Makran and Iraq, and was laid in a coffin before the Caliph in Damascus. As the Caliph lifted the lid and struck the dead body of Qasim with a cane, saying to Surya Devi, "Behold how the Caliph punishes any servant who dares touch his property!", the fearless daughter of Maharaja Dahir Sen smiled and spoke her final immortal words:

"O Caliph! Muhammad bin Qasim was like a brother or a son to us; he never laid a finger upon our honor! Keep your wits about you: because he slew our father the King of Hind and Sindh, butchered our brothers, and enslaved our country, we possessed no army or sword to take revenge upon him in Damascus—so we spoke this single lie to make you murder your greatest general with your own hands! Had he lived another year, he would have ruined the kingdoms of Hind up to Kanauj and Kashmir!" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 194–195; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, p. 210)

Enraged at having been outwitted by two captive Hindu princesses, the Caliph ordered Princess Surya Devi and Princess Parmal Devi tied by their hair to the tails of horses, dragged through the streets of Damascus, and walled up alive or cast into the Tigris/Barada river. To this day, their names shine in the Sanātani Balidān pantheon as martyrs who struck down the destroyer of Sindh inside the very heart of the Caliphate.

---

VI. The Forensic Mystery Solved: How Sindhi Buddhism Was Taxed and Crushed into Total Extinction (712–1000 CE)

One of the most profound historical questions examined by modern scholarship is why Buddhism—which commanded hundreds of monasteries (vihāras) and a massive urban following across Sindh in 711 CE—completely vanished from Sindh within 250 years, whereas Vedic Hinduism survived both among rural Rajput-Jat communities and urban Lohana, Bhatia, and Amil families right down to 1947 and today.

In his landmark archival monograph Religion and Society in Arab Sind (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), Canadian historian Prof. Derryl N. MacLean analyzed every prosopographical entry, Arabic biographical dictionary (Kitāb al-Ansāb of al-Sam'ani), archaeological report (Kahu-Jo-Daro at Mirpurkhas, Depar Ghangro at Brahmanabad, Thul Mir Rukan, Sudheran-Jo-Daro), and Umayyad-Abbasid fiscal decree to reconstruct the death of Sindhi Buddhism.

MacLean proved that the very collaboration that Buddhist monastic leaders (Samanis) at Nerunkot, Siwistan, and Brahmanabad hoped would save their monasteries became the instrument of their extinction through four structural mechanisms:

1. Destruction of the Inter-Regional Trade Monopoly via Discriminatory Ushr Tariffs

Unlike Vedic Hinduism, which was rooted in self-sufficient rural villages, clan Gotras, and household rituals (Grihya Sutras), Sindhi Buddhism in the 7th–8th centuries was overwhelmingly an urban mercantile religion. Its great brick vihāras—such as the magnificent Kahu-Jo-Daro Stupa at Mirpurkhas (excavated by John Jacob and Henry Cousens), Depar Ghangro (6 miles from Brahmanabad), and Mohenjo-daro's Kushan Stupa—were financed directly by wealthy Buddhist merchant guilds controlling the Indus river and overland caravan trade between Central Asia, Iran, and Gujarat.

Once the Umayyad and Abbasid governors seized the river ports of Debal, Nerunkot, Alor, and Multan, they imposed discriminatory commercial customs duties (Ushr): - Muslim merchants paid a customs duty of only 2.5% to 5% on goods transported along the Indus. - Non-Muslim (Dhimmi Buddhist and Hindu) merchants were forced to pay 10% to 20%—double to quadruple the tax rate—in addition to the annual per-head Jizya poll tax (24 to 48 dirhams per adult male).

Within two generations, no Buddhist merchant guild in Nerunkot or Brahmanabad could compete with Arab or newly converted Muslim traders without going bankrupt. To save their commercial caravans and warehouses from seizure, the urban Buddhist merchant class converted to Islam en masse between 717 CE (under the zealous Caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who wrote letters to the rulers and nobles of Sindh promising full commercial equality if they embraced Islam, per Al-Baladhuri, p. 441) and 850 CE.

2. Collapse of Monastic Endowments and the Chachnāma Ban on Repairing Broken Bricks

When the Buddhist merchant patrons converted or went bankrupt, the vast brick monasteries of Sindh lost their sole source of food, oil, and architectural maintenance. Worse still, when the Buddhist Samani priests of Brahmanabad petitioned Muhammad bin Qasim and Al-Hajjaj for permission to repair their damaged vihāras, the Arab conquerors enforced a lethal fiscal stranglehold. Even while granting them nominal Dhimmi status, the Chachnāma records that the monks were compelled to hand over a massive share of temple offerings as state tribute, and under subsequent Umayyad and Abbasid governors—most notably Hisham ibn Amr al-Taghlibi (r. 768–774 CE, appointed by Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur)—the state actively demolished major Buddhist vihāras to build Friday mosques (Al-Baladhuri, p. 444).

Archaeologist Henry Cousens, in his monumental survey The Antiquities of Sind with Historical Outline (Archaeological Survey of India, Imperial Series Vol. XLVI, Calcutta, 1929), documented the physical evidence of this erasure across every Buddhist site in Sindh: - At Kahu-Jo-Daro (Mirpurkhas): The great decorated brick stupa was stripped of its votive terracotta plaques of the Buddha, its monastic cells abandoned and quarried for bricks by Arab settlers. - At Depar Ghangro (Brahmanabad) and Thul Mir Rukan (Nawabshah): The stupas were deliberately breached at their cores by treasure-hunters searching for sacred relic caskets, and not a single new Buddhist inscription or repair was ever made after the 9th century CE.

3. Institutional Decapitation of the Sangha vs. Decentralization of the Hindu Household

Buddhism required a visible, centralized institution to survive: ordained celibate monks (Bhikshus), visible brick monasteries (Viharas), and public monastic libraries. When a vihara was burned, taxed into insolvency, or forbidden to ordain new youths, Buddhism in that district died overnight.

Vedic-Puranic Hinduism, by contrast, possessed an indestructible cellular resilience. Even when the grand public temples of Debal and Alor were demolished or converted into mosques, a Hindu family in a Sindhi village or a Lohana courtyard needed no brick monastery to remain Hindu: their Gotra lineage, their household Kuldevi or Ishta-Devata, their sacred river Sindhu (Darya Shah / Jhulelal), and their family Brahmin Purohit kept Sanātana Dharma alive behind closed doors!

4. The Total Erasure Recorded by Al-Biruni (1030 CE)

By the end of the 10th century CE, the extinction of Sindhi Buddhism was so total that when the great polymath Abu Rayhan al-Biruni traveled across West Punjab and Sindh between 1017 and 1030 CE researching his encyclopedic Kitāb al-Hind, he could scarcely find a single living Buddhist monk or text anywhere in the Indus basin—whereas he documented vibrant Hindu scholars, Siddhanta astronomers, and temples from Multan to Peshawar and Kashmir.

Thus, the first great demographic casualties of the 712 CE Arab conquest of Sindh were the very urban Buddhist communities (Samanis) who had opened the gates of Nerunkot and Siwistan in the tragic belief that appeasement would purchase survival. Their stupas crumbled into silent mounds of baked brick across the Thar and Indus plains, while their converted descendants were absorbed into the early urban Muslim artisan and mercantile classes of Mansurah, Nerunkot, and Thatta.

---

CHAPTER 7

The Hindu Shahi Thermopylae (870–1026 CE) — Waihind, Nandana, and the Hindu Kush Slave Death-Marches

न भीतो मरणादस्मि केवलं दूषितं यशः । हुताशने प्रवेक्ष्यामि राज्यं न्यस्य सुते मम ॥

na bhīto maraṇād asmi kevalaṃ dūṣitaṃ yaśaḥ | hutāśane pravekṣyāmi rājyaṃ nyasya sute mama ||

"I fear not death; I grieve only that the glory of the frontier has been stained. Bestowing my crown upon my son, I shall enter the sacred purifying fire." — Epitaph for Maharaja Jayapala Deva (1002 CE) after the Battle of Purushapura/Waihind

I. The Forgotten Emperors of the North-West Frontier

Ask an educated citizen in modern Peshawar, Attock, Rawalpindi, Chakwal, or Lahore who ruled their cities before Mahmud of Ghazni crossed the Khyber Pass in 1001 CE, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will draw a blank. Yet for more than a century and a half (c. 843/870–1026 CE)—and nearly four centuries if counted together with their Turk Shahi predecessors—the entire expanse from the Hindu Kush and Jalalabad (Nagarahara) across the Khyber Pass, Peshawar (Purushapura), Charsadda (Pushkalavati), Swat (Uddiyana), Attock (Udabhandapura / Waihind), Taxila, the Salt Range (Nandana and Katas Raj), and thewest bank of the Indus at Kafir Kot (Dera Ismail Khan) right down to Lahore (Lavapuri) and the Chenab was governed by one of the noblest, wealthiest, and most chivalrous royal dynasties in Indian history: the Hindu Shahi Emperors.

Even their sworn mortal enemies stood in awe of their character. Writing in Ghazni in 1030 CE, just four years after the last Hindu Shahi prince fell in battle, the great Persian-Khwarazmian scholar Abu Rayhan al-Biruni paid an extraordinary tribute to the fallen dynasty in his Kitāb al-Hind (Tahqīq mā li-l-Hind, trans. E.C. Sachau, London, 1910, Vol. II, p. 13):

"The Hindu Shahiya dynasty is now extinct, and of the whole house there is no longer the slightest remnant in existence. We must say that, in all their grandeur, they never slackened in the ardent desire of doing that which is good and right, and that they were men of noble sentiment and noble bearing." — Al-Biruni, Kitāb al-Hind (Vol. II, p. 13)

And writing a century later in Kashmir (1148–1149 CE), the great Sanskrit historian Kalhana lamented their disappearance in the Rājataraṅgiṇī (Book VII, verses 66–69):

"Where is that Shahi dynasty with its ministers, its kings, and its vast grandeur? People today ask themselves whether the glorious reign of the Shahis was a reality or only a vision!" — Kalhana, Rājataraṅgiṇī (VII.66–69, trans. M.A. Stein)

When Yaqub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar seized the citadel of Kabul by treachery in 870 CE, the reigning Hindu Shahi monarch Lalliya (Kallar)* relocated the imperial capital to Udabhāṇḍapura (known to Arab and Persian chroniclers as Waihind or Ohind, modern *Hund village on the right bank of the Indus in Swabi District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, just opposite Attock). Situated at the exact strategic choke-point where the Kabul River (Kubhā) pours into the mighty Sindhu, Udabhandapura became the Thermopylae of India.

Today, archaeologists and epigraphists who walk through the ruins of Hund (Waihind), North and South Kafir Kot (Dera Ismail Khan), Malot, Amb Shareef, Kallar, and Nandana (in the Salt Range of Chakwal and Jhelum) behold the silent stone witnesses of this golden empire:

1. The Hund Sanskrit Marble Inscription (c. 10th Century CE): Discovered at Hund (ancient Udabhandapura) and preserved in the Peshawar Museum, written in crisp Sarada Sanskrit characters, recording the construction of a magnificent Hindu temple during the reign of Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara Śrī Bhīmadeva and paying homage to Maharaja Jayapala Deva.
2. The Silver and Gold Bull-and-Horseman Coinage (Śrī Sāmantadeva & Śrī Bhīmadeva): Minted in such millions at Udabhandapura from the silver mines of Panjshir that Hindu Shahi coins served as the international reserve currency from Baghdad and Nishapur to Kiev, Novgorod, and Viking Scandinavia!
3. Twelve Monumental Nagara and Kashmiri-Style Stone Temples: Still standing on the jagged cliffs of Kafir Kot above the Indus and at Amb, Malot, and Katas Raj in the Salt Range—built by the direct Hindu ancestors of the modern Janjua, Gakhar, Khokhar, Awan, and Khatri populations of northern Pakistan.

The Imperial Lineage of the Hindu Shahi Dynasty (c. 843–1026 CE)

---

II. The Gathering Storm in Ghazni and the Two Campaigns of Sabuktigin (977–988 CE)

The geopolitical balance along the Hindu Kush shifted ominously in 962–977 CE when rebel Turkic slave-commanders (ghulāms) of the Samanid Empire—first Alptigin and then his ruthless son-in-law Sabuktigin (r. 977–997 CE)—seized the mountain fortress of Ghazni in former Zabulistan and launched systematic slave-raiding and temple-plundering expeditions down the Kabul River into the Hindu Shahi borderlands of Laghman (Lamghan).

Perceiving the existential danger that a predatory Turkic military state at Ghazni posed to the entire Indian subcontinent, Maharaja Jayapala Deva (r. 964–1002 CE) did not wait passively behind the Indus. Twice—in 986–987 CE and 988 CE—Maharaja Jayapala marched a grand Hindu Shahi army up through the freezing passes of Kabul and Laghman to destroy Sabuktigin's base before it could grow.

During the first campaign at the hill of Ghuzak (between Kabul and Lamghan), as recorded by Mahmud of Ghazni's royal secretary Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Jabbar al-Utbi in his contemporary Arabic chronicle Kitāb al-Yamīnī (Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī, c. 1020 CE), Jayapala's warriors fought Sabuktigin and his young teenage son Mahmud to a standstill for days until a freak, catastrophic blizzard and freezing hailstorm descended upon the high mountain pass:

"Suddenly a sky-darkening snowstorm and icy wind burst upon the camp of the Hindus, who were accustomed to the warm plains of India. Thousands of their pack-animals and war-horses froze to death in a single night, the hands of the archers stiffened so that they could not draw their bowstrings, and the warmth went out of their blood." — Al-Utbi, Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī (trans. James Reynolds, London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1858, pp. 34–38; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 20–21)

When Jayapala returned in 988 CE with an allied confederacy of North Indian detachments totaling 100,000 cavalry and foot-soldiers, Sabuktigin avoided a single head-on clash against the superior Hindu phalanx; instead, he deployed rotating divisions of 500 Turkic mounted horse-archers who fired volleys of arrows into the flanks day and night before charging when the formations broke. Forced to cede Laghman and Jalalabad (Nagarahara) west of the Khyber Pass, Sabuktigin immediately demolished every ancient Hindu and Buddhist temple in the Laghman Valley, erected mosques over their foundations, and slaughtered the non-Muslim population (Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, p. 22).

---

III. November 27, 1001 CE: The Battle of Peshawar/Waihind, the Enslavement of 500,000 Sanātanis, and the Royal Pyre of Maharaja Jayapala

When Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998–1030 CE) ascended his father's throne, he took a solemn religious vow before the Abbasid Caliph Al-Qadir Billah (who bestowed upon him the titles Yamīn al-Dawlah and Amīn al-Millah) to lead an annual Jihad into Al-Hind every single year to smash its idols and enslave its people.

In September 1001 CE, Mahmud marched down through the Khyber Pass and encamped outside Peshawar (Purushapura) with 15,000 picked Turkic cavalry and 10,000 Ghāzīs (religious war-volunteers) from Khorasan and Transoxiana. Without waiting for all his outlying provincial levies from the eastern Punjab to arrive, the aged Maharaja Jayapala Deva marched out of Udabhandapura (Waihind) with 12,000 cavalry, 30,000 infantry, and 300 war-elephants to block the invader on the plain of Peshawar.

On Thursday, 8th Muharram 392 AH (November 27, 1001 CE), the two armies collided. From dawn until noon, the Hindu Shahi warriors fought with desperate valor, their elephants trampling the Ghaznavid lines until Mahmud's dense squadrons of Central Asian horse-archers concentrated a storm of iron-tipped arrows upon the eyes and trunks of the elephants, driving the wounded beasts back through Jayapala's own infantry ranks.

Al-Utbi, who served directly in Mahmud's chancery and witnessed the aftermath and the slave-caravans arriving in Ghazni, wrote a blood-chilling eyewitness account of the slaughter at Peshawar and the subsequent sack of the Hindu Shahi capital at Waihind (Hund):

"By noon, fifteen thousand of the friends of idol-worship lay dead upon the battlefield like a carpet of scarlet poppies, and the birds of prey and beasts of the desert feasted upon their corpses... God bestowed upon the friends of Islam the spoils of the infidels beyond all limit of calculation. Maharaja Jayapala himself, together with fifteen of his sons, brothers, and kinsmen, was surrounded and taken captive. From the neck of Jayapala alone they tore off a royal necklace (mālā) composed of sixteen strands of pearls, rubies, and red jacinths, each jewel valued at two hundred thousand dinars, and similar necklaces were stripped from his captured nobles.

And five hundred thousand (500,000) slaves—beautiful men and women, boys and maidens of India—were driven off in chains to Ghazni! So vast was the multitude of Hindu captives after the capture of Waihind that the price of a slave in the market of Ghazni fell to a couple of dirhams, and free men of noble birth were bought and sold like common sheep!" — Al-Utbi, Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 25–27; Reynolds trans., pp. 280–284)

Pause and absorb the scale of Al-Utbi's official court figure: 500,000 human beings—men, women, and children of Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi, Attock, and Hazara, the direct flesh-and-blood kin of today's inhabitants of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Punjab—were roped together by the neck and marched across the freezing passes into the slave pens of Ghazni, Khorasan, and Samarkand in a single campaign!

In the spring of 1002 CE, after extracting a huge ransom of 250,000 dinars and 50 war-elephants and subjecting the seventy-year-old Hindu Emperor to public humiliation in the slave market, Mahmud released Maharaja Jayapala to return to the Punjab.

According to the ancient Kshatriya code of the Shahi dynasty, a king who had once fallen captive into the hands of the Mlecchas (unclean invaders) was spiritually polluted and could no longer wear the sacred crown. Reaching the eastern bank of the Indus/Punjab, Maharaja Jayapala wrote a solemn royal charter transferring the imperial throne to his valiant son Prince Anandapala. Then, as recorded with awed respect by Al-Utbi (Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, p. 27) and Firishta:

"When Jayapala returned to his own country after his release, he held that his honor had been stained by his captivity in the hands of the Muslims. He therefore shaved his head clean, put on ceremonial robes, built a lofty funeral pyre with his own hands outside the city gate, kindled the flames below, and cast himself into the roaring fire until he was burned to ashes." — Al-Utbi, Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, p. 27)

---

IV. 1004 CE: The Four-Day Stand and Self-Sacrifice of Raja Baji Rai at Bhatiya

If Pakistani textbooks erase Maharaja Jayapala, they are equally silent about the lion-hearted Raja Baji Rai (Bajra) of Bhatiya (modern Bhera on the Jhelum or Bhatinda / Uch-Vijnot on the Multan-Sutlej frontier), a proud feudatory ally of the Hindu Shahis who had refused to join Sabuktigin or pay tribute to Ghazni.

In October–November 1004 CE (395 AH), Mahmud of Ghazni marched across the Indus at Multan and laid siege to Raja Baji Rai's high-walled fortress of Bhatiya, surrounded by a deep moat so wide that arrows could barely cross it. Rather than cower behind his ramparts, Raja Baji Rai led his Hindu Rajput and Jat warriors out into the open field.

For three consecutive days, from sunrise to sunset, Raja Baji Rai's warriors fought Mahmud's veteran Turkic guard with such ferocity that on the third evening the Ghaznavid lines were on the verge of breaking, and Mahmud himself had to turn his face toward Mecca, throw himself prostrate in the dust before his troops, and beg Allah for deliverance (Al-Utbi, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 28–30). Only on the fourth day, after ordering ditch-fillers to choke the moat with felled trees and stones under a hail of missiles, did Mahmud's elephants breach the outer gate.

Withdrawing to a nearby forest glen on the banks of the river with a small band of loyal retainers, Raja Baji Rai was surrounded by an elite Ghaznavid detachment sent with strict orders to capture him alive so that he could be forcibly converted and paraded in chains.

Seeing the Turkic horsemen closing in from all sides, Raja Baji Rai fought until his shield was cleft in two, then drew his own jewel-hilted dagger from his belt, cried out his devotion to the Gods, and plunged the blade straight through his own heart, falling dead before a single enemy hand could touch his body!

Enraged that Baji Rai had robbed him of a live royal trophy, Mahmud ordered the dead king's head severed and carried out a merciless massacre of every inhabitant of Bhatiya who refused Islam. In the chilling words of Al-Utbi:

"No quarter was given to the infidels of Bhatiya; only those who embraced Islam were spared. One hundred and twenty elephants, mountains of gold and silver, and countless slaves fell into the hands of the Sultan. Mahmud remained at Bhatiya until he had cleansed the region of idol-worship, demolished its temples, erected mosques in their place, and appointed Islamic teachers (mu'allims) to instruct the forcibly converted inhabitants in the precepts of the Quran—with orders that anyone who apostatized or reverted to his ancestral faith should be put to death." — Al-Utbi, Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, p. 30)

---

V. 1008–1014 CE: Chhachh, Nagarkot, and the Heroic Stand of Nidar Bhīm and General Tekchand at Nandana Fort

Far from collapsing after Jayapala's death, his son Maharaja Anandapala Deva (r. 1002–1010 CE), grandson Maharaja Trilochanapala Deva (r. 1010–1021 CE), and great-grandson Prince Bhimapala ("Bhīm the Fearless", d. 1026 CE) waged an epic twenty-four-year war across every river and mountain pass of northern Pakistan.

In 1006 CE, when Mahmud demanded free passage through Hindu Shahi territory to attack Multan, Maharaja Anandapala flatly refused and met Mahmud's vanguard near Peshawar. Two years later, in the winter of 1008–1009 CE, when Mahmud marched with his largest army to crush the Shahis forever, Maharaja Anandapala and his crown prince Brahmanapala / Trilochanapala took up position on the wide plain of Chhachh (between Waihind/Hund and Attock-Hazro on the eastern bank of the Indus).

Here occurred one of the most famous moments in the military history of the Punjab, recorded by both Al-Utbi and Firishta. For forty days the two armies faced each other across the wintry plain of Chhachh while Hindu women in distant towns melted down their golden mangalsutras and bangles and spun cotton to finance the defense of the frontier. When battle was finally joined in December 1008 / January 1009 CE, 30,000 bareheaded, barefoot Hindu Gakhar and Khokhar warriors from the Potohar plateau and Salt Range—armed with double-edged broadswords, spears, and daggers—charged straight into the Ghaznavid trenches!

Slaughtering 4,000 to 5,000 Muslim soldiers in less than an hour and slicing off the legs of the Turkic cavalry horses from below, the Gakhar/Khokhar warriors came within a hair's breadth of cutting down Sultan Mahmud himself—who was already preparing to flee the field when a stray burning naphtha fireball struck the howdah of Prince Brahmanapala's/Anandapala's command elephant. Crazed with pain from the fire, the royal elephant turned and bolted from the battlefield. Thinking their king had fallen or ordered a retreat, the Hindu divisions wavered, and Mahmud's reserve cavalry of 10,000 elite guards charged into the gap, slaughtering 8,000 to 20,000 retreating warriors and sweeping all the way to the unguarded temple-treasury of Bhīmanagara (Nagarkot / Kangra), where Mahmud looted 70 million royal dirhams and 700,000 mans of gold and silver ingots accumulated since the days of King Bhima (Al-Utbi, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 33–35).

Even after this terrible blow, when Udabhandapura on the open Indus bank became untenable, Maharaja Anandapala and Maharaja Trilochanapala established their new mountain capital at the eagle's-nest citadel of Nandana (located in the Baghanwala gorge of the eastern Salt Range, in modern Jhelum/Chakwal District, Pakistan, overlooking the Jhelum River plain and guarding the sacred pilgrimage valley of Katas Raj and Murti).

Today, the dramatic ruins of Nandana Fort and its towering 9th–10th century Hindu Shahi Shiva Temple still cling to the precipitous rocky ridge above Baghanwala (famously surveyed by Sir Aurel Stein in Archaeological Reconnaissances in North-Western India, 1937, Chapter I, and where Al-Biruni later measured the circumference of the Earth from the summit peak).

In November 1013 CE, Mahmud marched from Ghazni to storm Nandana, only to be driven back by fierce winter snowstorms in the passes. Returning in March 1014 CE (404 AH), Mahmud surrounded the mountain pass of Nandana.

While Maharaja Trilochanapala rode toward Kashmir to bring allied reinforcements under the Kashmiri general Tunga, his teenage son Prince Bhimapala—whom even the hostile chronicler Al-Utbi admiringly called Nidar Bhīm ("Bhima the Fearless")—and the veteran Shahi commander General Tekchand stayed behind to hold the narrow rocky defile of Nandana Fort.

As recorded by Al-Utbi (Tārīkh-i-Yamīnī, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 37–39) and Gardizi (Kitāb Zain-ul-Akhbār):

• Blocking the razor-thin mountain gorge between two sheer cliffs with a line of armored war-elephants and Salt Range Rajput archers (Janjua and Khokhar warriors of the hills), Prince Bhimapala repulsed wave after wave of Ghaznavid assaults for days, showering boulders and iron darts down upon the Dailamite and Khorasanian infantry.
• Only when Mahmud tempted part of the vanguard out into the open plain and set his sappers (naqqābān) to tunnel beneath the sandstone foundation walls of Nandana Fort, stuffing the mines with timber and setting them ablaze until the curtain wall collapsed, was the citadel breached.
• Inside the inner fortress of Nandana, General Tekchand and the surviving garrison refused to surrender and fought to the death, while Prince Bhimapala cut his way through the encirclement to rejoin his father in the Kashmir hills.
• Storming the sacred Temple of Nandana, Mahmud's soldiers smashed the ancient stone murti, ripped out an inscribed stone tablet claiming the temple's antiquity, looted the royal treasury, and then swept through the neighboring Gandhala Valley (Murti and Katas Raj), where Sir Aurel Stein in 1931 excavated massive heaps of deliberately shattered red-sandstone Hindu and Jain temple sculptures smashed by the Ghaznavid army in 1014 CE!

Yet Maharaja Trilochanapala and Prince Bhimapala STILL refused to bend the knee. For twelve more years (1014–1026 CE), father and son fought Mahmud on the Tosi (Poonch) River (1015), in the Siwalik hills, and on the banks of the Rahib (Ramganga) River (1019–1021)—until Trilochanapala died a martyr's death in 1021 CE and Prince Bhimapala ("The Fearless") fell fighting to his last breath in 1026 CE. Not once in 156 years (870–1026 CE) did a single Hindu Shahi Emperor convert to Islam or surrender his crown.

---

VI. How the Hindu Kush ("Slayer of the Hindus") Earned Its Blood-Soaked Name: Verbatim Witness of Ibn Battuta (1333 CE)

What happened to the hundreds of thousands of unarmed Hindu men, women, boys, and little girls—captured at Peshawar (1001), Waihind (1002), Bhatiya (1004), Multan (1006), Chhachh (1008), Nandana (1014), Thanesar (1014), Mathura & Kanauj (1018), and Lahore (1021), and in the subsequent Ghurid, Khalji, and Tughlaq slave-raids—who were roped together in long coffles and driven westward out of the warm plains of the Punjab and Gandhara toward the slave markets of Ghazni, Balkh, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khwarazm?

To reach the slave markets of Central Asia (Transoxiana / Mā warā' al-Nahr), the slave-caravans had to be marched across the towering 12,000-to-15,000-foot snow passes of the mountain range that ancient Sanskrit texts (Upariśyena) and classical Greek geographers had called the Paropamisus or Caucasus Indicus (connecting the Kabul Valley via the Panjshir, Salang, Khawak, and Bamiyan passes to Kunduz and Balkh).

Driven barefoot in thin cotton garments through blizzards and sub-zero mountain ice, hundreds of thousands of captive Hindu boys, girls, and mothers froze to death in the snow passes.

So vast were the heaps of frozen Indian corpses lining the mountain trails century after century that the entire mountain range lost its ancient Sanskrit and Greek names and acquired a new Persian name that remains on every world map to this day: Hindū-Kush (هندوکش — literally "The Slayer / Murderer of the Hindus").

In modern times, apologists have occasionally tried to invent polite linguistic excuses for the name Hindu Kush. Fortunately, we possess the unimpeachable, verbatim eyewitness testimony of the famous Moroccan Islamic jurist and world traveler Ibn Battuta (1304–1369 CE), who personally crossed this very mountain pass between Kunduz/Andarab and Parwan/Kabul in May 1333 CE (733 AH) and recorded the exact meaning and origin of the name in his Riḥla (Tuḥfat al-Nuẓẓār fī Gharā'ib al-Amṣār, ed. Defrémery & Sanguinetti, Paris, 1855, Vol. III, p. 84; trans. H.A.R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, Hakluyt Society, Vol. III, 1971, p. 586):

"After this I proceeded to the city of Barwan [Parwan], and on the road to it is a high mountain covered with snow and exceedingly cold; they call it the Hindu Kush, which means 'Slayer of the Hindus' [Qātil al-Hunūd], because the majority of the slave-boys and slave-girls who are brought from the land of India die there on account of the intensity of the cold and the great quantity of snow." — Ibn Battuta, Riḥla (1333 CE, Vol. III, p. 84 / Gibb trans., p. 586)

Every time a citizen of Pakistan or Afghanistan looks up at the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush, they are looking at the largest unmarked mass grave of their own indigenous Sanātani ancestors on earth—men, women, and children of the Sapta-Sindhu whose bones still lie buried beneath the eternal glaciers between Kabul and Balkh.

---

CHAPTER 8

The River-Warriors Strike Back — Mahmud's 1027 Naval Massacre of the Indus Jats & The 1206 Khokhar Assassination of Muhammad Ghori

हत्वा रिपुं रणे शूरः स्वर्गं याति न संशयः । प्रतिशोधमृते वीरः कथं स्वपिति भूतले ॥

hatvā ripuṃ raṇe śūraḥ svargaṃ yāti na saṃśayaḥ | pratiśodham ṛte vīraḥ kathaṃ svapiti bhūtale ||

"Slaying the invader in battle, the hero ascends to heaven without doubt; until the blood-debt of his homeland is avenged, how can a warrior sleep upon this earth?" — Classical Kshatriya Vow of Retribution (Pratiśodha)

I. Beyond the Royal Courts: The Unconquered Martial Peasantry of the Sapta-Sindhu

A persistent error of conventional military history is to assume that once the royal elephant of Maharaja Dahir fell at Rawar in 712 CE or the last Hindu Shahi prince Bhimapala fell in 1026 CE, the common people of Sindh and West Punjab passively bowed their necks to the conquerors.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Long after the royal capitals of Alor, Udabhandapura, Nandana, and Lahore were occupied by Arab or Turkic garrisons, the rugged countryside of what is now Pakistan—the swirling river-islands (belas) of the Indus and Chenab around Multan, Uch, and Bahawalpur, and the jagged ravines of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud) and Potohar plateau between the Jhelum and the Indus—remained in the hands of fierce, self-governing Sanātani warrior-peasant clans: the Indus Jats (Jatān), the Khokhars, the Gakhars, the Janjuas, and the Bhattis.

In two of the most dramatic, rarely told chapters in the history of the subcontinent, these indigenous river- and hill-warriors of modern Pakistan struck back directly at the two greatest Islamic conquerors of medieval India: Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (1026–1027 CE) and Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad bin Sam of Ghor (1205–1206 CE).

---

II. 1026–1027 CE: How the Hindu Jats of the Indus Punished Mahmud After Somnath—and Mahmud's Naval Holocaust of 4,000 Jat Boats

In January 1026 CE (416 AH), Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni carried out his most infamous raid into peninsular India: the sack of the sacred Jyotirlinga Temple of Somnath in Saurashtra, Gujarat, where his army slaughtered 50,000 Hindu devotees defending the sanctum, shattered the sacred Śiva-Liṅga with his own iron mace so that fragments could be embedded in the steps of the Jama Masjid of Ghazni, and loaded thousands of camels with 20 million dinars worth of gold, diamonds, and pearls.

Fearing that the Hindu Rajput kings of Malwa and Rajasthan (Raja Bhoja Parmar of Dhar) were blocking his return route through Ajmer, Mahmud led his treasure-laden army northward through the scorching deserts of Kutch and Thar into the lower and middle Indus Valley (Sindh and the Multan-Uch confluence, known in Persian chronicles as the region of the Jats of the Jud / Bhatiya / Multan rivers).

Here, in the spring of 1026 CE, the indigenous Hindu Jats of the Indus—the direct ancestors of today's Saraiki, Punjabi, and Sindhi Jats living along the Indus, Chenab, and Sutlej rivers—resolved to avenge the desecration of Somnath and rescue the enslaved Hindu captives trailing behind Mahmud's army!

Emerging from the labyrinth of river channels, reed marshes, and islands along the Indus and Chenab in fast river-skiffs and light cavalry bands, the Indus Jats launched relentless guerrilla strikes against Mahmud's exhausted columns: - They cut down stragglers, ambushed foraging parties, liberated scores of captives, seized thousands of baggage camels loaded with Somnath gold, and killed hundreds of Ghaznavid horsemen before vanishing back across the deep channels of the Indus where Mahmud's heavy cavalry could not follow. - So battered was Mahmud's army by the time it limped into Multan and Ghazni in April 1026 CE that the Sultan vowed to devote his seventeenth and final Indian campaign (Spring–Summer 1027 CE / 418 AH) solely to the total extermination of the Hindu Jats of the Indus.

We possess a vivid, terrifyingly detailed contemporary account of what Mahmud did in 1027 CE in the Kitāb Zain-ul-Akhbār (The Adornment of Histories, written c. 1050 CE at the Ghaznavid court) by Abu Sa'id Abd al-Hayy ibn al-Dahhak ibn Mahmud Gardizi, corroborated by Nizamuddin Ahmad's Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī and Firishta's Tārīkh-i-Firishta (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 477–478).

Arriving at Multan in the spring of 1027 CE, Mahmud realized that the Hindu Jats had evacuated their villages on the open plains and moved their wives, children, elders, and grain onto the fortified river-islands (belas) in the middle of the broad Indus-Chenab-Jhelum confluence, guarded by an indigenous fleet of 4,000 to 8,000 wooden river-boats.

Mahmud therefore engineered the largest riverine naval massacre in the history of the Punjab:

1. The 1,400 Iron-Spiked War-Boats: Ordering every shipwright and blacksmith in Multan and the upper Indus to be conscripted, Mahmud constructed a specialized armada of 1,400 heavy war-boats (kishtī). Onto the prow and both gunwales of every single Ghaznavid boat, Mahmud had blacksmiths bolt three massive, razor-sharp iron spikes (shākh-hā-yi āhanīn)—one jutting forward from the bow like a steel ram and one projecting from each side—explicitly designed so that whatever touched them would be ripped apart and sunk.
2. The Naphtha Fire-Crews: Inside each of the 1,400 iron-spiked boats, Mahmud stationed twenty elite Turkic archers clad in mail and five naphtha-bombers (naffātān) equipped with earthen pots of Greek fire (naft), sulfur flasks, and flaming arrows, while lining both banks of the Indus with his heavy cavalry, war-elephants, and camel-archers to slaughter anyone who swam to shore.

For their part, the fearless Hindu Jats did not flee. Sending their women, children, and aged parents to the inner sandbank islands, the Jat warriors manned 4,000 river-boats (some accounts say 8,000), each carrying armed oarsmen and archers, and rowed out to meet Mahmud's fleet in mid-stream!

Let the contemporary Ghaznavid court historian Gardizi (Kitāb Zain-ul-Akhbār, ed. Muhammad Nazim, Berlin, 1928, pp. 88–89) and Nizamuddin Ahmad (Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, p. 478) describe the holocaust that unfolded on the waters of the Indus:

"When the Jats learned of the Sultan's coming, they conveyed their wives and children and precious goods onto the islands in the middle of the river Indus, and launched four thousand boats—or as others relate, eight thousand boats—filled with armed fighting men to give battle to the Sultan's fleet.

When the two fleets met upon the broad waters of the river, a terrible battle ensued. The Sultan's 1,400 boats, driven forward by the current and rowers, rammed into the boats of the Jats with their three iron spikes while the naphtha-throwers hurled pots of liquid fire upon their wooden hulls. Every Jat boat that came into contact with the iron spikes was stove in, shattered to pieces, and capsized. Some of the Jats were burned alive in the blazing naphtha, thousands were pierced by arrows, and the vast majority were drowned in the deep waters of the Indus until the river ran red with their blood.

Those few warriors who swam to the banks were cut down by the Sultan's horsemen waiting on the shore. Having destroyed the entire fleet of the Jats, the Sultan's army landed upon the islands where the Jats had hidden their families and treasure; they put the remaining men to the sword, carried off all their wives, daughters, and children into slavery, and returned victorious to Ghazni." — Abd al-Hayy Gardizi, Kitāb Zain-ul-Akhbār (c. 1050 CE, pp. 88–89) & Nizamuddin Ahmad, Tabaqāt-i-Akbarī (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 477–478)

Look at the map of southern Punjab and northern Sindh today—around Multan, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Uch, and Rahim Yar Khan—where millions of proud Muslim Jat clans (Langah, Chhina, Bhutta, Dahar, Uttera, Jhammat, Kalru, Gill, Sandhu) till the riverine Kachhi lands along the Indus. Very few of them have ever been told in school that in 1027 CE, their own Hindu Jat great-grandfathers manned 4,000 boats on the Indus to punish Mahmud of Ghazni for the sack of Somnath, and perished in a wall of iron spikes and burning naphtha while their surviving mothers and children were dragged off into captivity!

---

III. 1205–1206 CE: The Great Khokhar Uprising of the Salt Range and the 20,000-Man Massacre Between the Jhelum and Chenab

Nearly two centuries after Mahmud's naval massacre of the Indus Jats, a second indigenous warrior nation of West Punjab—the Hindu Khokhars (alongside their Salt Range cousins, the Gakhars and Janjuas) of the Koh-i-Jud (Salt Range), Jhelum, Chakwal, Sargodha (Shahpur), and the Chaj/Rachna Doabs—delivered the ultimate blow of retribution against Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad bin Sam of Ghor (Muhammad Ghori).

After defeating Emperor Prithviraj Chauhan at the Second Battle of Tarain (1192 CE) and Emperor Jayachandra at Chandawar (1194 CE), Muhammad Ghori had established the military foundations of the Delhi Sultanate across northern India. Yet his vital artery connecting his imperial capital at Ghazni to his viceroy Qutb-ud-din Aibak in Lahore and Delhi ran directly through the Salt Range and the Jhelum-Chenab river crossings of West Punjab.

In 1204–1205 CE (601 AH), when Muhammad Ghori suffered a catastrophic defeat at Andkhud (Andkhoy) in Central Asia at the hands of the Qara Khitai and the Khwarazm Shah—losing almost his entire Khorasanian army and barely escaping to Ghazni with his life—word flashed across the Punjab hills that the tyrant had been slain.

Instantly, the Hindu Khokhar Kshatriyas of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud), Jhelum, Bhera, and the Chenab valley rose in a massive war of national liberation under their heroic twin chieftains Rai Sal (Sarkha / Rae Sal) and Bakan (Baku)!

As recorded in the contemporary Persian chronicles—Hasan Nizami's Tāj-ul-Ma'āsir (written in Delhi between 1205 and 1228 CE), Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani's Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī (1260 CE, trans. Major H.G. Raverty, Vol. I, pp. 481–487), and Ata Malik Juvaini's Tārīkh-i-Jahān-Gushā:

• Sweeping down from their mountain strongholds in the Salt Range (Jhelum, Chakwal, and Khushab), Rai Sal and Bakan's Khokhar warriors defeated the Ghurid deputy governor of Multan and Lahore (Baha-ud-din Muhammad), drove out the Sultanate revenue collectors across the Sindh-Sagar, Chaj, and Rachna Doabs, seized the strategic highway between Peshawar, Jhelum, and Lahore, cut off all gold tribute moving from Delhi to Ghazni, and laid siege to Lahore (Lavapurī) itself!
• Recognizing that if the Hindu Khokhars held the Punjab, the entire Ghurid empire in Hindustan would collapse, Sultan Muhammad Ghori marched personally from Ghazni in October 1205 CE (Rabi al-Awwal 602 AH) while ordering his viceroy Qutb-ud-din Aibak (accompanied by his elite slave-commander Shams-ud-din Iltutmish) to march north from Delhi with the entire army of Hindustan, trapping the Khokhars in a giant pincer between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers.

On Thursday, 25th Rabi al-Awwal 602 AH (November 10, 1205 CE), between the Jhelum and the Chenab (near modern Jhelum / Mandi Bahauddin / Bhera), the Hindu Khokhars under Rai Sal and Bakan stood and fought the combined imperial armies of Ghazni and Delhi from early morning until late afternoon. Only when Iltutmish drove his armored cavalry contingents straight into the waters of the Jhelum to cut off their retreat were the Khokhar lines broken.

Retreating into the rugged forests and ravines of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud), the Khokhars kindled a huge ring of fire around their mountain stronghold—and when the Ghurid forces surrounded them, the Khokhar warriors walked into the flames or fought until their swords shattered rather than be taken alive!

What Muhammad Ghori and Qutb-ud-din Aibak then inflicted upon the Khokhar population of Jhelum, Chakwal, and Sargodha in November–December 1205 CE is recorded by Hasan Nizami (Tāj-ul-Ma'āsir, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. II, pp. 233–235), Minhaj-i-Siraj, and Firishta in terms that beggar belief:

"The Sultan ordered a general massacre of the Khokhars... The blood of the infidels flowed in crimson torrents through the ravines of the Salt Range, and over twenty thousand [some chronicles say up to 100,000] Khokhar men, youths, and elders were put to the sword. So vast was the number of Hindu women, boys, and girls dragged into slavery from the hills of Jud and Jhelum that in the camp of the Sultan and the markets of Ghazni, five Hindu Khokhar slaves were sold for a single dinar!" — Minhaj-i-Siraj, Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī (Raverty trans., Vol. I, pp. 481–483); Hasan Nizami, Tāj-ul-Ma'āsir & Firishta

---

IV. March 15, 1206 CE: The Night of Vengeance at Dhamiak (Jhelum District) — How Twenty Khokhar Martyrs Assassinated Sultan Muhammad Ghori

After spending the winter of 1205–1206 CE in Lahore dividing the plunder and slave-caravans of the Salt Range, Sultan Muhammad Ghori set out in late February 1206 CE to march back to Ghazni and prepare a massive campaign into Central Asia.

Crossing the Jhelum River, the Sultan pitched his magnificent crimson imperial pavilion at the halting-stage of Dhamiak (Damyak, located in Sohawa Tehsil of modern Jhelum District, Punjab, Pakistan, just off the Grand Trunk Road near Rohtas and the Salt Range). He ordered his tent pitched right along the cool bank of the river/stream so that the breeze off the water would refresh his quarters.

Inside the ravines of the nearby Salt Range, however, a band of twenty heroic Hindu Khokhar warriors—young men whose fathers, brothers, wives, and children had just been butchered or sold at five for a single dinar by Muhammad Ghori four months earlier—swore a sacred blood-oath (Mṛtyu-Śapatha) before their clan deity: they would not live another week unless they slew the butcher of their people with their own hands!

How these twenty Khokhar heroes carried out the most famous tyrannicide in medieval Asian history is recorded verbatim by Minhaj-i-Siraj (Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī, Vol. I, pp. 484–486), Ibn al-Athir (Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, Vol. XII, pp. 136–138, who explicitly identifies the assassins as "infidel Khokhars" seeking vengeance for the slaughter and enslavement of their tribe), and Juvaini (Tārīkh-i-Jahān-Gushā):

1. For days, the twenty Khokhar warriors shadowed the imperial camp from the hills, hiding in the reeds along the river until Ghori's army halted at Dhamiak (Jhelum District) on 3rd Sha'ban 602 AH (March 15, 1206 CE).
2. Waiting until the sun dipped below the Salt Range ridges and the call to evening prayer (Maghrib) echoed across the camp—when the outer Turkic guards were dispersed or kneeling in prayer—the Khokhar warriors swam silently across the chilly river waters or crept through the brush with long curved daggers (kārd) strapped to their chests.
3. Bursting out of the twilight shadows at the doorway of the crimson imperial enclosure, two Khokhars instantly slit the throats of the outer sentries before they could raise a cry.
4. Hearing the commotion, several bodyguards fled in terror, leaving the inner pavilion unguarded. The remaining Khokhar warriors tore open the silk tent flaps, leaped into the inner chamber where Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad Ghori was kneeling on his prayer carpet, fell upon the conqueror of North India from every side, and drove their daggers into his body twenty-two times!

Let Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani—the official chief Qazi and historian of the Delhi Sultanate—record the final moments at Dhamiak in his own words:

"When the Sultan's camp was pitched at the halting-place of Damyak [Dhamiak, Jhelum District], on the third day of the month of Sha'ban in the year 602 AH [March 15, 1206 CE], while the Sultan was engaged in the evening prayer, certain devotees of the Khokhar tribe who had lost their fathers, brothers, and kinsfolk in the recent slaughter crept through the water and burst into the royal pavilion. They slew the guards at the entrance, rushed upon Sultan Mu'izz al-Din, and struck him to the ground with twenty-two dagger wounds, so that he died upon the spot." — Minhaj-i-Siraj Juzjani, Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī (trans. Major H.G. Raverty, London, 1881, Vol. I, pp. 484–486)

Every single one of the twenty Khokhar heroes inside the royal compound fought the converging imperial bodyguards until he was hacked to pieces on the spot—dying with a smile on his lips knowing that the tyrant who had enslaved their mothers and sisters lay dead in a pool of blood at their feet.

Because Muhammad Ghori left no son, his assassination at Dhamiak on March 15, 1206 CE instantly shattered the unified Ghurid Empire, severing Ghazni and Afghanistan from Delhi and preventing Ghori's planned centralization of the empire.

The Ultimate Historical Irony at Dhamiak Today

If you drive today to the village of Dhamiak in Sohawa Tehsil, Jhelum District, Punjab, Pakistan, you will see an ornate marble mausoleum erected in 1994–1995 by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, glorifying Sultan Shihab-ud-din / Mu'izz-ud-din Muhammad Ghori as a "pakistani national hero" (after whom Pakistan even named its Ghauri ballistic missile!).

And who are the villagers, police officers, soldiers, and landowners living in the villages surrounding Dhamiak in Jhelum, Chakwal, and Sargodha who walk past that tomb every day?

Hundreds of thousands of them carry the surname Khokhar, Gakhar, and Janjua!

By the cruelest psychological lobotomy in human history, state textbooks have trained the modern Muslim Khokhars of Jhelum and Punjab to lay wreaths at the tomb of the foreign invader who slaughtered 20,000 of their own Khokhar great-grandfathers and sold their great-grandmothers at five for a single dinar—while cursing as "Kafirs" the twenty immortal Khokhar martyrs of their own bloodline who gave their lives at Dhamiak on March 15, 1206 to avenge the honor of the Salt Range!

---

Summary Chronology of Part II: The 562-Year Frontier Resistance (644–1206 CE)

PART III: THE SIX ENGINES OF CONVERSION — HOW A SANĀTANI MAJORITY WAS BROKEN (712–1843 CE)

"A civilization of twenty million souls does not abandon the Gods, the rivers, and the ancestors of four thousand years because a wandering preacher recited a verse in a language they could not understand. The demographic flip of the Sapta-Sindhu was not a miracle of persuasion; it was the cumulative product of six interlocking legal, fiscal, military, and feudal engines operating continuously across fifty generations."

flowchart LR
    E1["ENGINE 1:<br/>The Sword & Slave-Market<br/>Kalima Pardon"] --> FLIP["THE DEMOGRAPHIC FLIP<br/>OF THE INDUS BASIN<br/>(712 – 1843 CE)<br/>From 99% Sanātani<br/>to 75–80% Muslim"]
    E2["ENGINE 2:<br/>The Fiscal Guillotine<br/>Jizya + 50% Kharaj<br/>& Revenue Slavery"] --> FLIP
    E3["ENGINE 3:<br/>Imperial Hostage-Princes<br/>& Succession Sanads<br/>for Hill Rajas"] --> FLIP
    E4["ENGINE 4:<br/>The Khanqah-Jagir<br/>Land-Grant &<br/>Canal Monopoly"] --> FLIP
    E5["ENGINE 5:<br/>The Qazi Blasphemy &<br/>Forced Circumcision<br/>Trap ('Sheikhs')"] --> FLIP
    E6["ENGINE 6:<br/>Zamindari Peshgi<br/>Debt-Bondage &<br/>Well Exclusion ('Musallis')"] --> FLIP

---

CHAPTER 9

Engines 1 & 2 — The Sword-and-Slave Pardon & The Fiscal Guillotine (Jizya + 50% Kharaj)

अदण्ड्यान् दण्डयन् राजा दण्ड्यांश्चैवाप्यदण्डयन् । अयशो महदाप्नोति नरकं चैव गच्छति ॥

adaṇḍyān daṇḍayan rājā daṇḍyāṃś caivāpy adaṇḍayan | ayaśo mahad āpnoti narakaṃ caiva gacchati ||

"A ruler who punishes the innocent and rewards the oppressor reaps boundless infamy and plunges his realm into hell." — Manusmṛti 8.128

I. The Fundamental Geographical Question: Why Did West Punjab and Sindh Convert at Four Times the Rate of the Gangetic Heartland?

Any serious historian of South Asia must confront a striking demographic paradox. The Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 CE) and the Mughal Empire (1526–1857 CE) had their imperial capitals at Delhi and Agra, right in the heart of modern Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Yet when the British conducted the first comprehensive censuses of India between 1872 and 1901, the districts surrounding Delhi, Agra, Mathura, Prayagraj, and Kashi remained 84% to 88% Hindu, whereas West Punjab (west of the Ravi and Chenab) had become 60% to 85% Muslim and Sindh had become 75% to 78% Muslim.

Why did the provinces furthest from the imperial throne in Agra and Delhi undergo a near-total religious transformation, while the Gangetic plains right outside the palace gates of the Sultans and Emperors preserved their Hindu majority?

For decades, ideological polemicists have offered two equally unscientific answers: either that the people of Pakistan are the biological descendants of Arab, Persian, and Turkic immigrants (a falsehood pulverized by 21st-century autosomal DNA, as proven in Chapter 4), or that the inhabitants of the Indus basin were peculiarly "egalitarian" and voluntarily flocked to Islam to escape the Hindu caste system (a claim refuted by the fact that converted Pakistani Rajput, Jat, Gujjar, Sheikh, and Musalli clans rigidly preserved caste endogamy, untouchability, and feudal hierarchy after conversion).

The real answer lies in historical geography, military logistics, and agrarian hydraulics:

1. The Permanent Invasion Corridor (Shāh-Rāh): Every single overland invasion of India for eight hundred years—from Sabuktigin (986) and Mahmud of Ghazni (1001–1027) to Muhammad Ghori (1175–1206), the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, Chagatai, Hulagu, and Qutlugh Khwaja (1221–1327), Amir Timur (1398), Babur (1505–1526), Nadir Shah (1738–1739), and Ahmad Shah Abdali (1748–1767)—marched directly across the narrow bottleneck of Peshawar, Attock, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Gujrat, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Lahore, Dipalpur, and Multan. An army marching from Kabul to Delhi might raid Mathura or Kanauj once in a generation and withdraw; it marched through, quartered its troops in, and requisitioned grain and slaves from West Punjab every single year.
2. The Absence of Forest Cover and Hill Refuges in the Riverine Plains: In Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, or the Himalayan foothills of Himachal and Uttarakhand, Hindu farmers and chieftains could melt into dense tropical jungles or monsoon-swollen ravines where Turkic heavy cavalry could not operate. In the flat, semi-arid alluvial plains of Sindh and the West Punjab Doabs (Sindh-Sagar, Chaj, Rachna, and Bari), receive less than 8 to 15 inches of annual rainfall, human survival was physically impossible outside the narrow ribbon of riverine floodplains (Sailāba / Kachhī) and Persian-wheel irrigation wells (Chāh / Rahat).
3. Total Hydraulic Vulnerability to the State Revenue Collector (Amil): Because a family in Jhang, Multan, Montgomery, or Sanghar could not grow a single grain of wheat without an irrigated well or an inundation canal (Kārez / Wah), and because a brick-lined Persian-wheel well could neither be hidden nor carried into the desert, the state revenue officer (Amil, Krori, or Jagirdar) held a literal life-and-death stranglehold over every household. Seize a Hindu peasant's well or double his water-tax, and his family starved within a single harvest cycle.

Upon this exposed hydraulic landscape, Islamic rulers from 712 to 1843 CE operated Six Interlocking Engines of Conversion. In this chapter, we examine the first two foundational engines: Engine 1 (The Sword-and-Slave-Market Kalima Pardon) and Engine 2 (The Fiscal Guillotine of Jizya, 50% Kharaj, and Revenue Slavery).

---

II. Engine 1: The Sword-and-Slave-Market Kalima Pardon and the 24 Humiliating Zunnar Decrees on the Lohanas and Jats of Sindh (712 CE)

The first and most direct engine of conversion operated during and immediately after every military siege, rebellion crackdown, and slave-raid from 712 CE to the 18th century. Under the classical Hanafi and early Umayyad law of war (Siyar) applied on the Indian frontier, when a city or rebel pargana was taken by storm ('Anwatan) rather than prior capitulation (Sulḥan), the lives of all adult fighting men and the freedom of all women and children were legally forfeit to the conqueror—with one instantaneous legal escape clause:

Any captive who raised his finger, recited the Islamic creed (Kalima Shahādat), and submitted to circumcision on the spot was legally spared execution, exempted from enslavement, and often allowed to retain his ancestral house and a portion of his land.

We have already seen this mechanism in the invaders' own words at Debal (712 CE), where Al-Baladhuri recorded that "every male above the age of seventeen who refused to embrace Islam was slain", and at Bhatiya (1004 CE), where Al-Utbi recorded that "no quarter was given to the infidels; only those who embraced Islam were spared."

Even more revealing, however, is what happened to those indigenous tribes of Sindh who were not immediately executed after the fall of Brahmanabad and Alor in 712 CE. How did the Umayyad state treat the surviving rural Jats (Jatān) and Lohanas (Lūhānā)—the two largest indigenous Sanātani populations of Sindh?

In the Chachnāma (trans. Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, 1900, pp. 163–171; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, pp. 182–187), Ali Kufi preserves the verbatim interrogation conducted by Muhammad bin Qasim and his minister Wada'ah ibn Hamid al-Bahili regarding how the indigenous Lohanas, Jats, Sahtas, and Channas had been governed, followed by the Umayyad Code of Social Humiliation imposed upon them with the approval of Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf:

"Muhammad bin Qasim inquired of the chamberlain Sisakar and the Brahmins regarding the position of the Jats and the Lohanas... They replied that in the reign of King Chach, the Jats and Lohanas were fierce and turbulent tribes who dwelt in the rural villages and riverbanks. Muhammad bin Qasim thereupon said: 'What disgusting people they are! They are just like the wild savages of Fars and the mountaineers of Syria; let them be bound by the very same humiliating rules!'" — Ali Kufi, Chachnāma (trans. Fredunbeg, 1900, p. 169; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, p. 186)

The Chachnāma and Al-Baladhuri (Futūḥ al-Buldān, pp. 439–440) then enumerate the humiliating Dhimmi / Zunnar regulations enforced day after day upon the unconverted Jats and Lohanas of Sindh:

1. Forbidden to Wear Silk, Velvet, or Fine Cloth: No Jat or Lohana was permitted to wear soft fabric, silk, or embroidered garments; he had to wear coarse rough cloth (kambal) with a distinguishing patch.
2. Compulsory Bareheadedness and Barefootedness: In public towns and before Arab officials, indigenous Jats and Lohanas had to walk bareheaded and barefooted, wearing only a coarse black or yellow woolen waist-cord (Zunnār) so that any Muslim could instantly identify them at a distance as subject Zimmis.
3. Forbidden to Ride Horses or Use Saddles: A Hindu Jat or Lohana was strictly forbidden on pain of flogging or death to ride a horse, or to place a saddle or bridle upon any mount; if he had to ride an animal at all, he had to sit sideways without a saddle or stirrups.
4. Forbidden to Carry Swords or Weapons: The martial Kshatriya and Jat population of Sindh was stripped of the right to carry a sword, bow, or spear.
5. Compulsory Escort of Dogs: Whenever a rural Jat walked from his village into a town or market, he was legally required to bring a dog with him on a leash, so that he would be publicly associated with ritual impurity and instantly recognizable to the garrison guards!
6. Compulsory Three-Day Free Quartering of Any Muslim Traveler: Every Jat and Lohana household was legally obligated to keep its doors unlocked and feed and house any passing Muslim soldier or traveler for three days and nights at the family's own expense, and to nurse any sick traveler without compensation.
7. Branding of Hands (Khatm) for Jizya Collection: As recorded by Al-Baladhuri (during the governorship of Amr ibn Muslim al-Bahili and Amran ibn Musa al-Barmaki in Sindh, Futūḥ al-Buldān, pp. 441, 445), when the Jats and Meds of Sindh were summoned to pay their poll-tax (Jizya), the Arab governors tattooed or branded a seal-mark onto their hands (khatama aydiyahum) and forced each man to bring a dog with him as he stood in line to pay silver!
8. Execution and Enslavement of Whole Families for Tax Theft: If any man of a Jat or Lohana village committed a breach of the peace or defaulted on tribute, the Chachnāma records that the statutory penalty was to burn his wife, children, and household alive or seize them as state slaves.

Imagine the psychological and social crushing power of this legal code operating not for a week or a year, but across generations. A proud Hindu Lohana, Jat, Soomra, or Samma warrior—whose ancestors had ridden the finest horses in Asia and carried steel from Multan to Debal—was told every morning that as long as he remained faithful to the Vedas, he must walk barefoot through his own ancestral town dragging a dog on a rope, forbidden to mount a horse, forbidden to carry a blade, his hand branded like cattle at the tax office, and his home open to any soldier who demanded food.

Yet the instant he walked into the Qazi's court and pronounced the Kalima, the dog-leash was dropped, shoes were placed on his feet, a turban was wrapped around his head, he was permitted to mount a saddled horse and strap on a sword, and his poll-tax was canceled!

---

III. Engine 2: The Fiscal Guillotine — How Jizya + 50% Kharaj + Charai + Ghari Drove the Indus Peasantry into Ruin

While sword-massacres occurred during wars and rebellions, Engine 2—the Fiscal Guillotine—operated every single harvest season in peacetime.

In the classical Hindu statecraft codified at Takshashila by Acharya Chanakya (Arthashastra) and in the Manusmriti (7.130), the king's lawful share (Ṣaḍbhāga) of agricultural produce was one-sixth (16.6%) of the crop, rising to one-fourth (25%) only during extreme wartime emergencies, and was automatically waived during droughts.

Under the Delhi Sultanate (particularly from Alauddin Khilji, r. 1296–1316 CE, and Ghiyas-ud-din / Muhammad bin Tughlaq / Firuz Shah Tughlaq onward) and the Mughal Empire, the agrarian tax regime imposed upon Hindu cultivators (Kharāj-guzārs or Zimmīs) in the Punjab and Sindh was weaponized into an instrument of deliberate economic strangulation.

We do not have to guess at the intent of this tax regime. Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357 CE), the orthodox court historian of the Delhi Sultanate and companion of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah Tughlaq, recorded the exact legal and fiscal policy in his masterpiece Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (completed 1357 CE, Bibliotheca Indica edition, Calcutta, 1862, pp. 287–291; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 182–185).

Describing how Sultan Alauddin Khilji consulted his ulema on how to break the rural Hindu village headmen—the Khūts, Muqaddams, and *Chaudhrīs* (the exact title still borne by millions of converted Jat, Gujjar, and Rajput families in Pakistani Punjab today!)—Barani wrote verbatim:

"The Sultan demanded of his wise men by what measures the Hindus could be ground down so that wealth and property—which are the source of rebellion and pride—should no longer remain in their houses. He ordered four decrees to be enforced:

First, that the Hindu cultivators should be forced by the measurement of every biswa of land to pay one-half (50%) of the gross produce into the royal treasury without the slightest deduction, so that no surplus should remain to the Khuts and Muqaddams.

Second, that a grazing tax (Charāī) should be levied upon every milk-producing cow, buffalo, sheep, and goat.

Third, that a house tax (Gharī) should be demanded from every inhabited dwelling.

And the Sultan declared: 'I will bring the Hindus so low that they shall be unable to ride on horseback, to wear fine clothes, to carry arms, or to indulge in eating betel leaf (tambūl)!' And so strictly were these rules enforced by Sharaf Qaini and the revenue officers that a single revenue peon would tie twenty Khuts, Muqaddams, and Chaudhris by the neck with a single rope and beat them with sticks to extract the tax. There was no gold, silver, or coin left in the houses of the Hindus, and the wives of the Hindu Khuts and Muqaddams were driven by destitution to work as maidservants in the houses of the Muslims to earn a crust of bread!" — Ziauddin Barani, Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (Bib. Indica, pp. 287–288; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 182–184)

Immediately after recording this economic devastation of the Hindu peasantry, Barani recorded the famous legal conversation at court between Sultan Alauddin Khilji and Qazi Mughisuddin of Bayana regarding the status of the Hindu tax-payer (Kharāj-guzār) under Islamic Sacred Law (Sharī'at):

"The Sultan asked Qazi Mughisuddin: 'How are the Hindus designated in the Sacred Law as payers of tribute (Kharāj-guzār)?' The Qazi answered: 'They are called payers of tribute, and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should, without question and with all humility and respect, tender gold! If the tax-collector chooses to spit into the Hindu's mouth, the Hindu must without reluctance open his mouth to receive the spittle! The meaning of doing such a thing is that the Hindu, by acting in this humble manner, shows his subservience and obedience, and promotes the glory of Islam and the degradation of false religion. God Himself has commanded their complete degradation in the Quran [9:29], saying: Until they pay the Jizya out of hand and have been humbled!' " — Ziauddin Barani, Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (Bib. Indica, p. 290; Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, p. 184)

The Crushing Arithmetic of the Four-Fold Tax Burden on a West Punjab or Sindhi Hindu Peasant

Let us examine the actual annual fiscal arithmetic faced by a Hindu Jat, Gujjar, Rajput, or Arora farming family on a 10-acre well-irrigated holding in Sialkot, Gujranwala, Jhang, Multan, or Thatta during the Sultanate and Mughal eras (particularly under the Tughlaqs, Lodis, and Emperor Aurangzeb, 1679–1707 CE):

---

IV. Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq's Personal Written Confession (Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, c. 1375 CE)

If anyone still doubts that the Jizya poll-tax was deliberately engineered and advertised by the state as a financial lever to convert the Hindu masses, we possess a historical document of unmatched authority: the autobiographical memoir of Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–1388 CE), titled Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (The Victories of Firuz Shah), which the Sultan personally composed and had inscribed onto the walls of the octagonal dome of the Jama Masjid in Firuzabad so that the entire world might read his achievements.

Firuz Shah Tughlaq was the very Sultan who marched repeatedly through the Punjab and Sindh (1365–1367 CE), dug canals in the Indo-Gangetic-Sutlej plains, founded Hisar and Firuzpur, and extended the Jizya even to Brahmins (prompting the Brahmins of Delhi and Punjab to go on a hunger strike at his palace gates and burn themselves alive rather than pay, as recorded by Shams-i-Siraj Afif in Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 365–366).

In the closing pages of his Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (trans. Prof. John Dowson in Elliot & Dowson, The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. III, 1871, p. 386), Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq proudly confessed in his own first-person voice how he converted large numbers of Hindus simply by proclaiming that anyone who recited the Kalima would immediately be freed from the crushing Jizya:

"I encouraged my infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the Prophet, and I proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Mussulman should be exempt from the jizya, or poll-tax. Information of this came to the ears of the people at large, and great numbers of Hindus presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the faith, were exonerated from the jizya, and were favoured with presents and honours. Thus they were favored with robes of honor and festive gifts, and were completely exempted from the payment of the Jizya!" — Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq, Futūḥāt-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (c. 1375 CE, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, p. 386)

Read that royal confession again. It is not a hostile British colonial report or a modern nationalist polemic; it is the Sultan of Delhi himself boasting on the walls of his own Friday Mosque that his tax-exemption decree caused "great numbers of Hindus" to present themselves day by day to escape the Jizya!

---

V. Aurangzeb's Fatāwā-i-Ālamgīrī and the Seizure of Wives and Children as Revenue Slaves During Indus Droughts

The fiscal guillotine reached its deadliest efficiency in West Punjab and Sindh during the forty-nine-year reign of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658–1707 CE)—the exact half-century to which the British District Gazetteers of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Jhelum, Shahpur, and Multan trace the mass conversion of hundreds of Hindu Jat, Gujjar, and Rajput villages in what is now Pakistan.

On April 2, 1679 CE, Aurangzeb formally re-imposed the graded Jizya across the Mughal Empire (documented by his court chronicler Saqi Must'ad Khan in Ma'āsir-i-Ālamgīrī, trans. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, p. 108, explicitly stating that the Emperor re-imposed Jizya "in order to spread Islam and put down the practice of infidelity").

Under the Hanafi legal code compiled by 500 Islamic jurists on Aurangzeb's personal orders—the Fatāwā-i-Ālamgīrī (Fatāwā al-Hindiyyah, Kitāb al-Siyar, Bāb al-Jizyah & Bāb al-Kharāj)—the rules governing Jizya and Kharaj collection in the provinces of Lahore, Multan, Thatta, and Kabul were ruthless:

1. The Graded Jizya Scale: Every non-Muslim male above the age of fourteen had to appear in person on foot before the collector (Amin-i-Jizyah). For the poorest class of rural peasants, weavers, and farmhands—anyone possessing even a single bullock, plow, or tools worth 200 dirhams (~Rs. 52)—the annual tax was 12 dirhams (Rs. 3 and 2 annas) per adult male. Because an average agricultural laborer or small peasant then earned barely Rs. 1.5 to Rs. 2 per month in cash, the Jizya on a father and two grown sons consumed up to two to three months' entire gross earnings on top of the 50% Kharaj land tax!
2. Physical Humiliation at Payment: As prescribed in the Fatāwā-i-Ālamgīrī, the Hindu payer had to approach on foot, stand while the Muslim collector sat, and place the silver coins in his open palm so the collector's hand was above and the Hindu's hand below, accompanied by a blow or grasp on the neck with the words: "O Dhimmi, pay the Jizya!"
3. No Remission for Drought Until Death, Followed by Seizure of Women and Children for Arrears: In the semi-arid plains of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Jhang, Multan, and Sindh, monsoon rains failed once every four to five years. When a drought struck and the Persian-wheel wells ran dry, a Hindu Cheema, Bajwa, Warraich, Virk, or Sandhu Jat farmer had zero harvest left after feeding his cattle. When the Mughal Faujdar or Jagirdar's horsemen rode into the village demanding the 50% Kharaj and the cash Jizya, the defaulting Hindu peasant faced an agonizing choice documented in European traveler accounts (Francisco Pelsaert, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, and Niccolao Manucci's Storia do Mogor, Vol. II, p. 415) and Mughal Akhbarat:
4. Either watch the collector's troopers confiscate his ancestral well-land (Chāh), chain him in the local dungeon, and seize his wife, daughters, and young sons to be sold as revenue slaves in the markets of Lahore, Multan, and Kabul to recover the tax arrears;
5. OR step forward with the village elders (Lambardars / Muqaddams), recite the Kalima, have the entire village's Jizya and past revenue arrears legally erased on the spot under the law of Fatāwā-i-Ālamgīrī (which held that conversion to Islam cancels all past Jizya liabilities!), and retain their wives, children, and ancestral fields!

As the Italian eyewitness Niccolao Manucci—who lived in Lahore for years during Aurangzeb's reign—recorded in his Storia do Mogor (trans. William Irvine, Vol. II, p. 415; Vol. III, p. 288):

"Many Hindus who are unable to pay the Jizya turn Muhammadan to obtain relief from the insults of the collectors... and when a peasant fails to pay the revenue, the governor seizes his wife and children and makes them slaves, unless he turns Muhammadan." — Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor (1653–1708 CE)

That is how Engines 1 and 2 broke the back of the rural Hindu peasantry along the Grand Trunk Road and the Indus plains: not through theological seminars, but through the cold fiscal arithmetic that made remaining Hindu a sentence of starvation, land-loss, and the enslavement of one's children.

---

CHAPTER 10

Engines 3 & 4 — Imperial Hostage-Princes (Sanad Conversions) & The Khanqah-Jagir Land-Grant Machine

भेदेन राजवंशानां बन्दिना राजसूनुना । सनदेन हृतं राज्यं गोत्रं ग्रामेषु नश्यति ॥

bhedena rājavaṃśānāṃ bandinā rājasūnunā | sanadena hṛtaṃ rājyaṃ gotraṃ grāmeṣu naśyati ||

"By dividing the royal houses, holding the young prince hostage, and dangling the imperial charter (Sanad), the kingdom is subverted from the top—and the clans in the villages follow their fallen king." — Historical Nyāya of the Hill Principalities of Chibhāl and the Salt Range

I. Engine 3: How Delhi and Agra Converted Fierce Rajput Hill Kingdoms Without Fighting Every Village — The Hostage-Prince & Sanad Mechanism

If the Fiscal Guillotine explains how open-plain agriculturalists in Sialkot, Gujranwala, and Multan were ground into conversion, a critical question remains: how did the Sultans and Mughal Emperors convert the fiercely martial Hindu Rajput hill kingdoms of the Salt Range (Janjua, Gakhar, Khokhar), the Pabbi and Jammu-Pir Panjal foothills (Chib, Jarral, Mangral, Domal, Bomba, Khakha), the Murree-Hazara mountains (Dhund, Satti, Karlal), and the Samma Jams of Thatta—mountain and desert bastions where warriors had cheerfully died by the tens of thousands rather than surrender?

Sending an imperial army into the jagged ravines of the Salt Range or the Bhimber-Rajouri-Kotli hills (Chibhāl) every five years was prohibitively expensive. Instead, the Delhi Sultans (especially Firuz Shah Tughlaq and the Lodis), the Mughal Emperors (Babur, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb), and later the Afghan Durrani rulers perfected Engine 3: The Imperial Hostage-Prince and Succession Sanad Machine.

The mechanism worked with clockwork political precision across four steps:

1. Exploiting a Dynastic Succession Dispute: In every Hindu Rajput hill principality—whether among the Janjuas of Malot/Makhiala in the Salt Range, the Gakhars of Pharwala/Dangali in Rawalpindi, the Chibs of Bhimber/Mirpur, the Jarrals of Rajouri, the Mangrals of Kotli, or the Samma Jams of Thatta—the death of an aging Hindu Raja inevitably triggered a succession rivalry between two sons, a younger brother, or a nephew.
2. The Offer of the Imperial Sanad, Mansab, and Cavalry: The imperial Subahdar in Lahore or the Emperor in Delhi/Agra would summon the rival claimant prince to court and present a simple bargain: "If you recite the Kalima, adopt an Islamic royal name alongside your Rajput title of Raja, and sign a tributary covenant, the Emperor will issue an imperial Sanad (royal patent) recognizing you as the sole legitimate Raja of your clan, bestow a Mughal Mansab (military rank) and tax-free Jagir upon you, and lend you 5,000 imperial horsemen to overthrow your unconverted Hindu brother/uncle!"
3. The Hostage Son (Yaraghmāl) at the Imperial Court: To ensure the newly converted Raja did not revert to Hinduism once he returned to his mountain fort (as dozens of Rajput chiefs initially did!), the Emperor required the Raja to leave his eldest son or younger brother as a permanent royal hostage (Yaraghmāl) at the court of Delhi, Agra, or Lahore. Raised from childhood inside the imperial harem and military camp, dressed in Mughal robes, married to a Muslim noblewoman, and educated by court Maulvis, this hostage prince returned to the hills twenty years later as a thoroughly Islamized ruler.
4. Top-Down Clan Cascading (Gotra Feudal Loyalty): In traditional Rajput clan structure, the junior kinsmen (Bhāyāts and Thakurs) held their village lands (Pattīs) directly through blood-fealty to their clan Raja. Once the ruling house of a Janjua, Gakhar, Chib, Jarral, Bhatti, or Samma kingdom was permanently Islamized and controlled the distribution of imperial Jagirs and military recruitment, the dependent clansmen across the surrounding 200 villages gradually followed their chief into nominal Islam over the next two to three generations in order to preserve their military stipends, marriage alliances with the royal family, and ancestral village estates!

Forensic Case Studies of Engine 3 Across Modern Pakistan and POJK

Let us examine five documented historical cases of this exact Hostage-Prince & Sanad Conversion Engine recorded in Persian court chronicles and the British District Gazetteers:

Look closely at the Samma Jams of Thatta recorded by Shams-i-Siraj Afif in the Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 332–338). When Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq starved Thatta into submission in 1367 CE by burning the surrounding crops and cutting the river approaches, he did not annex Sindh directly to a Turkic governor; instead, he took Jam Babiniya, his brother Tamachi, and the Samma royal family as hostages to Delhi, assigned them an annual stipend of 200,000 tankas on condition of their Islamic allegiance, kept them under watch at the Delhi court for years, and sent Jam Tamachi and later Babiniya back to Thatta only when the Samma royal dynasty had been thoroughly bound to the Islamic state!

---

II. Engine 4: Demystifying the "Peaceful Sufi Conversion" Myth — How the State-Backed Khanqah-Jagir & Canal Monopoly Converted the Pastoral Tribes (1200–1750 CE)

In modern academic and popular writing on Pakistan, no narrative is repeated more piously than the claim that while Sultans and Emperors may have fought wars, the rural masses of West Punjab and Sindh—the Sials, Tiwanas, Wattus, Joyas, Kharals, Gondals, Ranjhas, Langahs, Chhinas, and Sammat tribes—were peacefully and voluntarily converted by the spiritual charisma of great Sufi saints (Pīrs and Makhdūms) at the shrines (Khanqahs and Dargahs) of: - Pakpattan (ancient Ajodhan): Shrine of Shaikh Farid-ud-din Ganjshakar (Baba Farid, d. 1265 CE) and his hereditary Diwan successors; - Multan (ancient Mūlasthāna): Shrine of Shaikh Baha-ud-din Zakariya (1170–1262 CE) and his grandson Shaikh Rukn-ud-din Abul Fateh (Rukn-i-Alam); - Uch Sharif (ancient Devagarh / Uchcha): Shrine of Sayyid Jalal-ud-din Surkh-Posh Bukhari (1199–1291 CE) and his grandson Makhdum Jahaniyan Jahangasht (1308–1384 CE), close confidant of Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq; - Jhang / Chiniot / Shergarh / Taunsa / Sehwan: Shrines of Shah Jeewana, Daud Bandagi Kirmani, and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.

Even the American historian Prof. Richard M. Eaton—whose research on the shrine of Baba Farid at Pakpattan ("The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid", in Essays on Islam and Indian History, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 203–224, and "Court of Man, Court of God: Local Perceptions of the Shrine of Baba Farid, Pakpattan, Punjab", 1982) documented the conversion timelines of the Wattu, Sial, Tiwana, Joya, Kharal, and Hans clans—is frequently misquoted by selective readers who ignore the economic, agrarian, and state-coercive infrastructure that Eaton's own archival data and the Punjab District Gazetteers reveal!

When we examine the primary Persian chronicles (Tabaqāt-i-Nāsirī, Siyar-ul-Ārifīn, Jawāhir-i-Farīdī compiled by Ali Asghar Chishti in 1623 CE, and Tārīkh-i-Fīrūz Shāhī) alongside the British Settlement Reports of Montgomery (Sahiwal/Pakpattan), Jhang, Shahpur (Sargodha), and Multan, we discover that the great Khanqahs of the Indus basin were never detached, anti-state retreats of poverty-stricken mystics.

On the contrary, the major Suhrawardi, Chishti-Nizami/Sabiri (in their later hereditary Diwan phase), and Qadiri Khanqahs of Multan, Uch, Pakpattan, and Jhang functioned as state-endowed feudal corporations backed by the full military and fiscal power of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire!

How the Khanqah-Jagir Machine Actually Operated Across Four Structural Levers

1. Massive Imperial Tax-Free Land Grants (Inām / Madad-i-Ma'āsh / A'imma) and State Grain Vaults

In Multan and Uch, the Suhrawardi patriarch Shaikh Baha-ud-din Zakariya was not an ascetic living on wild berries; he was the richest landowner and grain-financier in southern Punjab. As recorded by Minhaj-i-Siraj and Hamid bin Fazlullah Jamali (Siyar-ul-Ārifīn), when Sultan Shams-ud-din Iltutmish annexed Multan and Uch from Qabacha in 1228 CE, he appointed Baha-ud-din Zakariya to the official state post of Shaikh-ul-Islām, bestowing vast tax-free villages (Inām) and state stipends upon his Khanqah.

So immense were the granaries and gold reserves inside Baha-ud-din Zakariya's Khanqah in Multan that when the royal governor of Multan ran out of grain to feed the Sultanate army or pay a 100,000-dinar ransom to invading Mongols under Sali Noyan (1246 CE), the Shaikh paid the 100,000 dinars in cash out of his own Khanqah treasury and loaned thousands of kharwars of grain to the military garrison! Similarly, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq, Emperor Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb* endowed the hereditary Diwāns (shrine custodians) of Pakpattan (Ajodhan), Uch, and Multan with tens of thousands of acres of prime, 100% tax-free riverine land (Madad-i-Ma'āsh) and entire revenue circles (Jagirs*).

2. Monopoly Control Over Riverine Irrigation Canals and Well-Sinking Leases during the Pastoral-to-Agrarian Transition (1300–1750 CE)

Between 1250 and 1750 CE, the semi-nomadic Hindu Rajput and Jat pastoral tribes of the Ravi, Sutlej, Chenab, and Jhelum river valleys—the Sials of Jhang, the Tiwanas of Shahpur, the Wattus and Joyas of Pakpattan/Okara, the Kharals of Kamalia, the Chadhars, and the Gondals—underwent a monumental economic transition from cattle-herding in the dry uplands (Bār) to settled Persian-wheel (Chāh) and inundation-canal wheat farming along the river floodplains (Hithār / Bet).

Who legally owned or controlled the Sanads to dig inundation canals and sink tax-privileged wells along the Sutlej at Ajodhan (Pakpattan), the Ravi at Shergarh/Dipalpur, the Chenab at Jhang/Uch, and the Indus at Multan/Taunsa?

The Mughal/Sultanate Governors (Subahdars of Multan and Lahore) and the hereditary Sajjada-Nashins (Diwāns and Makhdūms) of the state-backed Khanqahs!

If a Hindu Wattu, Joya, Sial, or Kharal clan wanted to clear riverine scrubland, dig a canal cut from the Sutlej or Chenab, and secure a legal title deed (Patta / Sanad) recognized by the Mughal Faujdar at Dipalpur or Multan without having 50% of their crop confiscated as Kharaj and every male taxed for Jizya, there was only one institutional doorway available: - The clan chief (Rai or Chaudhri) had to travel to the Khanqah at Pakpattan, Uch, or Multan, pledge formal spiritual-political allegiance (Bay'at) as a Murīd (disciple/tributary) of the Diwan/Makhdum, accept an Islamic name for his clan register, and agree to pay a small annual Nazar (shrine offering) in exchange for the Khanqah's legal protection and tax-shielded tenure!

3. Direct Military Collaboration Between the Khanqahs and Imperial Punitive Armies

Whenever an indigenous Hindu tribe in the Punjab or Sindh resisted the Sultanate or the Khanqah's authority, the Sajjada-Nashins did not rely on prayer alone—they summoned the Sultan's cavalry! - At Multan (1228 CE), it was Shaikh Baha-ud-din Zakariya who secretly wrote letters inviting Sultan Iltutmish to invade Multan and overthrow local autonomy. - At Thatta (1365–1367 CE), when the Samma Jams of Sindh defied Delhi and resisted Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq, who traveled personally between Delhi and the army camp in Sindh to negotiate the subjugation and Islamization of the Samma royal house? Sayyid Jalal-ud-din / Makhdum Jahaniyan Jahangasht of Uch Sharif, who received lavish imperial stipends and land grants from Firuz Shah Tughlaq for bringing the Sindhi chiefs into submission (Shams-i-Siraj Afif, Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 336–339)! - At Ajodhan / Dipalpur (November 1398 CE), when Amir Timur (Tamerlane) invaded West Punjab, he stopped personally to pray and bestow gifts at the shrine of Baba Farid in Ajodhan (Pakpattan)—whose elite residents collaborated with Timur—and then marched twenty miles down the road to Dipalpur and Bhatner, where Timur's soldiers slaughtered over 10,000+ unconverted and rebellious Hindu Bhatti Rajput and Jat defenders and burned their towns to the ground (Malfūzāt-i-Tīmūrī & Sharaf-ud-din Yazdi's Zafarnāma, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 421–427, 487–491)!

flowchart TD
    STATE["Sultanate & Mughal Imperial State<br/>(Governors at Lahore, Multan, Dipalpur & Thatta)"]
    KHANQAH["State-Endowed Khanqah / Dargah<br/>(Pakpattan, Multan, Uch, Jhang, Shergarh)"]
    TRIBE["Indigenous Hindu Rajput, Jat & Gujjar Clans<br/>(Sial, Tiwana, Wattu, Joya, Kharal, Bhatti, Gondal)"]

    STATE -->|"1. Grants 100% Tax-Free Estates (Madad-i-Ma'ash)<br/>Canal Rights & Military Backing"| KHANQAH
    STATE -->|"2. Threatens Unconverted Villages with<br/>50% Kharaj, Jizya & Punitive Cavalry Raids"| TRIBE
    TRIBE -->|"3. Clan Chief (Rai/Chaudhri) Becomes 'Murid'<br/>to Secure Land Title, Canal Water & Tax Shield"| KHANQAH
    KHANQAH -->|"4. Delivers Tributary Loyalty, Revenue &<br/>Multi-Generational Islamization"| STATE

4. The Multi-Generational Slow Absorption Recorded in the Jawāhir-i-Farīdī (1623 CE) and District Gazetteers

Even Prof. Richard Eaton's own landmark study of the Jawāhir-i-Farīdī (1623 CE genealogical register of the Pakpattan shrine) and the Montgomery and Jhang District Gazetteers proves that these clan conversions were initially political and institutional alliances, not sudden theological awakenings:

1. The Sials of Jhang (Gazetteer of the Jhang District 1883–84, pp. 43–52): Their ancestor Rai Sial was the son of Rai Shankar, a Hindu Parmar (Panwar) Rajput of Daranagar. Migrating into the Punjab during the turbulent 13th century (c. 1258–1265 CE) when Ghiyas-ud-din Balban's garrisons held Dipalpur and Multan, Rai Sial visited Ajodhan (Pakpattan), allied with the shrine of Baba Farid, and married the daughter of a local Muslim chief to secure territorial settlement rights in the lower Chenab valley.
2. The Wattus, Joyas, Hans, and Khichis of the Sutlej (Montgomery District Gazetteer 1898–99, pp. 58–75): Descendants of Hindu Bhatti/Yaduvanshi, Yaudheya, and Chauhan Rajputs whose clan chiefs became tributary Murids of the Pakpattan Diwans and Shergarh Pirs between the 14th and 16th centuries as they settled on canal- and well-irrigated Jagir lands along the Sutlej and Ravi.
3. Centuries of Persistent Hindu Naming Before Clerical Standardization: By analyzing the actual personal names of converts' sons and grandsons across four centuries (1300–1800 CE) in the clan genealogies of the Sials, Wattus, and Tiwanas, historians discovered that for two hundred years after their chief's initial allegiance to the Khanqah, the common tribesmen continued to give their sons traditional Hindu/Punjabi Rajput names (Rai, Mal, Chand, Ratna, Lal, Bhupa, Lakha, Sahra, Dodo) and continued employing Brahmin Purohits at their weddings! Only when Mughal fiscal administration and 18th/19th-century clerical Madrasa networks penetrated every village were their names systematically replaced with Arabic names (Muhammad, Ahmad, Ghulam, Allah-Ditta).

Thus, Engine 4 (The Khanqah-Jagir Machine) worked hand-in-glove with Engines 1, 2, and 3: the Sultan's sword and tax-collector wielded the stick of ruin, while the state-endowed Pir's Khanqah offered the sole legal sanctuary of land-title, canal water, and tax relief—at the price of the clan's ancestral Sanātani identity.

---

CHAPTER 11

Engines 5 & 6 — The Qazi Blasphemy-Circumcision Trap (Sheikhs) & Feudal Debt-Bondage (Musallis)

कूटसाक्ष्येन बद्ध्वा तु छित्वा चर्म बलात् कलौ । गोमांसं पाययित्वा च स्वजनान् विप्रयोजयेत् ॥

kūṭasākṣyeṇa baddhvā tu chitvā carma balāt kalau | gomāṃsaṃ pāyayitvā ca svajanān viprayojayet ||

"Seizing the innocent through false witnesses, mutilating his flesh by force, and compelling him to swallow forbidden beef, the tyrants of the Kali age sever a man from his own kinsfolk forever." — Historical Testimony of the Sindhi Hindu Tikhanas (18th–19th Century CE)

I. Who Are Pakistan's Millions of Urban Sheikhs and Rural Musallis?

In the social hierarchy of modern Pakistan, two enormous population groups stand outside the traditional landed Rajput, Jat, and Gujjar tribes:

1. In Urban Sindh and Punjab — The Sheikhs (Nau-Muslims / Khojas / Memons): Numbering several million across Karachi, Hyderabad, Thatta, Shikarpur, Sukkur, Larkana, Lahore, Chiniot, Rawalpindi, and Bhera. In Arabic, the word Shaikh literally means an "elder" or a descendant of the early companions of Mecca and Medina. Yet as Sir Denzil Ibbetson explicitly noted in the 1881 Punjab Census (Panjab Castes, §540) and Sir Richard Francis Burton documented in Sindh* (1851), in the Indus basin the title Sheikh (Nau-Muslim* or "New Muslim") became the universal euphemistic designation given to converted urban Hindu Lohanas, Khatris, Aroras, Bhatias, and Bhaibands**!
2. In Rural West Punjab — The Musallis and Dindars: Numbering over 1.5 to 2 million landless agricultural workers, brick-kiln laborers, and sanitation workers across Faisalabad (Lyallpur), Sheikhupura, Sargodha, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Lahore, and Sahiwal (Montgomery). In Arabic, Musallī means "one who performs the ritual prayer (Salāt)." In the real-world caste hierarchy of rural West Punjab, however, Musalli is the exact caste-label given to indigenous Hindu Valmiki (Chuhra), Meghwal, Od, and Bawaria Dalit farmhands who were coerced into reciting the Kalima under the crushing heel of feudal Zamindari debt-bondage!

How were tens of thousands of prosperous, educated Hindu Lohana and Bhatia families in Sindh turned into Muslim Sheikhs during the 18th and early 19th centuries? And how were 1.5+ million landless Hindu Valmikis in West Punjab turned into Muslim Musallis between 1850 and the post-Partition era?

The primary archival records of Engine 5 (The Qazi Blasphemy-and-Forced-Circumcision Trap) and Engine 6 (Feudal Peshgi Debt-Bondage and Well-Exclusion) provide some of the most harrowing reading in South Asian history.

---

II. Engine 5: The Qazi Blasphemy-Circumcision Trap Under the Kalhora and Talpur Mirs of Sindh (1701–1843 CE)

Between 1701 and 1843 CE—following the decline of direct Mughal administration and prior to the British annexation of Sindh by Sir Charles Napier in February 1843—Sindh was ruled successively by two local dynasties: the Kalhoras (1701–1783 CE) and the Talpur Mirs (1783–1843 CE), governing from Khudabad, Hyderabad, Thatta, Khairpur, and Mirpur.

During these 142 years, the surviving Hindu population of Sindh—consisting primarily of the enterprising Lohana caste (divided into Amils, who served as revenue scribes and administrators because the tribal Mirs were largely illiterate in revenue accounting, and Bhaibands / Sahukars, who conducted all banking and trade), alongside Bhatias, Sahtas, and Saraswat/Pokharna Brahmins—lived under a regime of legalized daily terror.

We do not rely on second-hand rumors for how this terror operated. We possess two extraordinary, independent, first-hand eyewitness memoirs written by men who lived in Sindh during the exact final decades of Talpur rule:

1. Memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand, C.S.I., of Karachi (1804–1878): Written by the patriarch of one of Sindh's oldest Hindu Lohana merchant families (whose ancestors had lived across Thatta, Shahbandar, Hyderabad, and Karachi since the 17th century), translated and edited by the British Commissioner in Sind, Sir H. Evan M. James (Exeter: William Pollard & Co., 1915, especially pp. 34–52).
2. Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1851, especially Chapter XI, and Scinde; or, The Unhappy Valley, 1851) by the famed polyglot orientalist and intelligence officer Captain (later Sir) Richard Francis Burton, who arrived in Sindh immediately after 1843 and spoke fluent Sindhi, Arabic, and Persian.

Both Seth Naomal Hotchand and Sir Richard Burton independently describe the exact same diabolical legal machine—what we term The Verbal Blasphemy / Accidental Utterance Forced-Circumcision Trap:

Under the Qazi courts of the Kalhora and Talpur Mirs in Thatta, Hyderabad, Hala, Shikarpur, Rohri, and Khairpur, a rule of fanatic jurisprudence was enforced whereby if a Hindu male even accidentally pronounced an Arabic word associated with Islam or the Prophet, or if two Muslim witnesses swore before a Qazi that they had heard a Hindu utter such a word, that Hindu was declared to have either "insulted Islam" or "unwittingly confessed Islam"—and the mandatory sentence was immediate, physical forced circumcision in the Qazi's court!

A. How saying "Rassi" (Rope) or "Pak" (Clean) Resulted in Instant Forced Circumcision

Let Sir Richard Francis Burton (Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus, London, 1851, Chapter XI, pp. 309–315) describe the trap in his own verbatim words:

"Under the rule of the Mirs, the Hindoo in Sindh was treated with a studied and systematic cruelty which finds no parallel in any other part of India. The slightest offense—nay, the most innocent word—could at any moment cost him his religion, his family, and his liberty.

If a Hindoo in the bazaar, while buying a piece of cord or twine, happened to ask a Moslem shopkeeper in the Sindhi language for a 'Rassi' [rope], any malicious bystander had only to drag him by the throat before the Kazi and swear with one witness that the unbeliever had uttered the sacred name of the 'Rasul' [the Prophet Muhammad]! In vain would the trembling wretch protest that he had only asked for a rope; the word of a Hindoo carried zero legal weight against the oath of two Believers.

Similarly, if a Hindoo said of a piece of washed cloth that it was 'Pak' [clean], he was accused of pronouncing a holy Arabic attribute; or if a Moslem in a quarrel intentionally dashed a few drops of water from his own drinking-vessel or touched the Hindoo's lips with a piece of bread, a mob immediately assembled shouting 'Deen! Deen!' (The Faith! The Faith!).**

The victim was hurried before the Kazi, who gave him the simple choice of death or circumcision. Unless he was a wealthy Amil whose master among the Mirs intervened for a massive bribe, four stout fellows pinned him to the ground on the floor of the Kazi's courtyard, the barber-surgeon performed the operation of circumcision by main force on the spot, a spoonful of beef-broth was poured down his throat to destroy his caste forever, and he was paraded through the streets on a donkey or horseback with pipes and drums as a new 'Sheikh' (Nau-Muslim)!" — Sir Richard Francis Burton, Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus (1851, Ch. XI)

B. Verbatim Eyewitness Testimony of Seth Naomal Hotchand (Memoirs, 1804–1878, pp. 34–52): The Seizure of Hotchand in Thatta/Hyderabad

In his Memoirs (1915, pp. 34–52), Seth Naomal Hotchand confirmed every word of Burton's account from his own family's bleeding history, recounting how his own revered ancestor Seth Hotchand was kidnapped by fanatics in Thatta / Hala / Hyderabad on a fabricated verbal pretext so that they could forcibly circumcise one of the most prominent Hindu Lohana elders in Sindh!

Let us read Seth Naomal Hotchand's verbatim account of the terror under which Sindhi Hindus lived before 1843:

"In those days under the Talpurs, the Hindus of Sind were subjected to indescribable indignities and persecution. In the towns of Thatta, Hyderabad, Hala, and Shikarpur, no Hindu dared to wear clean white clothes in public, or ride a horse with a saddle; he had to ride a donkey, and if a Syed or Baluch passed him on the road, the Hindu was forced to dismount and stand barefoot in the dust until the Muhammadan had passed.

Worst of all was the constant terror of forcible conversion. If any Muhammadan bore a grudge against a Hindu merchant, or wished to cancel a debt which he owed to a Hindu shopkeeper, he had merely to assemble two false witnesses and cry out in the street that the Hindu had spoken disrespectfully of the Prophet, or had uttered the words of the Kalima in jest, or had called a Muslim boy his 'son.' Immediately a fanatical mob of hundreds of Mullahs and idlers would surround the Hindu's house or shop, beat him mercilessly, drag him to the mosque or the Kazi's court, and forcibly circumcise him before anyone could come to his rescue.

Once the razor had touched his flesh and a piece of beef had been thrust into his mouth, his own Hindu caste-fellows and family could never take him back under penalty of the whole Panchayat being attacked by the Mullahs! Moreover, under the law of the Kazis, the forcibly converted man's young children and property were immediately claimed as Muslim, and his Hindu wife was dragged away unless she fled in disguise by night!" — Seth Naomal Hotchand, Memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand, C.S.I., of Karachi, 1804–1878 (trans. Sir H. Evan M. James, 1915, pp. 36–44)

Seth Naomal goes on to recount how when his own grandfather/ancestor Hotchand was seized by a fanatical clique determined to circumcise him at Hala / Hyderabad, armed Pathan retainers and huge sums of gold had to be deployed in a life-and-death struggle while Hindu shops across Sindh shut down in protest—and how scores of less wealthy Hindu Lohana, Bhatia, and Sonar men who could not pay 50,000 rupees in ransom to the Mirs were pinned down, circumcised, and turned into Sindhi Muslim Sheikhs.

C. The Martyrdom of Those Who Chose Death Over Forced Circumcision—and the Origin of Sindh's Hidden Tikhanas

As Bherumal Mahirchand Advani (Amilan-jo-Ahwal / History of the Sindhi Hindus) and Seth Naomal recorded, while thousands of trapped victims were turned into Sheikhs (who for generations afterward still wept in secret at night and kept their Lohana Nukh / sub-clan names!), brave Sindhi Hindu martyrs chose to burn themselves alive or have their heads struck off rather than submit to the barber's knife:

• In Thatta and Shikarpur, several trapped Hindu youths bit off their own tongues or leaped into blazing furnaces and the deep waters of the Indus rather than swallow beef and be circumcised.
• Because building any Hindu temple with a spire (Shikhara), ringing a temple bell (Ghanta), or blowing a conch (Shankha) in public was punishable by death and demolition in Kalhora-Talpur Sindh, how did the surviving Sindhi Lohanas, Amils, and Bhatias preserve Sanātana Dharma for 142 years?
• They invented the hidden courtyard Tikhana (Darbar): an ordinary, windowless mud-brick house on the outside, indistinguishable from a residential haveli, inside which Sindhi Hindus installed the sacred light (Jyot) of Jhulelal (Uderolal / Darya Shah—the 10th-century incarnation of Varuna who had saved Sindhi Hindus from the forced-conversion decree of the tyrant Mirkhshah of Thatta) alongside the Guru Granth Sahib of Guru Nanak Dev Ji and small brass murtis that could be hidden inside wall-niches at a moment's notice!

Today, when you meet a Pakistani citizen in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, or Shikarpur bearing the caste-title Sheikh, Memon, or Khoja, you are looking at the biological grandchild of a Sindhi or Kutchi Hindu Lohana whose ancestor was caught in the vise of Engine 4 or Engine 5!

---

III. Engine 6: Feudal Peshgi Debt-Bondage, Well-Exclusion, and the 1947 Essential Services Trap That Created 1.5 Million Musallis in West Punjab

If Engine 5 explains the creation of the urban Sheikh class in Sindh, Engine 6 exposes one of the darkest, most hypocritical secrets of Pakistan's social history: the coerced conversion of 1.5 to 2 million oppressed Hindu Valmikis (Chuhras / Balmikis), Meghwals, Ods, and Sansis across the canal colonies and feudal estates of West Punjab.

For centuries across the Punjab plains, the landless agricultural laboring and village-sanitation caste—who revered Maharishi Valmiki (author of the Ramayana) and his popular folk manifestation Bala Shah / Lal Beg—lived as dependent village servants (Sepīs or Kammīs) attached to the estates of dominant landowning Zamindars (Muslim Rajputs, Jats, Syeds, and Qureshis in West Punjab).

When the British constructed the vast Canal Colonies between 1885 and 1930 in Lyallpur (Faisalabad), Montgomery (Sahiwal), Shahpur (Sargodha), Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, and Jhang, hundreds of thousands of Hindu Valmiki/Chuhra farmworkers migrated westward to clear the scrubland and harvest wheat and cotton on the giant estates (Chaks) granted to Muslim feudal landlords (Noons, Tiwanas, Daultanas, Sials, Gilanis, Qureshis, Bajwas, and Cheemas).

In the Census of India, 1911 and 1931 (Volume XVII: Punjab, Part I), and later in the groundbreaking sociological fieldwork of Dutch scholar Dr. Pieter H. Streefland (The Sweepers of Slaughterhouse: Conflict and Survival in a Suburban Christian Community in Pakistan, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1979) and Urvashi Butalia (The Other Side of Silence, 1998), the ruthless three-part mechanism (Engine 6) that converted over a million Hindu Valmikis into Muslim Musallis was documented in forensic detail:

1. The Peshgi (Generational Debt-Advance) Trap on Feudal Zamindari Estates

To hire a landless Valmiki family to work his cotton fields or private brick-kiln (Bhatta) in Sargodha, Lyallpur, Sheikhupura, or Rahim Yar Khan, the Muslim feudal Zamindar advanced a small cash loan called Peshgī (for a wedding, an illness, or grain during a lean month) at exorbitant, unpayable compound interest recorded solely in the landlord's private ledger. - Once trapped in Peshgi, the Valmiki worker and his wife and children were legally and physically barred by the landlord's armed thugs (Deras) from leaving the estate. - The landlord then laid down the law of the Chak: as long as the farmhand remained an unconverted Hindu Chuhra, he was forbidden to draw water from the village well, forbidden to touch the landlord's harvesting vessels, and charged higher deductions from his grain share (Sep)—whereas if he and his family recited the Kalima before the village Maulvi and became Muslim "Musallis" ("those who pray") or "Dindars" ("those who adopted the faith"), the landlord promised to remit part of the Peshgi interest and allow them to draw water and work inside the homestead!

2. The Hypocrisy of Post-Conversion Untouchability: Why a Converted Dalit Became a "Musalli", Never an Equal

What happened the day after the impoverished Hindu Valmiki family recited the Kalima on a West Punjab estate? Did the Muslim Rajput or Jat Zamindar embrace them as equal brothers in Islam? Let Sir Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, 1883/1916, §596–599) and H.A. Rose (Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab, Vol. III, 1914, pp. 125–126) record the ethnographic reality: - The converted Valmiki was never permitted to call himself a Rajput, Jat, or Sheikh, nor would any landowner ever intermarry with him or eat from his dish! - Instead, he was segregated into a brand-new endogamous Muslim untouchable caste called Musallī (in West Punjab) or Kutāna (in Multan/Muzaffargarh)—still restricted to living on the outer edge of the village (Thatthī), still forced to perform unpaid bonded labor (Begār), and still buried in a separate corner of the graveyard! - Even more tellingly, as the 1911 and 1931 Punjab Census Reports documented, hundreds of thousands of desperate Valmikis in Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, and Lyallpur tried to escape the Muslim landlords' Musalli bondage by converting en masse to Christianity (Through the United Presbyterian and Church Missionary Society missions, creating practically the entire 3-million-strong Punjabi Christian population of modern Pakistan!)—only to discover that Muslim Zamindars and urban municipalities continued to treat Pakistani Christians as untouchable "Chuhras"!

3. October 1947: The Ultimate Betrayal — How Pakistan Used the Essential Services Maintenance Ordinance to Trap Hindu Valmikis as Human Property

The final, most heart-wrenching chapter of Engine 6 occurred during the Partition Holocaust of August–December 1947.

When six million upper-caste Hindus and Sikhs evacuated West Punjab, NWFP, and urban Sindh to India, hundreds of thousands of terrified Hindu Valmiki (Balmiki), Meghwal, and Dalit sanitation workers and farmhands in Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Lyallpur, and Multan packed their meagre bundles and rushed to the refugee camps and railway stations to board evacuation trains to India.

Suddenly, the Government of Pakistan under Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and West Punjab authorities realized a terrifying municipal fact: if the Hindu Valmikis left for India, there would be no one left to sweep the streets, clean the latrines, or skin cattle in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Karachi!

What did the newly created Islamic state of Pakistan do? 1. It immediately invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Ordinance (October 1947), declaring municipal sanitation and sweeping an "essential state service" and making it a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment for any Hindu Valmiki / Scheduled Caste sanitation worker to leave his job or board a refugee train to India! 2. When Indian Military Evacuation Organization (MEO) trucks arrived at the Valmiki colonies of Lahore, Sialkot, Lyallpur, and Karachi to rescue them, Pakistani police and National Guards physically blocked the trucks at gunpoint, ripped the "Evacuee" badges off the chests of Dalit men and women, and dragged them back to their municipal barracks! 3. Two years later, on October 8, 1950, Pakistan's own first Minister of Law and Labour—the Scheduled Caste leader Jogendranath Mandal—fled to India and submitted his historic resignation letter, explicitly indicting the Pakistani state for trapping hundreds of thousands of Scheduled Caste Hindus in West Punjab and Sindh and subjecting them to forced conversion into Muslim Musallis and Dindars and the systematic abduction of their daughters!

Isolated in post-1947 West Punjab after all Hindu temples had been padlocked and all other Hindus and Sikhs had been ethnically cleansed, the trapped Hindu Valmiki families of Lahore, Faisalabad, Sialkot, Gujranwala, and Sargodha were progressively forced at brick-kilns and municipal depots either to adopt Islamic names as Musallis / Sheikhs or to register as Christians simply to survive. (Remarkably, even in Lahore's Valmiki Mohalla near Anarkali today, converted "Muslim Valmikis" still carry the memory of Bhagwan Valmiki inside their homes!).

---

CHAPTER 12

Forbidden Memory — How Converted Clans Clung to Hindu Gotras, Mirasi Vanshavalis & Brahmin Purohits Until the 19th Century

नामानि परिवर्त्यन्ते न तु रक्तं पितामहम् । गोत्रं वंशावली चैव साक्षिणौ कुलजन्मनः ॥

nāmāni parivartyante na tu raktaṃ pitāmaham | gotraṃ vaṃśāvalī caiva sākṣiṇau kulajanmanaḥ ||

"Names may be altered by the sword of time, yet the blood of the forefathers never changes; the Gotra and the ancestral scroll (Vaṃśāvalī) stand as eternal witnesses of one's true birth." — Traditional Bhāṭ /Purohit Maxim of the Sapta-Sindhu

I. The Colonial Ethnographic Shock of 1881: What British Surveyors Found Inside the Villages of West Punjab and Sindh

When the British annexed Sindh (1843) and the Punjab (1849) and launched the most exhaustive village-by-village, house-by-house land-revenue and ethnographic surveys in human history—culminating in Sir Denzil Ibbetson's landmark 1881 Census Report (Outlines of Panjab Ethnography / Panjab Castes, 1883/1916), H.A. Rose's monumental three-volume A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (Lahore, 1911–1919), Major John Biddulph's Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (1880), Frederic Drew's The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories (1875), and the District Settlement Reports and Gazetteers of every district from Rawalpindi and Jhelum to Multan and Thatta—the British settlement officers expected to find a standard Islamic society resembling Arabia or Persia.

Instead, they experienced an ethnographic shock that fills thousands of pages of archival reports.

Outside a tiny urban stratum of foreign-born courtiers and orthodox town Maulvis, the vast rural Muslim majority of what is now Pakistan—from the Salt Range and Potohar to the Chenab valleys, Chibhal (POJK), and Gilgit—had never forgotten that they were converted Hindus!

Not only did they proudly retain their exact Hindu Kshatriya/Rajput, Jat, and Gujjar Gotra (clan) names, but two hundred to five hundred years after their ancestors' nominal conversion to Islam, they were still actively practicing four unmistakable pillars of Sanātani ancestral memory:

1. Maintaining hereditary Mirāsī and Bhāṭ genealogists who recited written Vaṃśāvalī (Shajara) scrolls tracing the Muslim clan's bloodline directly back to Bhagwan Sri Rama (Suryavanshi), Bhagwan Sri Krishna (Yaduvanshi/Chandravanshi), the Pandava Emperor Janamejaya (Arjuna's great-grandson), Maharaja Vikramaditya (Parmar/Panwar), or Emperor Prithviraj Chauhan.
2. Inviting their ancestral family Hindu Brahmin (Parohit / Purohit) alongside the Muslim Qazi to conduct Muslim Rajput and Jat weddings*—tying the sacred Hindu Kanganā thread, calculating the auspicious Hindu astrological Muhūrat, erecting the ceremonial marriage canopy, and distributing Shagun (Lāg*)!
3. Strictly enforcing the Vedic-Hindu Gotra Exogamy taboo (forbidding marriage within one's own clan Gotra or mother's/grandmother's Gotra as incestuous, in total defiance of Arabic/Islamic first-cousin marriage).
4. Continuing ancient Hindu rites of passage and sacred taboos—such as offering the newborn male child's sacred Hindu scalp-lock (Choṭī / Jhand) at the shrine of the clan's pre-Islamic Hindu founder, or (among the converted Shina Dards of Gilgit and Chilas) refusing to touch beef, drink cow's milk, or wear calfskin leather out of ancient Hindu reverence for Gau-Mātā!

Let us open the original 19th-century archival records and examine each of these four pillars of Forbidden Memory in detail.

---

II. Pillar 1: The Hereditary Mirāsī & Bhāṭ Vaṃśāvalī Scrolls — Tracing Pakistani Muslim Clans to Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, and the Pandavas

In every rural estate of Jhelum, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Shahpur (Sargodha), Jhang, and Montgomery (Sahiwal), every major Muslim Rajput, Jat, and Gujjar clan maintained a hereditary family bard and genealogist known as a Bhāṭ (often still Hindu or freshly converted) or a Mirāsī (Dūm).

What was the legal and social duty of the clan Mirāsī or Bhāṭ? Every harvest season and at every wedding or succession ceremony, the Mirāsī unrolled a long, generations-old paper scroll (the Vaṃśāvalī or kursī-nāma, written in Landā, Gurmukhi, Devanagari, or Persian script) and chanted aloud from memory the complete, unbroken generation-by-generation ancestry of the family—naming the exact ancestor (Bābā) who had first recited the Kalima under Firuz Shah Tughlaq, Akbar, or Aurangzeb, and naming his Hindu fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers all the way back to the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata!

Writing in the 1881 Census Report (Panjab Castes, 1916 reprint, pp. 131–165, 234–236), Sir Denzil Ibbetson marveled at the fidelity of these Mirāsī records:

"Every tribe, and almost every great family of Rajputs and Jats in the Western Plains, has its hereditary Mirasi or Bhat, whose duty it is to record the births, marriages, and deaths of every member of the clan, and to recite at weddings and public gatherings the genealogy of the house from its ancient Hindu founder—whether Raja Salvahan, Raja Vikramaditya, Rai Pithora [Prithviraj Chauhan], or the Lunar Pandavas—down to the ancestor who first embraced Islam under the Delhi Emperors, and from him to the living chief." — Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes (1883/1916)

Look at the specific Hindu Royal Pedigrees recorded verbatim from the lips of Pakistani Muslim tribal chiefs and their Mirasis in the British District Gazetteers (1883–1907) and H.A. Rose's Glossary (1911–1919):

---

III. Pillar 2: The Ancestral Hindu Brahmin Purohit at Muslim Rajput Weddings in Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Gujrat, and Chibhal

Even more astonishing to British settlement officers than the Mirāsī scrolls was discovering who actually officiated at the weddings of proud Muslim Rajput chiefs in Jhelum, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Sialkot, Shahpur, and Bhimber/Mirpur (Chibhāl) as late as the 1880s and 1910s.

In the 1881 Census Report (Panjab Castes, §422, §441, §512) and the Jhelum and Rawalpindi District Gazetteers, Sir Denzil Ibbetson and H.A. Rose recorded that while the village Qazi or Mullah was called in for ten minutes simply to read the Arabic Nikāh formula required by Islamic law, the entire surrounding three-day wedding ceremony of a Muslim Janjua, Gakhar, Chib, Jarral, Bhatti, Tiwana, or Sial Rajput was still presided over by the family's hereditary Hindu Brahmin Purohit (Parohit)!

Let Sir Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, 1883/1916, pp. 101, 134, 216) describe this living survival in his own words:

"In the Rawalpindi, Jhelum, and Gujrat districts, and throughout the Salt Range and the sub-montane tracts, the Musalman Rajputs—such as the Janjuas, Gakhars, Chibs, and Bhattis—still retain their ancestral Hindu Brahmin Parohits [family priests]. At every wedding in a Musalman Rajput chief's house, the family Brahmin attends alongside the Mirasi; he consults his Sanskrit astrological almanac (Patrī) to fix the auspicious hour (Mahūrat), ties the sacred red-and-yellow thread (Kanganā or Maulī) around the wrists of the Muslim bridegroom and bride, performs the customary ancestral rites of Shagun, and receives his hereditary priestly fee (Lāg or Dachhnā) just as his forefathers did when the tribe was still Hindu!" — Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes (1883/1916)

And what about the Muslim Chib Rajputs of Bhimber and Mirpur (modern POJK)—whose sons today populate the Pakistani army and the Mirpuri diaspora in Britain?

In 1875, the British geologist and administrator Frederic Drew—who served for ten years in the service of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and personally surveyed every village of Bhimber, Mirpur, Kotli, and Rajouri—published his famous eyewitness account The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories: A Geographical Account (London: Edward Stanford, 1875, pp. 43–59).

What did Frederic Drew witness with his own eyes at the shrine/tomb of the Hindu founder Raja Chib Chand near Bhimber in 1875—more than three hundred years after the Chib royal branch had converted to Islam under the Mughals?

"The Chibs are a race of Rajputs who inhabit the low hills around Bhimbar... Part of the caste are Hindu and part Have become Muhammadan; the Muhammadan Chibs are the more numerous. Yet so strong is the tie of blood and ancient custom that until very lately, both the Muhammadan Chibs and the Hindu Chibs used to bring their male children to the tomb of their common Hindu ancestor, Baba Dharam Chand / Chib Chand, at Bhimbar, so that the child's first lock of hair (the Hindu Choṭī / Jhand) might be ceremonially cut off at the ancestral shrine! And a Hindu Chib and a Muhammadan Chib still recognize each other as brothers of one blood, sharing the exact same clan pride and title of Raja." — Frederic Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories (1875, pp. 44–46); cited verbatim in H.A. Rose, Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, 1911, pp. 169–171)

Similarly, when Major John Biddulph served as the first British Political Officer in Gilgit (1877–1881) and published Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Calcutta, 1880, pp. 34–39, 108–118), he discovered to his amazement that the converted Muslim Shins (Shina-speaking Dards) of Gilgit, Astor, and Chilas: - Still regarded the Cow (Gau) with such ancient Hindu sanctity and taboo that a Muslim Shin in Gilgit in 1880 refused to eat beef, refused to drink cow's milk, refused to touch a vessel that had held cow's milk, and refused to wear shoes made of calfskin leather, purifying his hands with water if his garment accidentally brushed against a cow or a calf! - Still preserved stone Sati and cremation memorials (Chodens) in their valleys where their own grandfathers had burned their dead on Hindu funeral pyres using wooden vessels that were still kept in the villages!

---

IV. Pillar 3: Vedic Gotra Exogamy vs. Islamic Cousin Marriage — How Punjab's Jats Kept Sanātani Marriage Law for Centuries

In orthodox Islamic jurisprudence (Sharī'at) practiced across Arabia and the Middle East, marriage between first cousins—especially a man marrying his father's brother's daughter (Bint 'Amm / patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage)—is the most favored, prestigious form of marriage because it keeps property inside the immediate patriarchal family.

In Vedic and classical Sanātana Dharma, by contrast, marrying one's father's brother's daughter—who shares the exact same patrilineal Gotra (clan bloodline)—is strictly prohibited as incestuous sister-marriage (Sagotra Vivāha)! Under the ancient Hindu Gotra rule of North India (the Chār-Got or four-clan exogamy law), a Jat, Rajput, or Gujjar man is forbidden to marry any woman belonging to: 1. His own father's Gotra; 2. His mother's Gotra; 3. His father's mother's (Dādī's) Gotra; 4. His mother's mother's (Nānī's) Gotra.

When Sir Denzil Ibbetson (1881) and H.A. Rose (1911) surveyed the millions of converted Muslim Jats and Gujjars across Sialkot, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Lahore, Sheikhupura, and Lyallpur—clans such as the Cheema, Bajwa, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Goraya, Dhillon, Tarar, Gondal, Khatana, and Chechi—what marriage law did they find them obeying?

For centuries after converting to Islam, the Muslim Jats and Gujjars of central and north-eastern West Punjab flatly refused to marry within their own Gotra! A Muslim Cheema Jat in Sialkot or Wazirabad in 1881 considered a Muslim Cheema girl from another village ten miles away to be his blood sister (Bhain), and married only outside his Gotra (for instance, a Muslim Cheema marrying a Muslim Bajwa or Warraich), just like his Hindu and Sikh Cheema cousins across the Ravi!

Let Sir Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, 1883/1916, §356, §422) record this extraordinary fact:

"Throughout the eastern and central districts of the Punjab, and even far into the Western Plains among the great Jat and Gujjar tribes such as the Bajwa, Cheema, Warraich, Virk, and Sandhu, conversion to Islam has had little or no effect upon their ancient Hindu marriage rules. The Musalman Jat still holds marriage within his own Got [Sanskrit: Gotra] to be incestuous, and strictly observes the Hindu rule of exogamy!" — Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Panjab Castes (1883/1916)

---

V. The Great Clerical Purge (1850–1947–Present): Burning the Vaṃśāvalīs and Arabizing the Soul of Pakistan

If the converted Muslim Rajputs, Jats, Gujjars, and Shins of Pakistan preserved their Hindu Gotras, their Mirāsī Vaṃśāvalī scrolls, their Brahmin Purohits, their Choṭī offerings, and their Hindu marriage exogamy right up to 1881–1911, why do so many young Pakistanis today know nothing of these traditions?

Because between 1830 and the late 20th century, a relentless, highly organized ideological campaign of cultural erasure and Arabization was waged across the towns and villages of what is now Pakistan by four successive clerical and political movements:

1. Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi's Mujāhidīn / Wahhābī Movement (1826–1863 CE) in the Frontier and Punjab: Marching from Rae Bareli into Peshawar, Swat, Buner, and Hazara (Balakot), Barelvi and his Wahhabi deputies declared war not only on Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Khalsa Empire, but on every pre-Islamic indigenous custom (Bid'at and Shirk) practiced by converted Indian Muslims.
2. The late-19th and early-20th Century Ahl-i-Hadith, Deobandi, Barelvi, and Tablighi Jamaat Reform Campaigns (1880–1947 CE): Alarmed by the published revelations of the 1881 and 1891 British Census Reports—which proved in black-and-white statistical tables that West Punjab's Muslims were converted Hindus still employing Brahmins and keeping Gotra taboos—revivalist Maulvis and Anjumans fanned out into every village from Rawalpindi and Sialkot to Jhang and Mirpur:
3. They issued fiery Fatwas declaring that inviting a Brahmin Purohit to tie a wedding Kanganā, cutting a child's Choṭī at an ancestor's shrine, or obeying Hindu Gotra exogamy* instead of marrying one's first cousin was Kufr and Shirk (polytheism/apostasy)* that invalidated a Muslim's marriage!
4. Under intense clerical shaming and social boycotts, Muslim Rajput and Jat families were pressured to dismiss their ancestral Hindu Purohits and Mirāsīs, burn or bury their Hindu Vaṃśāvalī scrolls, and force their sons and daughters into Islamic first-cousin marriages (which is why Pakistan today has the highest rate of consanguineous first-cousin marriage in the world—over 60% to 65%—despite its population having practiced strict Hindu Gotra exogamy just five generations ago!).
5. The Fabrication of Fake Arab Genealogies (Shajaras): As Sir Denzil Ibbetson dryly noted in 1881, the moment a converted Hindu tribe dismissed its honest Mirāsī who traced their bloodline to Raja Salvahan or Arjuna, they hired a town Mullah* for fifty rupees to forge a brand-new Persian Shajara claiming that their ancestor was actually an Arab general from *Quraish, Baghdad, or Medina:
6. Thus, the indigenous Hindu Dhund Rajputs* of the Murree and Abbottabad hills suddenly began calling themselves "Abbasis" (claiming descent from the Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad—despite sharing *99.5% indigenous Himalayan-Pahari DNA with their unconverted neighbors!);
7. The indigenous Salt Range Awans and Sindhi Kalhoras fabricated pedigrees tracing themselves to Ali or Abbas;
8. And millions of converted artisans and shopkeepers adopted the surname Qureshi, Ansari, Siddiqui, Farooqi, Usmani, Hashmi, or Syed—prompting the famous Persian proverb recorded across colonial censuses: > "Last year I was a Julāhā (weaver); this year I am a Sheikh; and next year, if the harvest is good, I shall be a Syed!"
9. The Post-1947 and Zia-ul-Haq State Lobotomy (1947–2026 CE): Finally, after the ethnic cleansing of all remaining Hindu Brahmins, Khatris, and Sikhs from West Punjab, NWFP, and POJK in 1947, and under General Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization drive (1977–1988), the state systematically purged Sanskrit-derived words from Urdu, replaced traditional greetings (Khuda Hafiz to Allah Hafiz), and made it socially dangerous for any Pakistani to speak openly of his family's Hindu ancestors.

Yet truth has a stubborn way of outliving every bonfire of manuscripts.

The Mullahs of the 20th century could burn the paper Vaṃśāvalī scrolls of the Mirāsīs, expel the Brahmin Purohits in 1947, and rewrite the school textbooks of Lahore and Karachi—but they could not burn the British District Gazetteers preserved in the world's libraries, they could not erase the Hindu Gotra surnames stamped on 150 million Pakistani national identity cards (Bajwa, Cheema, Bhatti, Janjua, Chib, Jarral, Sial, Tiwana, Noon, Kharal, Gondal, Ranjha, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Chauhan, Khatana, Chechi, Soomro, Sammo, Abro, Junejo, Bhutto), and above all, they could not rewrite the three billion base pairs of indigenous Sapta-Sindhu DNA flowing in the veins of every Pakistani child.

In Part IV and Part V, we will now travel province by province, valley by valley, and clan by clan across the length and breadth of modern Pakistan—opening the exact historical dossiers of each region and each tribe so that every family from the Chenab to the Hindu Kush can read the true, unvarnished story of their Sanātani ancestors.

---

Master Analytical Matrix of Part III: The Six Engines of Conversion in the Indus Basin (712–1950 CE)

PART IV: PROVINCE BY PROVINCE, CLAN BY CLAN — WEST PUNJAB, POTOHAR & POJK

---

Chapter 13: The Salt Range & Potohar — The Pandava and Rajput Citadels of the Janjua, Khokhar, Gakhar, Awan & Minhas Clans

I. The Irony of the Garrison Heartland

Drive south from Rawalpindi and Islamabad toward Chakwal, Jhelum, and Khushab, and the flat alluvial plains of the Punjab suddenly heave upward into the jagged red-sandstone escarpments and limestone cliffs of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud of the Arab and Persian chroniclers; ancient Sanskrit Urujasa and Simhapura) and the Potohar Plateau. Today, this rugged upland between the Indus (Sindhu) and the Jhelum (Vitasta) is the undisputed military nerve center of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Every village road from Gujar Khan, Kahuta, and Kallar Syedan to Chakwal, Talagang, Pind Dadan Khan, and Jhelum is lined with the painted regimental monuments of soldiers and generals bearing the proud tribal titles of Raja, Malik, Sultan, and Chaudhry. Their clan names are household words across Pakistan: Janjua, Gakhar, Khokhar, Awan, Minhas, Mair-Minhas, Kassar, Jodhra, and Gheba.

In the official pedagogy of the modern Pakistani garrison state, these martial clans of the Potohar and the Salt Range are celebrated as the quintessential "swords of Islam"—warriors imagined to have ridden down from the passes of Central Asia or sprung from the loins of Arab conquerors to subdue the "infidel" plains of Hindustan. Yet the moment a historian opens the Persian chronicles of the Ghaznavid, Ghurid, and Mughal courts, or reads the house-to-house ethnographic settlement records compiled in the Jhelum District Gazetteer (1904), the Rawalpindi District Gazetteer (1907), Sir Denzil Ibbetson's Panjab Castes (1883), and H.A. Rose's Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (1911–1919), this ideological myth shatters into dust.

The truth preserved in their own ancestral Mirasi and Bhat genealogical scrolls (Vanshavalis), in the memoirs of Emperor Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur, and in the ruined stone fortresses crowning their ridges is the exact opposite. The Janjuas, Khokhars, Gakhars, and Minhas Rajputs of the Salt Range and Potohar were not the foreign conquerors of Hindu India. They were the indigenous Hindu Kshatriya and Rajput frontier guardians who bled for five hundred years (1001–1526 CE) to stop Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad Ghori, and Amir Timur from entering India. When a Pakistani Army officer from Chakwal or Jhelum signs his name as Raja—a pure Sanskrit royal title (Rājā) found nowhere in Arabia, Persia, or Turkestan—he is unconsciously testifying to his unbroken descent from the Pandava and Rajput kings who built the Shiva temples of Katas Raj, Malot, Nandana, and Amb.

---

II. The Janjuas ("Rajas" of the Salt Range): From Pandava Emperor Janamejaya and Raja Mal Dev to the Sword of Ghazni

Among all the aristocratic warrior tribes of the Salt Range, none holds higher precedence in indigenous tradition than the Janjua Rajputs. Even today, across Jhelum, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, and Kahuta, a Muslim Janjua chief is universally addressed by the Hindu royal honorific Raja, and his clan retains the apical memory of its Chandravanshi (Lunar) Pandava lineage.

When British settlement officer W.S. Talbot compiled the Punjab District Gazetteer: Jhelum District (1904) and Sir Denzil Ibbetson recorded the oral and written genealogies of the Salt Range chiefs in 1881, they documented that the Muslim Janjuas unanimously traced their bloodline not to Mecca or Samarkand, but to the Pandava hero Arjuna of the Mahabharata, through his great-grandson Emperor Janamejaya—the monarch before whom Vaisampayana first recited the Mahabharata at Takshashila (Taxila, on the northern edge of the Potohar plateau):

"The Janjuas are a Rajput tribe of the Lunar race (Chandarbansi), who claim descent from Raja Mal, a descendant of the Pandava family of the Mahabharata, through Maharaja Janamejaya. According to their universal tradition and the genealogies preserved by their hereditary Mirasis, Raja Mal migrated from the Rathore/Pandava domains to the hills of the Salt Range, where he built the fortress and temple of Malot (ancient Malakot) on the high spur overlooking the Bunha and Jhelum valleys." — Punjab District Gazetteers, Vol. XXVII A: Jhelum District (Lahore, 1904, pp. 86–89) & H.A. Rose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, 1911, pp. 380–384)

For centuries before the Ghaznavid invasions, the Hindu Janjua Rajas ruled the Salt Range from their cliff-citadel at Malot (in modern Chakwal district), serving first as autonomous Kshatriya monarchs and later as the principal military feudatories and kinsmen of the Hindu Shahi Emperors of Udabhandapura (Hund) and Nandana. Standing on a sheer 3,000-foot limestone precipice, the fortress of Malot still cradles one of the architectural masterpieces of pre-Islamic Pakistan: a magnificent 10th-century red-sandstone Shiva temple built in the hybrid Kashmiri-Gandhara style, featuring fluted Greco-Roman columns, trefoil arches, and carved Shikhara roof miniatures housing images of four-armed Vishnu and Shiva.

According to the clan ballads (Vars) preserved by the Salt Range Bhats, the last great unconverted sovereign of the Salt Range was Raja Mal Dev (or Raja Mal Khan in later Islamized recensions). When the Hindu Shahi defenses at Peshawar (1001 CE), Chhachh (1008 CE), and Nandana (1014 CE) were battered by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and later when the Ghurid and Delhi Sultanate armies established permanent military garrisons at Bhera, Rohtas, and Lahore, the Janjua kingdom was trapped in a vise. Yet the Janjuas did not submit for centuries. Even as late as February 1519 CE, when the Mughal conqueror Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur marched down through the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud) and camped near Kallar Kahar, he wrote an extraordinary ethnographic account in his Baburnama acknowledging the ancient sovereignty and pre-Islamic royal title of the Janjua chiefs:

"Seven kos north of Bhera lies the mountain-range written of in the Zafar-nama and other books as the Koh-i-Jud. Before now we had not known why it was called this; we now learned that on it are two races of men, descended from the same father, one called Jud [Janjua], the other Janjua. From of old these two races have been the rulers and lords of this mountain, and of the tribes and peoples between Nil-ab [the Indus] and Bhera... Each chief among them gets the title of Rai [Sanskrit: Rājā / Rāī], while his younger brothers and sons are called Malik." — Emperor Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur, Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur, trans. Annette S. Beveridge, Vol. I, pp. 379–380)

How, then, were the Pandava-descended Janjua Rais and Rajas turned into Muslims? The Jhelum District Gazetteer and Lepel Griffin's Panjab Chiefs (1865) preserve the exact mechanism—a textbook execution of Engine 3 (The Imperial Hostage-Prince & Succession Sanad Mechanism) combined with relentless military attrition. Besieged repeatedly by the Sultans of Delhi (under Iltutmish, Balban, and Firuz Shah Tughlaq) and caught in a centuries-long territorial war against the neighboring Gakhars, the Janjua royal house of Malot was forced to send its princes as hostages to the court of the Delhi Sultans. When a succession dispute erupted among the sons of Raja Mal—specifically between the princes Wir (Bir), Jodh, Kala, Khakha, and Tarlon—the Sultan of Delhi granted imperial cavalry backing and revenue Sanads over the Salt Range ilaqas (Makhiala, Kusak, Malot, Dalwal, and Darapur) on the strict condition that the princes recite the Kalima, undergo circumcision, and police the royal highway for the Sultanate.

Once the Janjua Rajas of Malot, Watli, and Darapur accepted Islam to prevent their ancestral Jagirs from being handed to their Gakhar rivals, their dependent clansmen across Chakwal and Jhelum followed suit over the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet their Hindu Kshatriya cultural DNA proved almost impossible to erase. As late as the 1881 and 1901 British Settlement Surveys of Jhelum and Rawalpindi, colonial officers recorded with astonishment that Muslim Janjua Rajas: 1. Refused to marry within their own Hindu Gotra under ancient exogamy rules; 2. Employed hereditary Hindu Brahmin Purohits (Parohits) alongside the Muslim Qazi at every wedding to calculate the auspicious astrological hour (Muhurat) and tie the red-and-yellow Kangana thread around the bridegroom's wrist; and 3. Maintained Hindu Mirasis who recited their unbroken descent from Pandava Arjuna and Emperor Janamejaya at every birth and marriage feast.

---

III. The Khokhars of the Salt Range & Jhelum-Chenab Doab: The Regicides Who Stabbed Muhammad Ghori at Dhamiak (1206 CE)

Closely intertwined with the Janjuas across the Salt Range, Pind Dadan Khan, Bhera, Shahpur, and the Jhelum-Chenab (Chaj) Doab are the Khokhars—a vast warrior confederacy numbering millions across modern West Punjab. While late Mughal-era genealogists fabricated absurd myths attempting to link the Khokhars to Persian or Arab figures like "Qutb Shah," contemporary 13th- and 14th-century Islamic court historians (Hasan Nizami in Taj-ul-Ma'asir, Minhaj-i-Siraj in Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, and Ata Malik Juvaini in Tarikh-i-Jahan Gusha) unambiguously recorded the Khokhars as unyielding Hindu Kshatriyas (Kuffar-i-Khokhar) who mounted the single deadliest war of resistance against the founding of the Delhi Sultanate.

As detailed in Part II (Chapter 8), when Sultan Shihab-ud-din Muhammad Ghori suffered a catastrophic defeat at Andkhud in Central Asia in 1204–1205 CE, the Hindu Khokhar confederacy of the Salt Range and Jhelum—led by their fearless Hindu chieftains Rai Sal (Sarkha) and Bakan—rose in a massive war of liberation. Storming down from the Salt Range hills, the Khokhar warriors routed the Ghurid governor of Sangwan, severed the imperial lifeline between Lahore and Ghazni, and rallied the Hindu tribes of West Punjab to throw off Turco-Afghan rule.

It took the combined imperial armies of Muhammad Ghori marching from Ghazni and Qutb-ud-din Aibak and Shams-ud-din Iltutmish marching from Delhi to trap the Khokhar forces between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers in late 1205 CE. In his contemporary eyewitness-era chronicle Taj-ul-Ma'asir, Hasan Nizami described the genocidal slaughter and mass enslavement that broke the Hindu Khokhar heartland:

"The fire of the sword of Islam consumed the harvest of the infidel Khokhars... Over twenty thousand of those accursed idolaters were sent to the fire of hell, and so vast was the booty in Hindu slave-boys and slave-girls dragged from the Jhelum hills that in the camp of the Sultan, five Khokhar Hindu captives were sold for a single dinar!" — Hasan Nizami, Taj-ul-Ma'asir & Minhaj-i-Siraj, Tabaqat-i-Nasiri (trans. Major H.G. Raverty, Vol. I, pp. 481–485)

After burning the sacred forests of the Jhelum valley where the Khokhar families had taken refuge, Muhammad Ghori forced a surviving captive Khokhar prince to recite the Kalima, robed him in an Islamic Khilat (dress of honor), and released him to induce his surviving clansmen to convert. Instead, the unconquered Hindu Khokhars took an immortal oath of vengeance. On the evening of March 15, 1206 CE, as Muhammad Ghori camped on the eastern bank of the Jhelum river at Dhamiak (modern Sohawa Tehsil, Jhelum District, Pakistan) on his return march to Ghazni, a commando band of Hindu Khokhar warriors—each having lost brothers, wives, and children in the Jhelum massacre—swam the icy river at dusk, cut down the royal sentries, stormed the Sultan's crimson pavilion during evening prayers, and stabbed the conqueror of North India to death with twenty-two dagger wounds.

Even after 1206, the Khokhars of the Salt Range and West Punjab remained fierce rebels for another two and a half centuries. During the early 15th century (1420–1442 CE), the great Salt Range Khokhar king Jasrath Khokhar (son of Shaikha Khokhar, who had fought Amir Timur at Lahore in 1398 CE) allied with the Hindu Dogra kings of Jammu (Raja Bhim Dev), repeatedly defeated the Sayyid Sultans of Delhi across Jullundur, Sialkot, and Lahore, and nearly recaptured Delhi itself. Across the 14th to 17th centuries, through a combination of Tughlaq, Lodi, and Mughal military expeditions, marriage alliances with Delhi governors, and the Madad-i-Ma'ash Sufi estates of Bhera, Chiniot, and Multan, the western Khokhar branches were gradually Islamized—while their eastern Khokhar brethren in Amritsar, Gurdaspur, and Kapurthala remained Hindu and Sikh.

---

IV. The Gakhars of Pharwala & Rawalpindi: From the Bareheaded Charge at Chhachh (1008 CE) to Mughal Feudatories

North of the Janjua and Khokhar domains, stretching across the dissected ravines of the Potohar Plateau—Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Pharwala, Kahuta, Gujar Khan, Khanpur (Haripur), and Mirpur—lies the ancestral realm of the Gakhars (whose aristocratic chiefs bear the title Sultan and Raja).

In the historic memory of the northwest frontier, the Gakhars first burst onto the stage of world history in 1008–1009 CE during the decisive Battle of Chhachh (Waihind) on the plains between Attock and Hazro. When the Hindu Shahi Emperor Maharaja Anandapala formed a grand pan-Indian defensive coalition to stop Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, the deadliest vanguard of the Hindu army consisted of 30,000 Gakhar warriors from the Potohar and Margalla hills. As recorded by the Persian chronicler Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Firishta (Tarikh-i-Firishta):

"Mahmud perceived that the infidels fought with greater devotion than ever before. Thirty thousand Gakhars, with their heads and feet bare, armed with spears, swords, and daggers, penetrated on two sides into the Muslim lines, mingled with the cavalry, and in a few minutes slaughtered between three and four thousand Muhammadans in such a manner that the Sultan was about to abandon the field and retreat—until by sudden misfortune a naphtha fireball struck the elephant of Anandapala, causing it to turn and flee in panic." — Firishta, Tarikh-i-Firishta (trans. John Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. I, pp. 46–47)

For two hundred years after Chhachh (1008–1205 CE), the Gakhars remained fiercely non-Muslim, defying the Ghaznavid governors of Lahore from their impregnable cliff-gorge capital of Pharwala Fort (situated 15 miles east of modern Islamabad across the Soan River). According to the Tarikh-i-Firishta and the family Kayani-nama / Gakhar-nama traditions analyzed in the Rawalpindi District Gazetteer (1907), the Gakhars were only forced into nominal Islam after the catastrophic campaigns of 1205 CE, when Ghorid forces defeated and captured their paramount chief, forcing him to embrace Islam in captivity in exchange for imperial confirmation over the Potohar hills.

Even after their ruling house adopted Muslim names—producing the famous 16th-century Potohar warrior-kings Sultan Sarang Khan (who died fighting Sher Shah Suri at Rawat in 1546 CE, causing Sher Shah to build the massive Rohtas Fort near Jhelum specifically to crush Gakhar-Mughal resistance) and Sultan Adam Khan—the Gakhars retained an unmistakable Hindu Rajput social structure. Well into the British colonial era, ethnographers H.A. Rose and Denzil Ibbetson documented that the Muslim Gakhars of Rawalpindi and Jhelum: - Considered all non-Gakhar Muslims socially inferior and strictly practiced hypergamy on the Hindu Rajput model; - Employed ancestral Hindu Brahmin Purohits at their weddings and succession ceremonies at Pharwala and Khanpur; and - Preserved tens of sub-clans (Bugial, Admal, Sarangal, Firozal, Tulial) named directly after their medieval Hindu-turned-Muslim warrior ancestors.

---

V. The Awans, Minhas (Mair-Minhas), Kassars & Jodhras of Potohar and Chakwal

Alongside the Janjuas, Khokhars, and Gakhars, the demographic fabric of the Salt Range, Attock, Mianwali, and Chakwal is dominated by four other great landowning tribes whose pre-Islamic Indic origins are thoroughly documented in colonial settlement reports and autosomal genetics:

1. The Minhas and Mair-Minhas Rajputs (Chakwal & Jhelum):
2. The Minhas (and their Chakwal branch, the Mair-Minhas, who served as the hereditary Chaudhries of the Chakwal Dhan plateau) are universally recognized in both Hindu and Muslim genealogies as a direct branch of the Suryavanshi (Solar) Jamwal / Dogra Rajputs of Jammu, descending from Bhagwan Sri Rama via Raja Jambu Lochan and Raja Maluk Chand.
3. As documented in the Jhelum District Gazetteer (1904, pp. 90–92), an ancestor of the Jammu Dogra royal house migrated across the Jhelum into the fertile Dhan Chaurasi (84-village) plateau of Chakwal during the Delhi Sultanate era, accepted Islam to secure an imperial land grant (Sanad) over Chakwal, and founded the Muslim Mair-Minhas clan—while his brothers who remained east of the Chenab in Jammu and Kangra remained the Hindu Minhas and Dogra Rajputs (the exact royal clan of Maharaja Gulab Singh and Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu & Kashmir, and today's Pakistani Nishan-e-Haider recipients from Chakwal).
4. The Awans of the Salt Range, Attock, Talagang & Mianwali:
5. Numbering several million across the Salt Range (Soon Sakesar), Talagang, Attock, Rawalpindi, and Mianwali, the Awans (addressed as Malik) constructed a late medieval prestige genealogy claiming descent from "Qutb Shah" and Ali ibn Abi Talib.
6. However, both classical colonial ethnographers (Sir Alexander Cunningham, Sir Denzil Ibbetson, and W.S. Talbot in the Jhelum Gazetteer) and 21st-century genome-wide autosomal and Y-chromosomal DNA studies have thoroughly dismantled the Arab origin myth. Genetically, the Awans carry 98–99% indigenous South Asian (Indus Periphery + Steppe Pastoralist + AASI) autosomal ancestry, identical to neighboring Punjabi Hindu Khatris, Jats, and Rajputs, with virtually zero Arabian Peninsula genetic input.
7. Ethnographically, Cunningham and Ibbetson demonstrated that the Awans are an indigenous North-West Indian Kshatriya/Jat population of the Indus-Jhelum salt tracts (historically linked to the ancient Anu / Avanti / Bhatti-Yadu tribes of the Indus gorge around Kalabagh and Mari Indus) who retained Hindu Brahmin marriage Purohits and pre-Islamic naming patterns long after their medieval Islamization.
8. The Kassars, Jodhras & Ghebas of Chakwal and Pindigheb:
9. The Kassars of the Babial and Dhan tracts in Chakwal claim common Rajput migration with the Mair-Minhas; the Jodhras of Pindigheb (Attock District) are documented in the Attock District Gazetteer (1907) as converted Hindu Rajput descendants of a Hindustani/Rajasthani Rajput chief who settled near the Sil River; and the Ghebas of Fatehjang and Kot Fateh Khan are acknowledged kinsmen of the Hindu Parmar Rajput Sials and Tiwanas.

---

VI. The Desecration of the Sacred Salt Range Pilgrimage Axis: Katas Raj, Nandana, Malot, Amb & Tilla Jogian (1014–1748 CE)

Nothing proves the indigenous Hindu identity of the Salt Range and Potohar more viscerally than the physical landscape itself. Before the Ghaznavid invasions, the 150-mile arc of the Salt Range from the Jhelum to the Indus was one of the holiest pilgrimage corridors in the entire Hindu-Buddhist world—a mountain sanctuary dotted with scores of carved stone temples, sacred springs, and Yogic monasteries.

flowchart LR
    TILLA["Tilla Jogian (Jhelum)<br/>3,200-ft Summit Seat of<br/>Guru Gorakhnath's Nath Yogis<br/>(Sacked by Abdali, 1748 CE)"] --> NANDANA["Nandana Fort & Shiva Temple<br/>Hindu Shahi Mountain Pass<br/>(Stormed by Mahmud, March 1014 CE)"]
    NANDANA --> KATAS["Katas Raj (Simhapura) & Murti<br/>Shiva's Tear-Pond & Pandava Shrine<br/>(Desecrated 1014–1947 CE)"]
    KATAS --> MALOT["Malot & Kallar Temples<br/>10th-Century Red Sandstone<br/>Citadel of Hindu Janjua Rajas"]
    MALOT --> AMB["Amb Shareef (Soon Valley)<br/>Towering 9th-Century Nagara<br/>Hindu Shahi Temple Fortress"]

Let us walk through the five supreme sanctuaries of this desecrated axis:

1. Nandana Fort and the Massacre of March 1014 CE

Perched atop a knife-edge rocky spur commanding the principal pass through the eastern Salt Range in Jhelum District stands Nandana (named after Nandana-vana, the celestial garden of Lord Indra). After the fall of Hund (1001–1002 CE), the Hindu Shahi Emperor Maharaja Trilochanapala and his fearless son Prince Bhimapala (Nidar Bhima) made Nandana their fortified mountain capital.

In March 1014 CE, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni marched against Nandana. Deploying his personal guard under General Tekchand, Prince Bhimapala held the narrow mountain gorge behind a line of war-elephants, repulsing charge after charge of Ghaznavid Turkoman cavalry until Mahmud's sappers undermined the fortress walls. As recorded by Mahmud's royal secretary Al-Utbi in the Tarikh-i-Yamini:

"The Sultan surrounded the fort of Nandana, blocking every path of escape, and set his miners to work under the bastions... Inside the great temple of the fortress stood an ancient stone idol with a Sanskrit inscription declaring that it had been erected tens of thousands of years ago. The Sultan broke the idol, seized the vast treasury of gold, jewels, and weapons stored in the citadel, slaughtered the fighting defenders, and drove the surviving inhabitants into captivity." — Al-Utbi, Tarikh-i-Yamini (in Elliot & Dowson, History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. II, pp. 37–39)

Today, the ruined shell of the 9th-century Hindu Shahi Shiva Temple of Nandana still clings to the cliffside above Baghanwala, its Amalaka crown broken and its sanctum empty—silent witness to the last stand of Prince Bhimapala's garrison.

2. Katas Raj (Kaṭākṣa Rāja / Siṃhapura) and the Smashed Sculptures of Murti

Twelve miles west of Choa Saidan Shah in Chakwal District lies the emerald spring-fed lake of Katas Raj (from Sanskrit Kaṭākṣa, meaning "tearful eye"). In Puranic tradition, when Goddess Sati immolated herself at Daksha's sacrifice, two tears fell from the grief-stricken eyes of Bhagwan Shiva: one fell at Pushkar in Rajasthan, and the other fell here in the Salt Range, forming the bottomless sacred pool of Kataksha Kund. In the Mahabharata (Vana Parva), Katas Raj is revered as the exact lake where the four younger Pandava brothers collapsed after drinking without answering the Yaksha, and where Maharaja Yudhishthira answered the immortal Yaksha Prashna (Questions of Dharma) to bring his brothers back to life.

When Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited Katas Raj (which he recorded as Siṃhapura) in 630 CE, he described its crystal-clear streams filled with sacred fish, its Buddhist stupas erected by Emperor Ashoka, and its thriving white-robed Jain and Shaiva ascetics. Just four miles away in the lush Gandhala Valley stood the exquisite red-sandstone temple complex of Murti. When the world-renowned archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein excavated Murti in 1890 and 1931 (Archaeological Reconnaissances in North-Western India and South-Eastern Iran, 1937, Chapter I), he uncovered cartloads of exquisitely carved red-sandstone pilasters, celestial Gandharvas, and Tirthankara/Deva sculptures that had been violently smashed to pieces with iron hammers during the Ghaznavid sack of Nandana in 1014 CE. At Katas Raj itself, the cluster of Satghara ("Seven Temples") was repeatedly desecrated under Sultanate, Mughal, and Durrani rule, restored briefly under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa (who built a Haveli overlooking the pool), and then stripped of all worship and left to decay after the ethnic cleansing of Chakwal's Hindus in 1947.

3. Malot, Kallar (Shahpur/Chakwal), and Amb Shareef (Soon Valley, Khushab)

Across the crest of the Salt Range stand the sister temple-fortresses of the Hindu Shahis and Janjua Rajas studied by architectural historian Prof. Michael W. Meister (Temples of the Salt Range and the Indus, 2010): - Malot Temple (Chakwal): The 10th-century royal Shiva temple of the Hindu Janjua Rajas, standing beside the gateway built later by Sher Shah Suri; - Kallar Temple (Sassi da Kallara, Attock/Chakwal border): An extraordinary 8th–9th century brick Nagara temple overlooking the Soan/Indus tributaries; and - Amb Shareef (Soon Valley, Khushab District): A towering, three-story 9th–10th century Nagara Hindu Shahi temple complex rising nearly 60 feet high in the heart of the Soon Sakesar valley, adorned with intricate Chandrashala (horseshoe-arch) lattice carvings and flanked by a massive Hindu fortress wall—abandoned when the Hindu inhabitants of the Soon Valley were converted into today's Muslim Awan peasantry.

4. The 1748 Sack of Tilla Jogian — Guru Gorakhnath's Supreme Citadel

Rising 3,200 feet above the Jhelum plains west of Rohtas Fort stands the pine-clad summit of Tilla Jogian ("The Hill of the Yogis", ancient Balnath Tilla). For over two thousand years—from the era of the Indo-Greeks and Kushans down to the 19th century—Tilla Jogian was the Vatican of the Kanphata ("Split-Eared") Nath Yogi Order founded by Mahayogi Guru Gorakhnath.

It was here on the summit of Tilla Jogian that the legendary prince Puran Bhagat (son of Raja Shalivahana of Sialkot) was initiated as a Yogi; here that Ranjha (the hero of Waris Shah's Heer Ranjha) had his ears pierced by Guru Balnath; here that Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji meditated for forty days on stone ponds that still survive; and here that even Mughal Emperors Akbar and Jahangir climbed the mountain in awe to seek blessings from the ascetic Nath Mahants (as documented through original Mughal royal Farmans by historians B.N. Goswamy and J.S. Grewal in The Mughals and the Jogis of Jakhbar, 1967).

Yet in early 1748 CE, during his very first invasion of the Punjab after crossing the Indus at Attock and seizing Rohtas Fort, the Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Abdali (Durrani) sent his Afghan cavalry up the steep stone trail to Tilla Jogian. Finding hundreds of unarmed, ash-smeared Kanphata Nath Yogis chanting around their eternal sacred fire (Dhuni), Abdali's troops butchered the Yogis on the spot, looted the ancient monastery's copper vessels, silver bells, and land endowments, and set fire to the cells and shrines. Though resilient Nath Yogis returned under Sikh rule (1799–1849) to rebuild the Samadhis and water tanks of Tilla Jogian, the final blow fell in August–October 1947, when the last Nath Mahants and ascetics of Tilla Jogian were hunted down or driven across the Radcliffe Line into East Punjab and Himachal Pradesh—leaving the 2,000-year-old seat of Guru Gorakhnath an eerie, overgrown ghost city in the forests of Jhelum.

---

VII. Summary Matrix: Major Salt Range & Potohar Clans (West Punjab)

---

Chapter 14: The Great Rajput Confederacies of the River Valleys — Sials, Tiwanas, Bhattis, Kharals, Noons & Chadhars

I. The Feudal Lords of the Bar and the River Plains

Descend from the rocky cliffs of the Salt Range into the vast alluvial plains of central and western Punjab—where the Jhelum (Vitasta), Chenab (Asikni), and Ravi (Parushni) sweep through the Chaj and Rachna Doabs across Sargodha (Shahpur), Jhang, Chiniot, Hafizabad (Pindi Bhattian), Nankana Sahib, Sheikhupura, Okara, and Sahiwal (Montgomery)—and you enter the domain of West Punjab's great riverine Muslim Rajput confederacies.

For the past century, the political parliamentary landscape of Pakistan—from the British Unionist Party to the Muslim League, PPP, and PTI—has been dominated by the sprawling feudal families (Zamindars and Makhdums) of these river valleys: the Sials of Jhang, the Tiwanas and Noons of Sargodha/Khushab, the Bhattis of Pindi Bhattian and Nankana, the Kharals of Kamalia and Ravi, the Chadhars, and the Manj Rajputs.

Unlike the urban Ashraf elites who fabricated Persian or Arab pedigrees, these powerful rural Rajput tribes of the West Punjab plains were too proud of their royal Kshatriya blood to pretend they were Arabs. When British settlement commissioners—such as E.B. Steedman in the Gazetteer of the Jhang District (1883–84), James Wilson in the Gazetteer of the Shahpur District (1897), and Sir Denzil Ibbetson in the 1881 Punjab Census—interviewed the tribal elders and examined the written Vanshavali scrolls kept by their hereditary Mirasis and Bhats, every single one of these Muslim feudal clans proudly recited the exact name of the Hindu Rajput ancestor from whom they descended, the Hindu royal dynasty (Agnivanshi Parmar, Chandravanshi Yaduvanshi Bhatti, Suryavanshi Rathore, or Solanki/Chalukya) to which they belonged, and the precise historical circumstances under which their medieval forefather was converted to Islam.

---

II. The Sials of Jhang & Chiniot: From Hindu Parmar Rajput Rai Shankar of Daranagar (c. 1260 CE) to the Lords of the Chenab

In the cultural imagination of the Punjab, the city of Jhang on the Chenab is immortalized as the homeland of Heer—the heroine of Waris Shah's classic Punjabi romance Heer Ranjha, who belonged to the ruling Sial tribe (Heer Sial, daughter of Chuchak Sial). Today, the Sials constitute the premier Muslim Rajput landowning tribe of Jhang, Chiniot, Toba Tek Singh, and lower Sargodha, numbering hundreds of thousands.

Who were the Sials before Islam? In the official Gazetteer of the Jhang District (1883–84, pp. 43–52), Settlement Officer E.B. Steedman recorded the exhaustive genealogical history preserved by the Sial chiefs and their family Bhats. That history leaves zero ambiguity: the Muslim Sials of Pakistan are pure Hindu Agnivanshi Parmar (Panwar) Rajputs, direct blood-kinsmen of Emperor Vikramaditya of Ujjain and Raja Bhoja of Dhar:

"The Sials are beyond all doubt of pure Rajput descent, and there is every reason to believe that they are a branch of the great Panwar (Parmar) clan of Rajputs. Their own universally accepted tradition states that their eponymous ancestor, Rai Sial (or Seo), was the son of Rai Shankar, a Hindu Panwar Rajput sovereign of Daranagar (between Allahabad and Fatehpur in the Ganges-Jumna Doab). According to the tribal genealogy, Rai Shankar had three sons: Teo, Gheo, and Seo (Sial)—from whom sprang three cognate tribes of West Punjab: from Teo came the Tiwanas of Shahpur; from Gheo came the Ghebas of Pindigheb; and from Seo came the Sials of Jhang." — Gazetteer of the Jhang District, 1883–84 (Compiled and Published under the Authority of the Punjab Government, Lahore, 1884, pp. 43–45)

What drove the Hindu Rajput prince Rai Sial to leave the Gangetic plains and how was he converted in the Punjab around 1258–1265 CE? The Jhang District Gazetteer recounts the exact historical crisis during the turbulent reign of the Delhi Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din Balban (1266–1287 CE) and the Mongol invasions of the northwest: 1. Following fierce family dissensions and Sultanate military pressure in the Doab, the Hindu prince Rai Sial marched northwest with his armed Rajput retainers into the Punjab, crossing the Sutlej and Ravi into the Sandal Bar and the Chenab valley, which was then ruled by indigenous Hindu Nauls, Bhangus, Mangans, and Marrals. 2. Arriving at Ajodhan (modern Pakpattan)—then the principal Sultanate military and spiritual outpost on the Sutlej river-crossing—Rai Sial encountered the Chishti Sufi Shaikh Farid-ud-din Masud Ganjshakar (Baba Farid, d. 1265 CE), whose Khanqah operated in close symbiosis with Sultanate frontier governors (specifically Balban / Ulugh Khan, whose daughter was married in tradition to Baba Farid). 3. Seeking political legitimacy, protection from Sultanate punitive expeditions, and an alliance with the local Muslim chief Baha-ud-din Khan (a converted Rajput of the Naul/Mekan stock) whose daughter Suhag declined to marry an unconverted Hindu, Rai Sial recited the Kalima, married Suhag, settled at Sialkot/Mankan on the Chenab, and founded the Muslim Sial chieftaincy. 4. His descendants—led by Mal Khan Sial (c. 1462–1477 CE), who founded the town of Jhang Sial and paid tribute to the Langah Sultans of Multan and the Lodi governors of Lahore—gradually conquered the entire Chenab basin from Chiniot to Muzaffargarh, producing over forty named Sial sub-clans (Bharwana, Rajbana, Hiraj, Sargana, Chela, Kamrana,اعات/Chuchkana), many of which still bear pure Sanskritic/Prakrit ancestral names.

Even more remarkably, Steedman documented in the 1883–84 Jhang Gazetteer (pp. 48–52) that six hundred years after Rai Sial's conversion, the Muslim Sial Rajputs of Jhang still clung tenaciously to their ancestral Hindu Brahmin rituals: - Every Sial sub-clan maintained its own hereditary Hindu Brahmin (Parohit) alongside the family Mirasi; - At every Sial Muslim wedding in the 19th century, the Hindu Brahmin was summoned to fix the auspicious Hindu date (Saha / Muhurat) and perform the traditional Rajput marriage preliminaries before the Nikah was read; - Sial daughters were strictly denied inheritance under ancient Hindu Mitakshara/Rajput customary law (rather than Islamic Sharia inheritance); and - Until the early 19th century, the Sial chiefs of Jhang wore the Hindu Rajput turban and Dhoti and used the Hindu title Rai and Rana before adopting the Arabic title Khan or Mahr.

---

III. The Tiwanas and Noons of Shahpur (Sargodha): Hindu Parmar and Solanki Cavaliers of the Thal and Jhelum

Ride northwest from Jhang across the Jhelum River to Mitha Tiwana, Nurpur Tiwana, Hadali, and Khushab in modern Sargodha and Khushab districts, and you enter the ancestral seat of the Tiwana and Noon Maliks—a feudal aristocracy that produced the British-era Prime Ministers of united Punjab (Malik Sir Umar Hayat Khan Tiwana and Malik Sir Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana) as well as the post-Partition Prime Minister of Pakistan (Malik Feroz Khan Noon).

In the Gazetteer of the Shahpur District (1897) and Sir Lepel Griffin's The Panjab Chiefs (1865 / 1909, Vol. II, pp. 177–195), the Tiwana family's own verified genealogical records (Shajara-i-Nasab) are laid out in full. Like their cousins the Sials of Jhang and the Ghebas of Attock, the Tiwanas are pure Hindu Agnivanshi Parmar (Panwar) Rajputs:

flowchart TD
    SHANKAR["RAI SHANKAR<br/>Hindu Parmar (Panwar) Rajput Sovereign<br/>of Daranagar (13th Century CE)"]
    SHANKAR --> TEO["1. TEO<br/>Hindu Ancestor of the<br/>TIWANA Rajputs<br/>(Mitha Tiwana, Sargodha)"]
    SHANKAR --> GHEO["2. GHEO<br/>Hindu Ancestor of the<br/>GHEBA Rajputs<br/>(Pindigheb / Kot Fateh Khan, Attock)"]
    SHANKAR --> SEO["3. SEO (RAI SIAL)<br/>Converted c. 1260 CE at Ajodhan<br/>Ancestor of the SIAL Rajputs<br/>(Jhang & Chiniot)"]

According to the Shahpur District Gazetteer (1897) and Griffin's Panjab Chiefs: - The founder of the Punjab Tiwana line was Rai Melo (a descendant of Teo, son of Hindu Parmar prince Rai Shankar, and linked in family ballads to Raja Todar Mal Tiwana), who first settled near Pakpattan and later migrated to the arid edge of the Thal desert at Jahanabad and Mitha Tiwana (founded around 1680 CE by Mir Ahmad Khan Tiwana). - Prior to their conversion to Islam at Pakpattan under Delhi Sultanate pressure, the Tiwanas were devout Hindu Devi- and Shiva-worshipping Parmar Rajputs. Even after becoming Muslim Maliks, the Tiwanas of Mitha Tiwana retained their hereditary Hindu Bhats (who lived in Patiala and Bikaner and traveled annually to Shahpur to update the family Vanshavali scrolls in Devanagari/Landha script!) and kept Hindu Brahmin retainers well into the 19th century.

Living side by side with the Tiwanas in the Shahpur/Sargodha (Bhalwal and Nurpur Noon) and Multan/Shujabad tracts are their close marital allies, the Noon Rajputs. As recorded in H.A. Rose's Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. III, p. 175) and the Shahpur Gazetteer, the Noons are converted Hindu Solanki (Chalukya) or Tonwar/Parmar Rajputs who migrated from Rajputana into the Sutlej and Jhelum valleys alongside the Bhattis, accepted Islam during the Tughlaq era to secure riverine Jagirs, and preserved dozens of Hindu Gotra subdivisions until the 20th century.

---

IV. The Bhattis of Pindi Bhattian, Nankana & Sandal Bar: How the Yaduvanshi Kinsmen of Sri Krishna and Jaisalmer Were Split by the Sword

No Rajput clan name is more ubiquitous across the length and breadth of modern Pakistan than Bhatti. From Lahore, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, and Pindi Bhattian (Hafizabad District) to Gujranwala, Sialkot, Jhang, Multan, and Bahawalpur, millions of Pakistani Muslims carry the surname Bhatti (or its sub-branches: Wattu, Manj, Alpial, Sidhu-Brar).

Who are the Bhattis? Both the Hindu/Jain chronicles of Rajasthan (Nainsi ri Khyat, James Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan) and the British Gujranwala, Lahore, and Montgomery District Gazetteers confirm that the Muslim Bhattis of Pakistan and the Hindu Bhati Rajputs of Jaisalmer are the exact same Yaduvanshi (Chandravanshi / Lunar) Kshatriya bloodline, claiming direct descent from Bhagwan Sri Krishna and the Yadava clan of Mathura and Dwarka!

Let us trace their documented historical trajectory across the Indus basin: 1. Ancient Yadu Kingdoms in the Punjab & Zabul: Long before the founding of Jaisalmer (1156 CE), Yaduvanshi Bhati kings ruled across Sialkot (Salbahanpur, founded by Raja Shalivahana), Bhera, Gajni (Ghazni/Zabul), and Bhatner (modern Hanumangarh). 2. Rao Bhatti & the Splitting of the Clan: From the 3rd–9th century Hindu monarch Rao Bhatti (after whom the entire clan and the region of Bhattiana were named) sprang two great geographic streams: - The southern stream retreated into the Thar desert of Rajasthan to defend Sanātana Dharma, building the golden fortresses of Tanot, Derawar (now in Bahawalpur, Pakistan), and Jaisalmer under Rawal Jaisal—remaining fiercely Hindu Bhati Rajputs to this day. - The northern stream remained on the exposed river plains of the Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej in West Punjab (Bhattiora / Pindi Bhattian in Hafizabad and Talwandi Rai Bhoe, modern Nankana Sahib). 3. How the West Punjab Bhattis Were Converted (1320–1550 CE): - In the Lahore and Gujranwala District Gazetteers, the conversion of the Nankana and Pindi Bhattian Bhattis is traced directly to the brutal Sultanate military campaigns of Alauddin Khilji, Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq, and Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351–1388 CE). - At Talwandi Rai Bhoe (Nankana Sahib), the ancestral Hindu Bhatti Rajput chief Rai Bhoe (whose father had been defeated and dispossessed in clan warfare and Sultanate revenue raids) converted to Islam in the 14th century to obtain an imperial Jagir of 1,500 bighas of forest land in the Sandal Bar. His pious grandson was Rai Bular Bhatti* (c. 1425–1515 CE)—a 2nd-generation Muslim Rajput who still bore the Hindu royal title Rai, employed the Hindu Khatri revenue steward *Mehta Kalu (father of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji), and became the first noble to bow in reverence before the divine light of Guru Nanak! - A few miles away at Pindi Bhattian on the Chenab, the Hindu Bhatti Rajput line of Rao Sandal Bhatti converted to Islam under Delhi Sultanate pressure, producing Sandal Khan Bhatti, Bijli Khan Bhatti, Farid Khan Bhatti, and the legendary 16th-century Punjabi folk-hero Dulla Bhatti (Abdullah Khan Bhatti, executed by Akbar in 1599 CE)—who famously rescued indigent Hindu Brahmin girls (Sundri and Mundri) from Mughal abduction, arranged their Hindu weddings in the forest by lighting a sacred fire (Lohri), and fought Emperor Akbar's revenue armies to his last breath after his father and grandfather had their skins stuffed with chaff and hung from the gates of Lahore!

---

V. The Kharals of the Ravi (Kamalia & Gogera), the Chadhars & the Manj Rajputs

Moving south from the Chenab to the thickly wooded banks of the Ravi River across Kamalia (Toba Tek Singh), Gogera (Okara), Syedwala (Nankana), and Sahiwal (Montgomery), we encounter the fierce Kharal Rajput confederacy (whose chief Rai Ahmad Khan Kharal, 1776–1857, led the great 1857 Ravi uprising against the British).

In the Gazetteer of the Montgomery District (1898–99, pp. 62–65) and H.A. Rose's Glossary (Vol. II, pp. 493–497), the Hindu Rajput origin of the Kharals is documented from their own oral epics (Dhola ballads) and Mirasi scrolls: - Descent from King Vikramaditya via Raja Bhupa: The Kharals are Hindu Agnivanshi Punwar (Parmar) or Chauhan Rajputs claiming descent from Raja Vikramaditya through Raja Bhupa (Bhup Singh), who migrated to Uch and the Ravi valley. - Founder Kharal & Kamal Khan: Their eponymous Hindu ancestor Kharal ruled the pastoral tracts along the Ravi; during the reign of Sultan Ala-ud-din Masud or Firuz Shah Tughlaq (14th century), his descendant Kamal Khan (who founded the historic town of Kamalia in c. 1350 CE after converting under the influence of the Multan/Pakpattan Sufi Dargahs and Tughlaq governors of Dipalpur) brought the ruling branch into Islam. - Persistence of Hindu Customs (1899): As late as the 1898–99 Montgomery Settlement Report, British officers noted that the Muslim Kharals of the Ravi valley: 1. Retained the Hindu royal title Rai; 2. Practiced strict Hindu Gotra exogamy (refusing to marry another Kharal or even their fraternal Rajput cousins like the Punwars); and 3. Kept Hindu Brahmins to perform auspicious rites at weddings and harvests.

Similarly, across the Chenab and Ravi plains: - The Chadhars (Jhang, Chiniot & Faisalabad): Documented in the Jhang District Gazetteer (1883–84, p. 54) as pure Hindu Tonwar (Tomara) Rajputs claiming descent from Raja Pandu / Anangpal Tomar of Delhi, whose ancestor Chadhar migrated to the Chenab valley and was converted to Islam during the Sultanate period. - The Manj Rajputs (Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura & Jalandhar): Documented by Sir Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, p. 137) as direct Hindu Bhatti (Yaduvanshi) Rajputs descending from Raja Salvahan of Sialkot via Shaikh Chachu / Rai Manj, who converted under the Tughlaqs and Lodis and ruled large parts of the Bari and Bist Doabs until the rise of the Sikh Misls.

---

VI. Comparative Archival Table: The River Valley Rajput Confederacies of West Punjab

---

Chapter 15: The Divided Brotherhood of the Five Rivers — How the Cheema, Bajwa, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Gondal, Ranjha, Tarar & Chauhan Jats and Gujjars Were Split in Three

I. The Most Extraordinary Demographic Proof on Earth

If a skeptic ever demands a single, irrefutable proof that the Muslim majority of Pakistan is biologically and historically identical to the Hindus and Sikhs of India, one need only place the 1881 and 1901 British District Gazetteers of Sialkot, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Lahore, Sheikhupura, and Lyallpur (Faisalabad) side by side with a map of the modern India–Pakistan border.

Across the fertile plains of the Bari, Rachna, and Chaj Doabs—watered by the Ravi, Chenab, and Jhelum—the overwhelming majority of the rural agricultural population belongs to the great Jat and Gujjar clans. Look at the surnames of the Prime Ministers, Army Chiefs, Chief Justices, parliamentarians, and ordinary farmers of West Punjab in Pakistan today: Bajwa, Cheema, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Sidhu, Dhillon, Chattha, Tarar, Gondal, Ranjha, Goraya, Hanjra, Sahi, Ghuman, Kahlon, Randhawa, and among the Gujjars: Chauhan, Khatana, Chechi, Poswal, Kasana, Bains, and Gorsi.

Now walk twenty miles east across the Radcliffe Line into Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patiala, Karnal, Rohtak, or Meerut in India. What are the exact surnames and Gotras of the Sikh and Hindu Jats and Gujjars farming those fields? Bajwa, Cheema, Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Sidhu, Dhillon, Chattha, Tarar, Gondal, Ranjha, Goraya, Hanjra, Sahi, Ghuman, Kahlon, Randhawa, Chauhan, Khatana, Chechi, Poswal, Kasana, and Bains!

They are not merely "similar" names. As documented village by village in the Gazetteer of the Sialkot District (1894–95), the Gazetteer of the Gujranwala District (1893–94), and the Gazetteer of the Gujrat District (1892–93), they are the exact same biological families, descending from a single named Hindu ancestor, whose villages were split into three religious branches—Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim—purely as a function of how close their ancestral wells (Chah) lay to the Mughal and Durrani military garrisons along the Grand Trunk Road and the Chenab-Jhelum river crossings.

flowchart TD
    ANCESTOR["ONE SINGLE HINDU KSHATRIYA / JAT / GUJJAR ANCESTOR<br/>e.g., Rana Kang / Chima (Cheema), Rai Kalas (Bajwa),<br/>Raja Jagdeo Parmar (Warraich), Virk, Sandhu, Chauhan"]
    ANCESTOR --> WEST["WESTERN VILLAGES<br/>(Jhelum, Gujrat, Wazirabad, West Gujranwala, Jhang)<br/>Directly on the Ghazni-Peshawar-Lahore Invasion Corridor<br/>& Dependent on State-Taxed Persian Wheels (Rahat)<br/>➔ Coerced into ISLAM under Tughlaq & Aurangzeb Rule"]
    ANCESTOR --> CENTER["CENTRAL DOAB VILLAGES<br/>(Sialkot, Narowal, East Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Lahore)<br/>Split down the middle—often in the SAME village!<br/>➔ Half Muslim, Half Sikh & Hindu until 1947"]
    ANCESTOR --> EAST["EASTERN VILLAGES<br/>(Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Malwa, Haryana, UP)<br/>Shielded from permanent Western garrisons &<br/>rallied under the Khalsa Misls<br/>➔ Remained HINDU & SIKH"]

Let us examine the primary archival record in the colonial District Gazetteers for each of these great divided clans.

---

II. The Bajwa Jats of Sialkot & Narowal (Bajwat): Sons of Suryavanshi Raja Shalivahana and Rai Kalas

Few surnames are more famous in contemporary Pakistan than Bajwa (borne by former Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa and millions of Punjabi Jats across Sialkot, Narowal, Pasrur, Zafarwal, Gujranwala, and Sargodha, as well as millions of Sikh and Hindu Bajwas in India).

In the Gazetteer of the Sialkot District (1894–95, pp. 64–66), compiled by Captain J.R. Dunlop-Smith, and H.A. Rose's Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, pp. 45–48), the ancestral history of the Bajwa Jats is recorded directly from the clan's own Mirasi Vanshavalis in their ancestral homeland of Bajwat (the fertile sub-montane tract at the foot of the Jammu hills in Sialkot District):

"The Bajwa Jats (and Bajju Rajputs) of Sialkot claim Solar Rajput (Suryavanshi) descent from Raja Shalivahana of Sialkot. According to their universal tradition, their ancestor Rai Jaisan (or Kalas) was driven out of Multan/Uch during the early Muhammadan invasions and settled at Karbala / Pasrur and Narowal in the Sialkot district, taking the name Bajwa from the hawk (Baj / Baz) which their ancestor carried as a royal emblem. From Sialkot they spread over the northern Rachna Doab, founding the tract known after them as Bajwat." — Gazetteer of the Sialkot District, 1894–95 (Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1895, pp. 64–66)

Even more striking is the demographic table recorded in the Sialkot District Gazetteer and the 1881/1891 Punjab Census for the Bajwa clan inside Sialkot District itself: - In the eastern and northern villages of Bajwat and Zafarwal (bordering Hindu Dogra Jammu): The Bajwa Jats remained predominantly Hindu (called Bajju Rajputs in the hills) and Sikh (rising to power under the Khalsa Misls at Qila Sobha Singh and Qila Suba Singh in Narowal). - In the western and southern villages along the Pasrur–Gujranwala–Lahore Mughal highway: Under the revenue and religious pressure of Sultan Sikandar Lodi and Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707 CE), branches of the exact same Bajwa families recited the Kalima to retain their Chaudhrayat (village headmanship) and escape the Jizya and confiscation of their well-irrigated estates. - As late as 1895, Captain Dunlop-Smith observed that in numerous villages of Pasrur, Daska, and Narowal tehsils, Hindu Bajwas, Sikh Bajwas, and Muslim Bajwas lived in adjacent lanes of the same ancestral village, traced their genealogy to the same great-great-grandfather Rai Kalas, refused to marry any other Bajwa regardless of religion (strictly upholding the Hindu Gotra taboo), and invited the same village Brahmin Purohit and Mirasi to recite their common Hindu Vanshavali!

---

III. The Cheema Jats of Sialkot & Gujranwala: Descendants of Chauhan Rajput Rana Kang (Chima) After Prithviraj Chauhan's Fall (1192 CE)

Beside the Bajwas in Sialkot, Daska, Wazirabad, and Gujranwala stand the Cheema (Chima) Jats—the largest single Jat clan in Sialkot and Gujranwala districts, numbering hundreds of thousands of Muslim Cheemas in Pakistan alongside hundreds of thousands of Sikh and Hindu Cheemas in East Punjab.

How did the Cheema clan originate, and how was it split in two? The Gazetteer of the Sialkot District (1894–95, p. 66) and the Gazetteer of the Gujranwala District (1893–94, p. 56) preserve the clan's verbatim ancestral history:

"The Chimas (Cheemas) are one of the largest and most powerful Jat tribes in Sialkot and Gujranwala. They trace their unbroken descent from Rana Kang (or Chima), a Hindu Chauhan Rajput chieftain of Delhi and Ajmer, who fled into the Punjab after the defeat and martyrdom of Emperor Prithviraj Chauhan (Rai Pithora) by Shihab-ud-din Muhammad Ghori at Tarain in 1192 CE. Settling first on the banks of the Beas and Ravi, Chima's grandson Rana Dhol founded the ancestral village of Chima Kalan on the high bank of the Chenab near Wazirabad, from which his descendants colonized Chima Khurd and over 150 villages across Daska, Sialkot, and Wazirabad." — Gazetteer of the Sialkot District, 1894–95 (p. 66) & H.A. Rose, Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, 1911, pp. 176–177)

Look closely at the historical timeline preserved by the Cheemas themselves: 1. For nearly two hundred years (1192–c. 1370 CE) after fleeing the Ghorid conquest of Delhi, the descendants of Rana Chima lived along the Chenab in Wazirabad and Daska as unconverted Hindu Chauhan Rajputs/Jats. 2. During the reign of Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1351–1388 CE)—who established a major hunting and military cantonment at Wazirabad/Sialkot and openly boasted in his Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi of exempting converts from the crushing Jizya and Kharaj arrears—and later during the fanatical reign of Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707 CE), when Wazirabad served as a primary Mughal military staging post on the Grand Trunk Road to Kashmir and Kabul, the western Cheema villages along the Chenab were systematically coerced into Islam. 3. Meanwhile, the eastern Cheema branches in Sialkot, Gurdaspur, Amritsar, and Ludhiana embraced Sikhism under the Gurus or remained Hindu. Until the genocidal bloodbath of August 1947, a Muslim Cheema from Wazirabad and a Sikh or Hindu Cheema from Daska or Amritsar acknowledged each other as Bhais (blood brothers) of the exact same Chauhan Rajput ancestor!

---

IV. The Warraich, Virk, Sandhu, Gill, Tarar, Gondal, Ranjha & Chattha Jats of the Rachna and Chaj Doabs

The exact same pattern of a single Hindu Kshatriya/Jat bloodline fractured by imperial coercion repeats across every major agricultural tribe of Gujrat, Gujranwala, Sheikhupura, Sargodha, and Mandi Bahauddin:

1. The Warraich Jats (Gujrat & Gujranwala)

• Today, the Warraich clan dominates the politics and agriculture of Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Phalia, and Gujranwala in Pakistan, while tens of thousands of Sikh and Hindu Warraich families live across Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala, and Haryana.
• In the Gazetteer of the Gujrat District (1892–93, pp. 52–54) compiled by Captain H.S.P. Davies, the Warraich tribe's own genealogy traces their origin to Raja Jagdeo (Lakhdata), a Hindu Parmar (Panwar) or Suryavanshi Rajput prince of Dhar / Ghazni, whose descendant Warraich settled in the Gujrat plain and founded a Chaurasi (confederacy of 84 villages) around Jalalpur Jattan and Kunjah.
• According to the Gujrat Gazetteer, the Warraich remained Hindu for generations after settling in Gujrat until the reign of Sultan Mahmud / Firuz Shah Tughlaq and Emperor Akbar (when Akbar established the fortified administrative district of Gujrat in 1580 CE and placed it under imperial revenue assessment), when the western Warraich villages in Gujrat converted to Islam to secure imperial Zaildari / Chaudhrayat rights over the Chenab tract—while the Warraich families east of the Ravi remained Hindu and Sikh!

2. The Virk & Sandhu Jats (Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Nankana & Lahore)

• Across Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, Gujranwala, and Lahore, two of the most prominent landowning tribes are the Virk and Sandhu Jats.
• In the Gujranwala District Gazetteer (1893–94, pp. 54–58), the Virks trace their descent to a Hindu Yaduvanshi / Manhas Rajput prince named Virk, who migrated from Jammu into the Virkan tract of Sheikhupura and Gujranwala. Right up to 1947, the Virk clan was split roughly half-and-half between Sikh/Hindu Virks and Muslim Virks in the very same tehsils of Sheikhupura and Gujranwala!
• Similarly, the Sandhu Jats (claiming Suryavanshi Rajput descent from Raja Nar / Sanpal and traditionally worshipping their Hindu ancestral shrine of Kala Mahar / Jathera) formed the dominant agricultural aristocracy of Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, and Sialkot—with western branches converting under Mughal rule while the central and eastern branches formed the backbone of the Khalsa (including Shaheed Bhagat Singh's family from Banga/Lyallpur and Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa's Uppal/Sandhu kinsmen).

3. The Gondal, Ranjha, Tarar & Chattha Jats (Mandi Bahauddin, Sargodha & Hafizabad)

• The Gondals (Mandi Bahauddin & Sargodha): Giving their name to the fertile Gondal Bar between the Jhelum and Chenab, the Muslim Gondals are explicitly documented in the Shahpur District Gazetteer (1897) and Gujrat Gazetteer (1892–93) as converted Hindu Chauhan Rajputs whose ancestors worshipped the Hindu goddess and maintained Brahmin Purohits long after their medieval Islamization under the Delhi Sultanate.
• The Ranjhas (Mandi Bahauddin, Bhalwal & Kot Momin): Immortalized by Dhido Ranjha of Takht Hazara in Heer Ranjha, the Ranjha clan is documented in the Shahpur and Gujrat Gazetteers as Hindu Bhatti (Yaduvanshi) Rajputs closely akin to the Gondals, who migrated to the Chenab/Jhelum banks and converted during the Sultanate-Mughal transition.
• The Tarars (Hafizabad, Pindi Bhattian & Phalia): Tracing their pedigree in the Gujranwala Gazetteer (1893–94) directly to Hindu Bhatti Rajput prince Tarar (a descendant of Raja Salvahan of Sialkot), the Tarars remained Hindu in Bhatner/Bikaner until their ancestor migrated to the Chenab banks in Hafizabad and converted during the Tughlaq-Mughal era (producing former Pakistani President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar).
• The Chatthas (Wazirabad, Rasulnagar & Alipur Chattha): Documented by Sir Lepel Griffin (Panjab Chiefs) and the Gujranwala Gazetteer as pure Hindu Chauhan Rajputs descending from Raja Prithviraj Chauhan (Rai Pithora) through his grandson Chattha, whose 10th-generation descendant Dahru migrated from Sambhal to the banks of the Chenab, founded 11 villages around Rasulnagar/Alipur Chattha, and converted to Islam around 1600 CE under Mughal rule.

---

V. The Gujjars of Gujrat, Jhelum, Rawalpindi & Hazara: How the Gurjara-Pratihara Clans (Chauhan, Khatana, Chechi, Poswal, Kasana) Were Islamized

What is true of the Jats is equally true of the second massive pastoral-agricultural community of northern Pakistan: the Gujjars (numbering over 20–25 million across Gujrat, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, Sialkot, Lahore, Swat, Dir, Hazara, and POJK).

The very city and district of Gujrat on the Chenab (ancient Udumbara / Gurjara-rata) takes its name from the Hindu Gurjara (Gujjar) kingdoms that ruled northwest India alongside the Imperial Gurjara-Pratiharas (6th–11th centuries CE)—the dynasty hailed by Arab chroniclers Suleiman (851 CE) and Al-Masudi (915 CE) as the deadliest enemy of the Arab invaders in Sindh and Multan.

When Captain H.S.P. Davies compiled the Gazetteer of the Gujrat District (1892–93, pp. 55–57) and H.A. Rose catalogued the Gujjar sub-clans (Gots) across West Punjab and Hazara (Vol. II, pp. 306–318), they discovered that Pakistani Muslim Gujjars carry 100% pure Sanskrit Hindu Kshatriya Gotras—identical to the Hindu Gujjars of Rajasthan (Ajmer/Pushkar, sacred to Lord Devnarayan), Haryana, Delhi, and Western Uttar Pradesh:

1. Khatana (the royal Gurjara clan of Gujrat, Jhelum, and Hazara, tracing its origin to Hindu Raja Jai Pal / Moradhvaj);
2. Chechi (descendants of Hindu Raja Chech of Ajmer/Gwalior);
3. Chauhan (Agnivanshi Kshatriya lineage);
4. Poswal, Kasana (claiming descent from Bhagwan Sri Rama's son Kusha), Bains, Gorsi, Bhadana, Kalas, and Thikri.

In the Gujrat District Gazetteer (1892–93), the timeline of how the Hindu Gujjars of the Chenab-Jhelum Doab were converted is explicitly linked to Emperor Akbar's (1580 CE) construction of Gujrat Fort (where Akbar forced the local Gujjars and Warraich Jats into imperial revenue circles) and Emperor Aurangzeb's (1658–1707 CE) punitive campaigns along the Grand Trunk Road to Kashmir and Kabul. Even after conversion, the Muslim Gujjars of Gujrat, Jhelum, and Hazara strictly banned intra-Gotra marriages under Hindu Sapinda rules and retained their ancient Mirasi Vanshavalis into the 20th century.

---

VI. The Divided Brotherhood Table (1881 / 1901 Punjab Census & District Gazetteer Data)

---

Chapter 16: From Sacred Mulasthana & Ajodhan to Multan, Pakpattan & Derajat — The Sun Temple, Timur's 1398 Massacre & The Saraiki Heartland

I. Mulasthana (Kashyapapura): The City of Bhakta Prahlada and the Golden Aditya Sun Temple

Travel south from the Chenab and Ravi valleys toward the great confluence (Panjnad) where the five rivers of the Punjab empty into the mighty Sindhu (Indus), and you enter the ancient Saraiki (Multani) heartland—encompassing Multan, Uch Sharif, Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh, Lodhran, Rahim Yar Khan, Pakpattan (Ajodhan), Okara (Dipalpur), Sahiwal, Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Layyah, Bhakkar, and Mianwali.

Today, Multan is marketed across Pakistan as the "City of Sufi Saints" (Madinat-ul-Auliya). Yet for more than three thousand years before the arrival of the first Central Asian Khanqah, Multan was one of the two or three holiest pilgrimage cities in the entire Hindu cosmos. Known in Sanskrit literature, the Padma Purana, the Bhavishya Purana, and the Mahabharata as Mūlasthāna ("The Primordial Seat of the Sun") and Kaśyapapura ("City of Maharishi Kashyapa", recorded by Herodotus and Hekataios in the 5th century BCE as Kaspapyros), Multan was revered by every Hindu from Kashmir to Kanyakumari for two supreme sanctuaries standing inside its high citadel:

1. The Prahladpuri Narasimha Mandir: The sacred site where, in Puranic tradition, the demon-king Hiranyakashipu ruled from the citadel of Kashyapapura, where his saintly son Bhakta Prahlada remained steadfast in his devotion to Lord Vishnu, where Holika was consumed by the flames (giving birth to the pan-Indian festival of Holi / Holika Dahan, which originated in Multan!), and where Bhagwan Narasimha burst forth from a fiery pillar to slay the tyrant.
2. The Golden Aditya (Surya) Sun Temple of Mulasthana: The greatest Sun Temple in all of Asia—centuries older than Konark in Odisha or Modhera in Gujarat—whose dazzling golden image of Bhagwan Surya (Aditya) drew hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims and astronomical offerings of gold, pearls, sandalwood, and camphor from across the Indian subcontinent.

Let us read the unbroken chain of primary eyewitness testimonies—Chinese, Arab, Persian, and European—that documented the splendor, hostage-exploitation, repeated destruction, heroic Hindu reconstruction, and final annihilation of the Golden Sun Temple of Multan over one thousand years (641–1680 CE):

1. Xuanzang (641 CE) — Before the Arab Invasion

When the Chinese Buddhist scholar-pilgrim Xuanzang visited Mūlasthānapura in 641 CE, seventy years before Muhammad bin Qasim's invasion, he left a vivid eyewitness account in his Si-Yu-Ki (Buddhist Records of the Western World, trans. Samuel Beal, Vol. II, pp. 274–275):

"This country [Mulasthanapura] is about 4,000 li in circuit; the capital town is some 30 li round. It is thickly populated and the establishments are wealthy... There is a temple dedicated to the Sun (Aditya), very magnificent and profusely decorated. The image of the Sun-Deva is cast in yellow gold and ornamented with rare gems. Its divine insight is mysteriously spiritual and its wondrous power is manifest to all. Women play music, light torches perpetually, and offer flowers and perfumes to it without cessation. The kings and high families of the Five Indies never fail to send gems and precious substances as offerings, and have founded resting-houses (Dharamshalas) endowed with food, drink, and medicine for the poor and sick. Men from all countries come here to offer up their prayers; there are always some thousands doing so."

2. Muhammad bin Qasim (713 CE), Al-Masudi (915 CE), and Al-Biruni (1030 CE) — The Temple Used as a "Hostage Shield"

When Muhammad bin Qasim stormed Multan in 713 CE after a two-month siege, his forces slaughtered 6,000 Hindu warriors and temple guardians, enslaved their families, and uncovered forty bahars of pure gold (over 13,000 pounds of gold dust buried in forty subterranean vaults beneath the Sun Temple)—causing the Arabs to dub Multan the "House of Gold" (Farj Bait-uz-Zahab).

Why did Qasim and the subsequent Umayyad and Abbasid governors not immediately level the Sun Temple after plundering its treasury? The Arab geographers Al-Istakhri (951 CE), Ibn Hawqal (976 CE), Al-Masudi (915 CE, Muruj adh-Dhahab), and the great polymath Al-Biruni (1030 CE, Kitab al-Hind, trans. E.C. Sachau, Vol. I, pp. 116–117) openly recorded the cynical strategic reason: - First, the offerings brought by hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims from across India provided the bulk of the state revenue of the Arab Emirate of Multan; - Second, and more chillingly, the Arab rulers used the sacred Aditya murti as a human-and-divine hostage shield against the powerful Hindu Gurjara-Pratihara Emperors of Kanauj and the Hindu Rajas of Rajputana:

"When the unbelievers [the Hindu armies of India] march against Multan, and the faithful [the Arab garrison] do not feel themselves strong enough to fight them, they threaten to break their idol [the Aditya of Multan] and destroy it; whereupon the Hindu armies immediately withdraw their forces!" — Al-Masudi, Meadows of Gold (915 CE) & Al-Istakhri, Kitab al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik (951 CE, in Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, pp. 23, 27–28)

As Al-Biruni recorded in 1030 CE, when the fanatical Ismaili Qarmatians (Carmathians) under Jalam ibn Shaiban seized Multan around 965–985 CE, they finally carried out the threat: Jalam ibn Shaiban smashed the ancient wooden-and-gold Aditya image to pieces, murdered the Hindu Maga / Bhojaka Sun-priests on the spot, and built a Friday mosque directly on top of the ruined Sun Temple. When Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Multan from the Qarmatians in 1005–1010 CE, he left the Qarmatian mosque in ruins, and the resilient Hindu Khatris, Aroras, and Bhatias of Multan immediately rebuilt their sacred Sun Temple and reinstalled the image of Bhagwan Surya!

3. Jean de Thevenot (1666 CE) and Emperor Aurangzeb's Final Demolition (c. 1669–1680 CE)

For another six centuries—defying Ghurid, Tughlaq, Timurid, and early Mughal governors—the devout Hindus of Multan kept the rebuilt Aditya Sun Temple alive. In 1666 CE, during the early years of Emperor Aurangzeb's reign, the French traveler Monsieur Jean de Thevenot visited Multan and left our last eyewitness description of the living Sun Temple (The Travels of Monsieur de Thevenot into the Levant and the East Indies, Part III, London, 1687, p. 55):

"At Multan there is still a famous Pagoda [Temple], to which the Banians and other Gentiles [Hindus] come in pilgrimage from all parts of India, just as the Mahometans go to Mecca... The Idol is clothed in red leather, has a black face, and two pearls in place of eyes; and the Emir or Governor of the country takes the offerings that are presented to it."

Less than fifteen years after Thevenot wrote those words, Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir—enforcing his general imperial edict (April 1669) to demolish all ancient temples and schools of the Hindus across the empire—ordered the final, permanent demolition of the 2,000-year-old Aditya Sun Temple of Multan, smashing its murti, erecting a Mughal Jama Masjid and gunpowder magazine over its foundations, and ending a solar pilgrimage that had shone uninterrupted since the Vedic age. (Its surviving sister shrine next door—the Prahladpuri Narasimha Mandir inside Multan Fort, rebuilt under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Diwan Sawan Mal—survived until December 7, 1992, when a state-backed Pakistani mob demolished it with sledgehammers and firebombs, leaving it a charred ruin today.)

---

II. Timur's November 1398 Holocaust at Bhatner, Ajodhan (Pakpattan) & Dipalpur

Why did the fierce Hindu Rajput and Jat warrior confederacies along the Sutlej, Ravi, and Bias rivers—around Dipalpur (Okara District), Ajodhan (Pakpattan District), Montgomery (Sahiwal), and Multan—finally lose their demographic majority between the 14th and 16th centuries?

Before being renamed Pakpattan ("Pure Ferry") under Mughal Emperor Akbar, the ancient fortified river-crossing on the high bank of the Sutlej was known for over a thousand years by its Sanskrit name Ajodhan (founded by the ancient Yaudheya Kshatriya republic—modern Joya Rajputs/Jats—and recorded by Cunningham as one of the great forts on the road from Multan to Delhi). Twenty-five miles northeast stood its sister Hindu fortress-city of Dipalpur (modern Okara District, founded by the Hindu monarch Raja Deva Pala), whose massive brick ramparts and sacred temples dominated the Bari and Lakhi tracts.

In October–November 1398 CE, the Central Asian conqueror Amir Timur (Tamerlane) crossed the Indus, joined his grandson Pir Muhammad (who had just besieged and sacked Multan for six months), and marched up the Chenab, Ravi, and Sutlej through Tulamba, Shorkot, Ajodhan (Pakpattan), Dipalpur, and Bhatner. In his own autobiography (Malfuzat-i-Timuri) and his court historian Sharaf-ud-din Ali Yazdi's Zafarnama (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 413–428, 487–495), Timur left a blood-curdling first-person record of the genocidal fury unleashed upon the Hindu Bhatti Rajput, Jat, and Arora inhabitants of southern and central West Punjab:

1. The Sack of Tulamba & the Massacre of the Jats of the Ravi (October 1398 CE):
2. Marching along the Ravi toward Multan and Dipalpur, Timur ordered his cavalry to ransom and plunder Tulamba (in modern Khanewal/Multan district), slaughtering its inhabitants and seizing their grain, and then launched a war of extermination against the indigenous Hindu Jats (whom Yazdi calls Jatah / Gete) inhabiting the riverine jungles near Tohana and the Sutlej-Ravi tracts, boasting of slaying 2,000 Jat warriors in a single day and enslaving their wives and children.
3. The Rebellion and Slaughter of the Defenders of Dipalpur (November 1398 CE):
4. Earlier in 1398, when Timur's grandson Pir Muhammad had occupied Dipalpur, the fearless inhabitants of Dipalpur—unable to bear the tyranny and rapacity of the Timurid garrison—had risen up, slain Timur's governor Musafir Kabuli along with 1,000 of his soldiers, and evacuated their families toward the mighty desert fortress of Bhatner (ruled by the Hindu Yaduvanshi Rajput king Rao Dul Chand Bhatti).
5. Marching through Ajodhan (Pakpattan) to Dipalpur and Bhatner in November 1398, Timur hunted down every fugitive column from Dipalpur and Ajodhan, plundering their cattle and baggage, dragging thousands of women and children into chains, and surrounding Bhatner where the refugees of Dipalpur had gathered for a last stand.
6. The Holocaust at Bhatner (November 12, 1398 CE) — 10,000+ Hindu Defenders Slain in a Single Hour:
7. When the Hindu Rajput king Rao Dul Chand Bhatti and the defenders of Dipalpur and Bhatner fought Timur's assault waves at the city gates, and then—when promised terms were violated through crippling tribute demands—barred the inner citadel gates to die sword in hand, Amir Timur recorded the ensuing slaughter in his own words:

"The infidels and desperate men of Dipalpur and Bhatner closed the gates and prepared to die... I gave the command to my victorious soldiers to scale the walls and put every living soul to the sword. The infidels set fire to their own houses, cast their wives and children into the flames [performing mass Jauhar] to save their honor, and rushed out to fight like demons until every man was cut down. In the space of a single hour, the heads of ten thousand infidels were cut off! The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the unbelievers, all the goods and treasures of the city were plundered, and I ordered the houses and fortifications to be razed to the ground so that no trace of habitation remained." — Amir Timur, Malfuzat-i-Timuri & Sharaf-ud-din Yazdi, Zafarnama (in Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 424–427, 491)

Five weeks later, outside Delhi, when Timur noticed that the 100,000 Hindu captives dragged in chains from Multan, Dipalpur, Ajodhan, Bhatner, and Samana smiled with hope on seeing the Indian elephants march out, Timur issued his most infamous order (December 1398): all 100,000 unarmed Hindu prisoners were butchered in cold blood in a single morning, with even timid Muslim scholars (Maulanas) in his camp forced to slaughter fifteen bound captives each.

---

III. The Conversion of the Sutlej & Saraiki Rajput-Jat Confederacies: Wattus, Joyas, Khichis, Dhudhis, Langahs & Dahars

With the military citadels of Dipalpur, Ajodhan, and Multan shattered by Khilji, Tughlaq, and Timurid armies, the indigenous Hindu Rajput and Jat tribes of the Sutlej, Ravi, and Saraiki belt (Okara, Pakpattan, Sahiwal, Vehari, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Lodhran, and Multan) found themselves completely surrounded by two interlocking imperial structures: 1. The Sultanate and Mughal military Faujdaris of Dipalpur and Multan; and 2. The sprawling tax-free Khanqah-Jagir estates (Inam / Madad-i-Ma'ash) of Pakpattan (Baba Farid's shrine), Shergarh (Daud Bandagi Kirmani, d. 1575 CE), Uch Sharif (the Bukhari and Gilani Makhdums), and Multan (the Qureshi/Suhrawardi shrines).

In the Gazetteer of the Montgomery District (1898–99, pp. 58–75), the Bahawalpur State Gazetteer (1904), and the Multan District Gazetteer (1923–24), British settlement officers recorded the exact pre-Islamic Hindu ancestry and conversion timeline of every major Muslim tribe in this region:

1. The Wattus of the Sutlej (Okara, Depalpur, Pakpattan & Bahawalnagar):
2. Numbering hundreds of thousands along both banks of the Sutlej (and producing Punjab Chief Minister Mian Manzoor Ahmad Wattu), the Wattus are documented in the Montgomery District Gazetteer (1898–99, pp. 58–61) as pure Hindu Yaduvanshi Bhatti Rajputs, descending directly from Raja Salvahan of Sialkot and Rao Jaisal of Jaisalmer through Raja Bada / Wattu.
3. According to their own tribal tradition, the Wattus ruled the Sutlej pastoral tracts as unconverted Hindu Rajputs under Rai Lakha Wattu until the 14th century (c. 1350–1400 CE), when Rana Adham / Khaira Wattu was converted at Pakpattan/Dipalpur under Tughlaq rule—while retaining the Hindu Rajput titles Rana and Mian and employing Hindu Brahmins at their marriages until the late 19th century!
4. The Joyas of the Sutlej, Vehari, Bahawalpur & Multan:
5. Identified by Sir Alexander Cunningham and the Bahawalpur Gazetteer (1904) as the direct biological descendants of the ancient Yaudheya Kshatriya Republic (celebrated in Panini's Ashtadhyayi 5.3.117 as Ayudhajivin warrior-clans worshipping Lord Kartikeya/Skanda on their coins found across Bahawalpur and Rohtak).
6. Driven across the Sutlej by Bhatti and Tughlaq campaigns in the 14th–15th centuries, the Hindu Joya chiefs (Lakhkho and Farid) converted to Islam to secure grazing and canal lands in Mailsi, Vehari, and Bahawalpur (founding Shahr Farid and Fatehpur).
7. The Khichis, Dhudhis, Hans & Hoted Rajputs (Vehari, Mailsi, Pakpattan & Sahiwal):
8. The Khichis (of Mailsi/Vehari): Documented in the Multan and Montgomery Gazetteers as pure Hindu Agnivanshi Chauhan Rajputs of Ajmer/Gagraun (Khichiwara), whose ancestor Khichi Khan / Rai Khichi migrated to the Sutlej/Ravi during the Mughal era and converted under the shrine of Shergarh/Pakpattan.
9. The Dhudhis: Documented as Hindu Punwar (Parmar) Rajputs closely allied to the Rathores and Bhattis.
10. The Mekan, Hot, and Langrial Clans: Similarly traced in the Multan Gazetteer to converted Hindu Rajput and Jat lineages.
11. The Langahs of Multan (1445–1527 CE) & the Dahars, Korejas and Bhuttas of Bahawalpur/Rahim Yar Khan:
12. In 1445 CE, Rai Sahra (Qutb-ud-din Langah) founded the independent Langah Sultanate of Multan, which ruled South Punjab for eighty years. As recorded by the 16th-century historian Nizamuddin Ahmad (Tabaqat-i-Akbari) and Firishta, the Langahs were an indigenous Hindu Rajput/Jat clan of Sibi and Multan (closely linked to the Chalukya/Solanki or Samma Rajputs) whose chief Rai Sahra* still bore the Hindu royal title Rai*** at the moment he seized Multan!
13. Further south in Uch Sharif, Rahim Yar Khan, and Sadiqabad—in the shadow of the towering 7th–10th century brick Hindu Shahi/Buddhist temple tower of Pattan Munara on the ancient course of the Hakra/Saraswati river—the dominant Muslim tribes (Dahar [claiming descent from Maharaja Dahir Sen of Alor!], Bhutta, Koreja, Chachar, and Mahar) are all documented in the Bahawalpur Gazetteer (1904) as converted Hindu Rajputs and Jats.

---

IV. The Subjugation of the Derajat & Thal Frontier (1450–1800 CE): How Indigenous Hindu Jats in Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Layyah, Bhakkar & Mianwali Were Reduced to Hamsaya Serfs

Cross the Chenab and Indus westward into the long frontier strip stretching from Mianwali, Bhakkar, and Layyah (the Thal desert and Kachhi riverine plain) down through Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Dera Ismail Khan (the Derajat), and you stand before one of the most dramatic archaeological and demographic paradoxes in Pakistan.

On the rugged limestone spurs of the Khasor Range overlooking the west bank of the Indus in Dera Ismail Khan District stand the twin fortified temple-cities of North Kafir Kot (Umar Kot) and South Kafir Kot (Bilot), alongside the ruined Hindu Shahi temples of Mari Indus and Rokhri in Mianwali. Built between the 7th and 10th centuries CE out of carved kanjur stone, the twelve monumental Nagara-style Hindu temples of Kafir Kot—studied by Sir Alexander Cunningham (ASI Report Vol. XIV, 1882) and Prof. Michael W. Meister (Temples of the Salt Range and the Indus, 2010)—prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the entire Indus bank of Dera Ismail Khan, Mianwali, and Dera Ghazi Khan was once a flourishing, densely populated Hindu kingdom!

Who were the people who farmed the fertile Kachhi floodplains of the Indus below the temples of Kafir Kot, and how did they become today's Saraiki-speaking Muslim peasant majority living under Baloch (Leghari, Mazari, Khosa, Gurchani, Drishak, Lund) and Pashtun (Niazi, Gandapur, Marwat, Babar) tribal Tumandars and Nawabs?

The answer is preserved with forensic clarity in two extraordinary primary colonial documents: H. St. George Tucker's Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Dera Ismail Khan District (1872–1879, Lahore, 1879) and A.H. Diack's Gazetteer of the Dera Ghazi Khan District (1893–97, Lahore, 1898).

Let us trace the two-stage demographic subjugation documented in those settlement reports:

1. Before 1469 CE — An Indigenous Hindu Jat & Rajput Peasantry:
2. Up until the late 15th century, the entire Indus riverbed (Kachhi / Nasheb) and the adjacent Thal wells of Mianwali, Bhakkar, Layyah, Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Dera Ismail Khan were owned and cultivated by indigenous Hindu Jat and Rajput clans—the Chhina, Bhutta, Sial, Uttera, Jhammat, Kalru, Aulakh,Khokhar, Kang, Joya, and Sandi Jats, alongside prosperous urban Hindu Arora, Khatri, and Bhatia merchants.
3. The Baloch & Pashtun Tribal Colonization (1469–1750 CE):
4. In 1469–1480 CE, the Langah Sultan of Multan (Sultan Husain Langah) invited Baloch tribal mercenary confederacies from Sistan and Makran—led by Malik Sohrab Dodai (whose sons Ismail Khan and Fateh Khan founded Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Fateh Khan) and Mir Chakar Rind / Ghazi Khan Mirrani (who founded Dera Ghazi Khan around 1494 CE)—granting them military Jagirs along the west bank of the Indus to act as a buffer against Delhi and Kabul.
5. Simultaneously, during the Lodi and Suri eras (1451–1555 CE), armed Niazi, Lohani, Marwat, and Bhittani Pashtun tribes pushed down from the Tank and Bannu passes into Isa Khel, Mianwali, and northern Dera Ismail Khan.
6. Reduction of the Indigenous Hindu Jats to Hamsaya Serfdom and Coerced Conversion:
7. As Tucker documented in his Dera Ismail Khan Settlement Report (1879, pp. 42–68), the invading Baloch Tumandars and Pashtun Khans did not expel the indigenous Hindu Jat cultivators—because the nomadic Baloch and Pashtun horsemen did not know how to dig Karez channels, operate Persian wheels (Rahat / Jhalar), or cultivate indigo, wheat, and cotton in the flooded Kachhi silt!
8. Instead, the military conquerors confiscated the proprietary title (Ala Milkiyat)* to the entire land, reducing the indigenous Hindu Jat farmers on their own ancestral fields to the status of Hamsayas ("those living under the shadow/protection of a master") and tenant-serfs (Adna Maliks / Chakdars) paying a feudal rent (Batai and Lichh*).
9. Subjected to daily social humiliation as "infidel Jats", barred from carrying weapons, and taxed at punitive rates unless they accepted the faith of their Baloch and Pashtun overlords (and the powerful Sayyid/Makhdum shrines of Bilot Sharif—established right next to the ruined Hindu temples of South Kafir Kot!—and Taunsa / Sakhi Sarwar), the rural Hindu Jat peasantry of Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Layyah, Bhakkar, and Mianwali converted to Islam clan by clan between 1500 and 1800 CE.
10. Only the fortified town-dwelling Hindu Aroras, Khatris, and Bhatias—who controlled the grain trade, banking (Hundis), and shops inside the walled cities of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Kulachi, Dera Ghazi Khan, Jampur, Taunsa, Layyah, Bhakkar, Kalabagh, and Mianwali (where Hindus still formed 35% to 55% of the urban population in the 1931 and 1941 Censuses!)—remained unconverted Sanātanis right down to April–October 1947, when their cities were put to the torch and every last Hindu family was ethnically cleansed across the Indus.

---

Chapter 17: Chibhal (POJK), Jammu Hills & Hazara — The Converted Royal Houses of Mirpur, Bhimber, Kotli, Rajouri & Abbottabad

I. The Forgotten Hindu Kingdoms of the Pir Panjal Foothills (Darvabhisara & Chibhal)

Look northward from Jhelum and Gujrat toward the snow-capped wall of the Pir Panjal and the lower Himalayas. Between the Chenab (Chandrabhaga) on the east and the Jhelum (Vitasta) and Indus (Sindhu) on the west lies a breathtaking belt of green outer hills, pine ridges, and mountain valleys: Bhimber, Mirpur, Kotli, Mangla, Bagh, Rawalakot, Sudhanoti, and Muzaffarabad (today constituting Pakistan-Occupied Jammu & Kashmir / POJK), contiguous with Rajouri and Poonch in Indian Jammu & Kashmir on one side and the Murree Hills (Kahuta/Kotli Sattian) and Hazara (Abbottabad, Haripur, Mansehra) on the other.

In ancient Sanskrit texts—including the Mahabharata, Panini's Ashtadhyayi, and Kalhana's 12th-century Kashmir chronicle Rajatarangini—this outer Himalayan hill zone was known as Dārvābhisāra (between the Chenab and Jhelum, ruled at the time of Alexander the Great by the Hindu king Abhisares) and Uraśā (modern Hazara, west of the Jhelum). From the 15th to the 19th centuries, the central region encompassing Bhimber, Mirpur, Kotli, and Naoshera was universally known as Chibhal ("Land of the Chib Rajputs").

Today, the population of POJK (Mirpur, Bhimber, Kotli, Muzaffarabad)—including the 1+ million-strong British Mirpuri diaspora in Bradford, Birmingham, and Luton—and the adjacent hills of Murree and Hazara is nearly 100% Muslim (following the genocidal extermination and expulsion of over 40,000+ indigenous Hindus and Sikhs at Mirpur, Alibeg, Bhimber, Deva Vatala, Kotli, Muzaffarabad, and Rajouri in October–November 1947).

Yet who are the Muslim inhabitants of POJK, Rajouri, Murree, and Hazara? Open the landmark geographical and ethnographic treatise written by Frederic Drew—who served for ten years as geologist and governor in the service of Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Jammu & Kashmir—titled The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories: A Geographical Account (London: Edward Stanford, 1875, Chapter III: "The Outer Hills / Chibhal", pp. 43–59), alongside the Hazara District Gazetteer (1907) and Rawalpindi District Gazetteer (1907).

Drew's eyewitness documentation reveals a historical reality that has been completely censored from Pakistani textbooks: almost the entire native population of POJK (Mirpur, Bhimber, Kotli, Bagh, Muzaffarabad) and the Murree-Hazara hills consists of converted Hindu Rajputs, Pahari Kshatriyas, and Gujjars whose Hindu royal houses (Chib, Jarral, Mangral, Domal, Pal, Bomba, Khakha, Gakhar, Dhund, Satti, and Karlal) remained Hindu until the Mughal (1586–1707 CE) and Afghan Durrani (1752–1819 CE) eras!

flowchart TD
    MUGHAL["THE IMPERIAL MUGHAL ROAD TO KASHMIR (After 1586 CE)<br/>Passing directly through Gujrat ➔ Bhimber ➔ Nowshera ➔ Rajouri ➔ Pir Panjal"]
    MUGHAL --> CHIB["1. CHIB RAJPUTS (Bhimber & Mirpur)<br/>Branch of Hindu KATOCH Rajputs of Kangra<br/>Founded by Raja Chib Chand (c. 1400 CE)<br/>Converted under Babur/Akbar/Aurangzeb via Hostage-Sanads"]
    MUGHAL --> JARRAL["2. JARRAL RAJPUTS (Rajouri, Bhimber & Mirpur)<br/>Chandravanshi PANDAVA Rajputs (Descended from Arjuna)<br/>Raja Nilakanta converted to 'Noor-ud-din'<br/>Hindu Jarral branch survived in Kangra/Jammu"]
    MUGHAL --> MANGRAL["3. MANGRAL, DOMAL & PAL RAJPUTS (Kotli, Mirpur & Poonch)<br/>Branches of Jammu/Chibhal Hindu Rajputs<br/>Islamized under late Mughal & Durrani rule"]
    MUGHAL --> HAZARA["4. DHUND, SATTI, KARLAL, BOMBA & KHAKHA CLANS<br/>(Murree Hills, Abbottabad/Hazara & Muzaffarabad)<br/>Indigenous Hindu Rajput/Kshatriya hill tribes converted<br/>between 1600 and 1800 CE"]

---

II. The Chib Rajputs of Bhimber & Mirpur (Chibhal): Sons of Hindu Katoch Prince Raja Chib Chand Who Still Offered the Hindu Choti at His Tomb in 1875!

The royal tribe that gave its name to Chibhal (modern Bhimber and Mirpur districts in POJK) is the Chib Rajput clan. Even today, every Muslim Chib in Bhimber, Mirpur, Jhelum, and Gujrat bears the royal Hindu title Raja.

Where did the Chib Rajputs come from, and how did they become Muslims? In The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories (1875, pp. 44–49) and H.A. Rose's Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, 1911, pp. 166–170), the documented history of the Chib royal house is set forth in extraordinary detail:

1. Direct Branch of the Ancient Hindu Katoch Royal Dynasty of Kangra (Trigarta):
2. The Chib Rajputs are an authenticated offshoot of the Hindu Chandravanshi Katoch Rajputs of Kangra (Himachal Pradesh)—one of the oldest surviving Hindu royal dynasties in the world, which ruled Trigarta from the era of the Mahabharata (Susharman).
3. Around 1400 CE (about seven generations before Mughal Emperor Babur), a younger Hindu Katoch prince named Raja Pratap Chand or his son Raja Chib Chand (son of Raja Megh Chand of Kangra) migrated westward along the outer Himalayan foothills to Bhimber, married the daughter of the local Hindu ruler Raja Sripat of Bhimber, succeeded to the throne, and founded the Hindu Rajput kingdom of Chibhal, naming his clan Chib after himself.
4. Conversion of Raja Dharam Chand (Shadi Khan) under the Mughals:
5. For over a century and a half, the descendants of Raja Chib Chand ruled Bhimber and Mirpur as unconverted Hindu Katoch-Chib Rajas.
6. However, when Mughal Emperor Akbar conquered Kashmir in 1586 CE, the Imperial Mughal Road from Lahore and Gujrat to Srinagar was routed directly through Bhimber, Saidabad (Samani), Nowshera, and Rajouri. Bhimber became the vital gateway (Darwaza) where Mughal emperors (Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb) camped with their colossal armies at the foot of the hills.
7. Applying Engine 3 (The Imperial Hostage-Prince & Sanad Mechanism), the Mughal court demanded that the Hindu Raja of Bhimber—Raja Dharam Chand (or in an earlier recension under Babur/Humayun, his ancestor who took the name Raja Shadi Khan)—embrace Islam and provide military escorts for the royal Kafila in exchange for an imperial Mughal Mansab and Jagir confirming his sovereignty over Chibhal!
8. When Raja Dharam Chand was converted into Raja Shadi Khan (who died during the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb and whose tomb still stands near Bhimber), the western and lowland Chib Rajputs of Bhimber, Mirpur, and northern Gujrat gradually followed their royal chief into Islam—while hundreds of eastern Chib Rajput families in Jammu, Akhnoor, and Kangra refused to convert and remain proud Hindu Chib Rajputs to this very day!
9. Frederic Drew's Bombshell Eyewitness Testimony (1875 CE) — The Sacred Hindu Choti Offered at Raja Chib Chand's Tomb:
10. Nothing illustrates the persistence of Hindu ancestral memory among the converted Rajputs of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir more powerfully than what Frederic Drew witnessed and recorded at Bhimber in 1875—three hundred years after the Chib royal family's conversion to Islam:

"The Chibs are a race of Rajputs; there are both Hindu Chibs and Muhammadan Chibs, the latter being the more numerous... They trace their origin to the Katoch Rajputs of Kangra. What is most remarkable is the reverence still paid by the Muhammadan Chibs to their Hindu founder, Chib Chand, whose tomb stands near Bhimber. To this day, whenever a male child is born to a Muhammadan Chib family, the mother allows the Hindu scalp-lock (Choti) to grow uncut on the crown of the boy's head until he is three or four years old; the child is then taken in pilgrimage to the tomb of their Hindu ancestor Raja Chib Chand at Bhimber, where the Choti is ceremonially shaved off according to the ancient Hindu rite (Mundan), and only after this offering to their Hindu forefather is the boy admitted into the brotherhood of the clan!" — Frederic Drew, The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories: A Geographical Account (London: Edward Stanford, 1875, pp. 45–47) & H.A. Rose, Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (Vol. II, 1911, p. 168)

Read that passage twice. As late as 1875, the Muslim Rajput aristocracy of Bhimber and Mirpur (POJK) was still growing the sacred Hindu Shikha / Choti on the heads of their newborn Muslim sons and performing the Vedic Chudakarana (Mundan) ceremony at the shrine of their Hindu Katoch ancestor Raja Chib Chand! Furthermore, Drew recorded that high-ranking Hindu Dogra and Katoch Rajputs of Jammu still recognized the Muslim Chibs as pure-blooded Rajput kinsmen until late 19th-century clerical orthodoxy severed the bond.

---

III. The Jarral Rajputs of Rajouri, Bhimber & Mirpur: Sons of Pandava Arjuna and Raja Nilakanta

Immediately north of the Chibs along the Mughal Road—ruling the strategic mountain kingdom of Rajouri (Rajapuri of Kalhana's Rajatarangini) and spreading across Mirpur, Bhimber, Kotli, and Gujrat—stand the Jarral Rajputs (Mirza / Raja).

Like the Chibs and Janjuas, the Muslim Jarral Rajputs of POJK and Rajouri possess a completely documented Hindu Kshatriya pedigree recorded in Kalhana's Rajatarangini, the Persian Tarikh-i-Rajgan-i-Rajouri, and H.A. Rose's Glossary (Vol. II, pp. 385–387): - Pandava Chandravanshi Lineage: The Jarrals trace their unbroken descent to the Pandava prince Arjuna of the Mahabharata, through his grandson Emperor Parikshit, Emperor Janamejaya, and Raja Jira / Jarral of Kalanaur. - Overthrow of the Hindu Paul/Pal Dynasty of Rajouri: In the late 12th century, the Hindu Jarral king defeated Amna Pal, the Hindu Raja of Rajapuri (Rajouri), and established a Hindu Jarral Rajput kingdom that ruled Rajouri for centuries. - Conversion of Raja Nilakanta ("Blue-Throated Shiva") into Raja Noor-ud-din: During the Delhi Sultanate / early Mughal penetration of the Kashmir passes, the reigning Hindu Jarral monarch Raja Nilakanta (named directly after Bhagwan Shiva / Neelkanth) was pressured into accepting Islam to retain his mountain kingdom, taking the Islamic name Sultan Noor-ud-din (and later Mughal titles of Mirza and Raja under Akbar and Jahangir, who took Jarral Rajput princesses into the Mughal imperial harem). - The Unconverted Hindu Jarral Brethren: When Raja Nilakanta converted in Rajouri, his younger brother and kinsmen refused to abandon Sanātana Dharma, retreated eastward across the Chenab into Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) and Jammu, and remained the Hindu Jarral Rajputs—who live in Kangra and Jammu to this day, sharing the exact same Gotra and Pandava ancestor as the Muslim Jarrals of Mirpur and Rajouri!

---

IV. The Mangrals of Kotli, Domals, Sudhans, Gakhars of Muzaffarabad & the Dhund ("Abbasi"), Satti, and Karlal Tribes of Murree and Hazara

Move northward from Mirpur and Bhimber through Kotli, Poonch, Rawalakot, Bagh, and Muzaffarabad across the Jhelum into the Murree Hills and Hazara (Abbottabad, Haripur, and Mansehra). Every single mountain valley tells the exact same story of a medieval Hindu Rajput, Pahari Kshatriya, or Dardic population Islamized between the 16th and early 19th centuries:

1. The Mangral Rajputs of Kotli & Mirpur (POJK):
2. Documented by Frederic Drew (1875, p. 44) and H.A. Rose as pure Hindu Rajputs descended from Raja Mangar Pal, a younger brother or kinsman of the Hindu Rajas of Jammu / Kangra, who founded the principality of Kotli (Mangralta) on the Poonch River and converted to Islam under Mughal imperial rule while retaining the Hindu royal title Raja.
3. The Domal, Thakial, Pal, and Malot Rajputs of Mirpur, Poonch & Rajouri:
4. All documented in Drew's Chibhal survey (pp. 43–55) as split tribes having both Hindu and Muslim branches in the 19th century—where the western families nearer the Jhelum converted under Mughal/Afghan rule while the eastern families nearer Jammu remained Hindu Thakurs and Rajputs!
5. The Bomba and Khakha Rajputs of Muzaffarabad & the Jhelum Gorge (Uri–Domel–Karnah):
6. Before the Sultanate of Kashmir and the Mughal-Afghan eras, the deep Jhelum gorge from Baramulla and Uri to Domel and Muzaffarabad (Dvaravati / Bolyasaka in Kalhana's Rajatarangini) was guarded by Hindu Damara and Khasas Kshatriya warlords.
7. As documented by Sir Aurel Stein (Kalhana's Rajatarangini, Vol. II, pp. 400–404, 434) and Frederic Drew (p. 55), the fierce Khakha and Bomba tribes of Muzaffarabad and the Jhelum valley (who bear the Hindu title Raja) are the direct Islamized descendants of the ancient Hindu Khaśa Kshatriya lords (Khaśālaya) recorded by Kalhana in the 11th and 12th centuries!
8. The Dhunds ("Abbasis"), Sattis, Karlals, Kethwals, and Dhanials of the Murree Hills & Hazara (Abbottabad / Haripur):
9. Today, in the Murree Hills (Rawalpindi District), Circle Bakote, Galis, Abbottabad, and Haripur, the dominant Pahari/Hindko-speaking tribes—the Dhunds, Sattis, Karlals, and Dhanials—have adopted prestige titles claiming descent from "Al-Abbas" (calling themselves Dhund Abbasis) or Arab generals.
10. However, when Major Wace (Hazara Settlement Report, 1874), Sir Denzil Ibbetson (Panjab Castes, 1883, pp. 158–160), and H.D. Watson (Hazara District Gazetteer, 1907) investigated their origins, customs, and physical anthropology, and when 21st-century geneticists tested the Pahari populations of Murree, Hazara, and POJK, the Arab myth collapsed completely:
    • Genomic Reality: The Pahari/Potohari tribes of Murree, Abbottabad, and POJK carry 99%+ indigenous South Asian autosomal DNA—genetically indistinguishable from neighboring Jammu Dogras, Kangra Rajputs, and Kashmiri Pandits, with < 1% Middle Eastern input.
    • Ethnographic Reality: As Ibbetson and Rose documented, the Dhunds (from Hindu ancestor Takht Mal / Dhund, a Suryavanshi/Tonwar Rajput of Delhi/Jammu), the Sattis (from a Hindu Rajput ancestor overlooking the Jhelum), and the Karlals of the Nara hills in Abbottabad (who explicitly acknowledged their descent from a Hindu Rajput ancestor named Karlal / Kallar Shah) are indigenous Hindu Pahari Rajput clans of ancient Uraśā (Hazara) and Darvabhisara who were converted during the late Mughal and Afghan Durrani governorships (1600–1818 CE) and retained their Hindu title Raja and Rajput marriage customs into the British era!

---

V. The Desecrated Crown of POJK: Sharda Peeth (Śāradā Pīṭha) in the Neelum Valley

At the northernmost apex of Pakistan-Occupied Jammu & Kashmir—where the emerald waters of the Kishanganga River (renamed the "Neelum River" by Pakistan after 1947) meet the Madhumati and Sarasvati streams at the village of Shardi (6,500 feet above sea level)—stands the desolate, roofless red-sandstone ruin of Maa Sharda Peeth (Śāradā Pīṭha).

Before the Islamization of Kashmir and the surrounding Khasa / Dard hills after the 14th century (under Sikandar Butshikan, 1389–1413 CE, and the Bomba/Mughal governors), Sharda Peeth was not merely a local shrine. It was the Oxford and Vatican of Northern India—one of the eighteen supreme Maha Shakti Peethas (where the right hand of Goddess Sati fell) and the revered seat of Goddess Saraswati (Śāradā, Goddess of Wisdom, Script, and the Vedas):

• Al-Biruni (1030 CE, Kitab al-Hind, Vol. I, p. 117) wrote of Sharda Peeth from personal reports:

  "In Inner Kashmir, about two or three days' journey from the capital in the direction toward the mountains of Bolor [Gilgit], there is a wooden idol called Śāradā, which is much venerated and frequented by pilgrims from all over India."

• Kalhana (1148 CE, Rajatarangini, Book I, v. 37 & Book VIII, v. 2556) and the Kashmiri poet Bilhana (11th century, Vikramankadeva Charita) celebrated Sharda Peeth as the supreme fountainhead of Sanskrit scholarship, asserting that the crystal waters of the Madhumati river below the temple sparkled with the gold dust of Saraswati's wisdom.
• Adi Shankaracharya (8th century CE) walked across the length of India to Sharda Peeth in modern POJK to defeat scholars of every philosophical school and ascend the Southern Door of the Sarvajna Peetham ("Throne of Omniscience")—an event commemorated by every Shankaracharya Matha in India today!
• Acharya Ramanujacharya (11th century CE) walked all the way from Srirangam in Tamil Nadu to Sharda Peeth in the Kishanganga Valley because its royal Sanskrit library held the only authentic manuscript of Bodhayana's Vritti on the Brahma Sutras, which Ramanuja studied there to compose his monumental Sri Bhashya.
• Acharya Hemachandra (12th century CE), the great Jain grammarian of Gujarat, sent emissaries to King Jayasimha of Kashmir specifically to copy the ancient Sanskrit grammatical treatises preserved in the library of Sharda Peeth to compose his Siddha-Hema-Shabdanushasana.
• Even the native alphabet of Kashmir, Himachal, and Punjab for a thousand years—the Śāradā Script (mother of Gurmukhi, Dogri/Takri, and Landa)—took its very name from Maa Sharda of the Neelum Valley!

When Sir Aurel Stein visited Sharda Peeth in 1892 (Kalhana's Rajatarangini, Vol. II, Note B: "The Shrine of Śāradā", pp. 279–289), the ancient Kashmiri-style stone temple—with its massive 22-stepped staircase, trefoil-arched gateway, and cella housing the sacred stone slab (Śāradā-śilā)—was still an active Hindu pilgrimage center tended by Kashmiri Pandits and guarded by a nearby Dogra fort, even though the surrounding Pahari and Bomba villagers of the Kishanganga valley had been converted to Islam centuries earlier.

Then came October–November 1947. Tribal lashkars and Pakistani troops stormed the Kishanganga/Neelum valley, slaughtered or expelled every single Hindu Pandit and Sikh resident of Shardi and Muzaffarabad, looted the temple precinct, and sealed the Line of Control. For nearly eighty years since 1947, the supreme Sarvajna Peetham where Adi Shankaracharya and Ramanujacharya once bowed has stood abandoned in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, battered by winter snows and encroached upon inside a military zone—a silent stone monument to the stolen Sanātani soul of the Himalayas.

---

VI. Summary Matrix: The Converted Royal & Pahari Clans of POJK (Chibhal) and Hazara

PART V: SINDH, GANDHARA, THE HINDU KUSH, GILGIT-BALTISTAN & BALOCHISTAN

---

Chapter 18: Sindh I — The Soomra (Parmar) and Samma (Yaduvanshi) Rajput Dynasties, the Seven Queens & The Siege of Thatta (1365–1367 CE)

I. The Myth of "Bab-ul-Islam" Versus the Reality of the Sammat Bloodline

In Pakistani state textbooks, the province of Sindh—the lower valley of the sacred Sindhu (Indus), from which the words Hindu, Hind, and India were born—is officially titled Bab-ul-Islam ("The Gateway of Islam"). Students in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, and Thatta are taught a cartoonishly simple narrative: that Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh in 712 CE, that the local population eagerly embraced the religion of the Arab invaders, and that Sindh's indigenous Hindu civilization effectively ended on the battlefield of Rawar.

Nothing could be further from historical truth. Even after the brutal Umayyad and Abbasid campaigns (712–854 CE) and the gradual extinction of urban Sindhi Buddhism under discriminatory Dhimmi taxation and monastic demolitions (documented in Chapter 6), the overwhelming majority of the rural and pastoral population of Sindh—and both of the great indigenous royal dynasties that ruled Sindh for five hundred years after the Arabs (1026–1520 CE), the Soomras and the Sammas—sprang directly from Hindu Rajput and Kshatriya lineages!

Look at the demographic makeup of Sindhi-speaking Muslims in Pakistan today. Alongside Baloch tribes who migrated into Sindh after the 15th century, the indigenous majority of native Sindhis is known collectively in Sindhi ethnography as the Sammat (or Samma / Soomra confederacy). Their surnames and clan names are worn by Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, landlords (Waderas), poets, and tens of millions of villagers across Sindh: Soomro, Sammo, Abro, Junejo, Bhutto, Jadeja (Jareja), Channa, Mahar, Dahar, Unar, Mangrio, Jokhio, Numrio (Burfat), Korejo, Samejo, Rahu, Dal, Sand, Halepoto, and Sanghar.

Who are these Sammat tribes? Open the earliest surviving Persian chronicles of Sindh—Mir Muhammad Masum Bhakkari's Tarikh-i-Masumi (1600 CE), Mir Tahir Muhammad Nasyani's Tarikh-i-Tahiri (1621 CE), Mir Ali Sher Qaune Thattvi's Tuhfat-ul-Kiram (1768 CE)—as well as the classic ethnographic surveys of Sir H.M. Elliot (The History of India, Vol. I Appendix, 1867), E.H. Aitken (Gazetteer of the Province of Sind, 1907), and Sadiq Ali Sher Ali Ansari (A Short Sketch of the Musalman Races Found in Sind, 1901). Every single chronicle and census record confirms the same foundational truth: - The Soomras (Soomro) are indigenous Hindu Agnivanshi Parmar (Panwar) Rajputs; - The Sammas (Sammo, Abro, Junejo, Unar, Jadeja) are indigenous Hindu Chandravanshi Yaduvanshi Rajputs—the exact same blood-clan as the Hindu Jadeja Rajputs of Kutch and Jamnagar* in Gujarat (who still bear the Sindhi royal title Jam, as in Jam Saheb of Nawanagar/CricViz Ranjitsinhji*)!; and - The Channas, Dahars, Mahars, and Bhuttos are indigenous Hindu Rajput and Jat clans** of the Indus valley whose ancestors bore pure Sanskrit and Prakrit names for centuries after 712 CE!

---

II. The Soomra Dynasty (c. 1026–1351 CE): Hindu Parmar Rajputs, the Ballad of Dodo-Chanesar & the Jauhar of Princess Baghul Bai Against Alauddin Khilji

When the Arab Habbarid Emirate of Mansura collapsed in the early 11th century (1025–1026 CE), sovereignty over Sindh did not pass to an Arab or Turkic family. It passed to an indigenous Sindhi Rajput dynasty: the Soomras (capital first at Thari / Muhammad Tur and later at Rupah-Mari in Badin/Thar).

Wait—if the Soomras had all been "orthodox Muslims since 712 CE," what were the names of the Soomra kings recorded in the Tarikh-i-Masumi (1600 CE), the Tuhfat-ul-Kiram, and the oral Charan / Bhat ballads of Sindh and Rajasthan? Look at the actual royal list of the Soomra sovereigns: - Rana Soomra / Rajpal - Rana Bhungar (Bhungar Rao) - Dodo (Duda I, II, III) - Chanesar (Chanesar Rao) - Sanghar - Hamir (Hamir Soomro) - Bhu / Bhim - Armil (Armil Rao) - Phattu - Rani Tara Bai and Princess Baghul Bai!

Not a single early Soomra king bore an Arabic name! Every one of them carried the Hindu Rajput royal titles Rana and Rao and pure Sanskrit/Prakrit names (Bhungar, Dodo, Chanesar, Sanghar, Hamir, Armil). Even more decisively, the 17th-century Sindhi historian Mir Tahir Muhammad Nasyani, writing in his Tarikh-i-Tahiri (1621 CE, translated in Elliot & Dowson, History of India, Vol. I, pp. 256–268), explicitly stated that the Soomras were of the Hindu religion, that they intermarried with Hindu Rajputs of Kutch and Jaisalmer, and that their ruling class practiced Hindu customs (including buffalo/animal sacrifices at the temple of Goddess Bhavani / Hinglaj and wearing the Hindu Rajput Tilak and turban) until pockets of them were gradually drawn into Ismaili/Sufi and Sunni Islam under Delhi Sultanate coercion!

The Immortal Sindhi National Epic: Dodo Soomro, Chanesar & the Jauhar Against Alauddin Khilji (c. 1298–1300 CE)

Even today, across every village of Sindh (in Pakistan) and Kutch/Thar (in India), Bhats and folk minstrels (Manganiyars) sing the greatest national epic of Sindh: the Dastan of Dodo and Chanesar (Dodo-Chanesar). What is this national epic of Sindh actually about?

Around 1298–1300 CE, when theSoomra king Rao Bhungar died at his capital of Rupah-Mari (Badin District), the noblemen of Sindh bypassed his elder son Chanesar (who hesitated) and crowned his heroic younger brother Rao Dodo Soomro. Enraged, Chanesar rode to Delhi and invited the ruthless Sultan Alauddin Khilji (r. 1296–1316 CE) to invade Sindh, promising the Sultan the hand of his virtuous sister, the Hindu-Soomra princess Baghul Bai!

When Alauddin Khilji's imperial army (led by his generals Salar Khan / Nusrat Khan and Alap Khan) marched into Sindh and demanded that Rao Dodo Soomro hand over Princess Baghul Bai into the Sultan's harem in Delhi: 1. The Soomra council declared that a Rajput princess would never be given to a Turkic invader ("Siron Diyan, Par Baghul Na Diyan" — "We will give our severed heads, but we will never give Baghul Bai!"). 2. Sending Princess Baghul Bai and the royal Soomra women for refuge to the impregnable desert fortress of Abro (Jam Abro) of Kutch—a fellow Hindu Yaduvanshi Rajput king who laid down his life and his sons' lives to protect the honor of the refugee women (Sammat-Saran)—Rao Dodo Soomro and his young nephew Nangar Soomro rode out in saffron robes (Kesariya) to fight Alauddin Khilji's vast army to the last man. 3. Even Chanesar, seeing his brother Dodo and nephew Nangar hacked to pieces defending the honor of Sindh and their sister, repented of his treason, drew his sword against Alauddin Khilji's general, and died on the battlefield beside his brother! 4. When the surviving Khilji troops reached the desert sanctuary to seize Princess Baghul Bai and the Soomra queens (Tari,Mari, and Rupah), the princesses prayed to the Mother Earth and the sacred fire, entering the flames in a supreme Rajput Jauhar so that their living bodies could never be touched by the invader (Satiyun-jo-Daro, the "Mound of the Satis", still revered in Badin/Thar today!).

Today, millions of Pakistani Muslim Soomros in Sindh and Hindu Parmar/Sodha Rajputs in Rajasthan are the direct descendants of those very heroes—and in the 1881 and 1901 British Censuses of Punjab and Rajputana, thousands of Hindu Soomra Rajputs and Hindu Soomra Aroras/Lohanas still lived across Multan, Bahawalpur, and Jaisalmer, worshipping their ancestral River-Deity and Goddess Hinglaj!

---

III. The Samma Dynasty (1351–1520 CE): Yaduvanshi Rajput Jams of Thatta, the Seven Queens, and Firuz Shah Tughlaq's Siege of Thatta (1365–1367 CE)

As the Soomra kingdom bled from thirty years of Khilji and Tughlaq invasions (including Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq's pursuit of the rebel Taghi into Sindh, where Muhammad bin Tughlaq died on the banks of the Indus near onda/Thatta in March 1351 CE), leadership of indigenous Sindh passed to their Yaduvanshi cousins: the Samma Rajput Dynasty (1351–1520 CE), who built their glorious capital at Samui and Thatta at the foot of the Makli Hills.

Who were the Sammas? Both the Persian chronicles (Tarikh-i-Masumi, Chachnama, Tuhfat-ul-Kiram) and the royal genealogies of Kutch and Saurashtra prove that the Sammas of Sindh and the Hindu Jadeja & Chudasama Rajputs of Gujarat are one and the same Chandravanshi Yaduvanshi Rajput family, claiming descent from Bhagwan Sri Krishna (Samba, son of Krishna and Jambavati): - When branches of the Sindhi Samma royal clan migrated across the Rann of Kutch into Kutch (Bhuj) and Halar (Jamnagar) in the 12th to 14th centuries under Lakho Ghuraro and Jam Jada, they became known as the Jadeja Rajputs ("Sons of Jam Jada"), retained the Sindhi Samma royal title Jam, worshipped their clan goddess Maa Ashapura at Mata no Madh in Kutch, and remained staunch Hindu Rajputs. - Meanwhile, their brothers who stayed behind on the Indus at Thatta founded the Samma Dynasty under Jam Unar (1351 CE), Jam Juna, and Jam Babiniya (Banbhiniyo)—retaining the exact same Hindu royal title Jam and pure Indic names (Unar, Juna, Tamachi, Karan, Raidhan, Sanjar, Nindo)!

flowchart TD
    YADU["CHANDRAVANSHI YADUVANSHI RAJPUTS<br/>(Claiming Descent from Bhagwan Sri Krishna / Samba)<br/>Ancient Samma Kingdom of Samba-nagara / Samui in Sindh"]
    YADU --> KUTCH["SOUTHERN BRANCH (Kutch & Saurashtra, India)<br/>Descended from Jam Jada & Lakho<br/>➔ The HINDU JADEJA RAJPUTS of Bhuj & Jamnagar<br/>Retained title 'JAM' & worship of Maa Ashapura"]
    YADU --> SINDH["NORTHERN BRANCH (Thatta & Indus Valley, Sindh)<br/>Founded Samma Dynasty (1351–1520 CE: Jam Unar, Jam Babiniya, Jam Tamachi, Jam Nindo)<br/>➔ Besieged by Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1365–1367 CE) & Hostage-Converted at Delhi<br/>➔ Today's SINDHI MUSLIM SAMMAT TRIBES:<br/>Sammo, Abro, Junejo, Unar, Bhutto, Jadeja/Jareja, Jokhio, Numrio"]

How Were the Samma Jams of Thatta Forced into Full Islamization? Firuz Shah Tughlaq's Two Sieges (1365–1367 CE)

Early Samma chiefs had adopted surface Islamic titles alongside their Hindu names (Jam / Rai), and under Jam Babiniya (Banbhiniyo) and Jam Juna, the Sammas openly allied with the Hindu Sodha and Jadeja Rajputs of Kutch and Thar and raided Tughlaq territories in Gujarat and Multan.

To crush the independent Samma kingdom once and for all, the fanatical Delhi Sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq launched a massive two-year invasion of Thatta (1365–1367 CE), recorded in vivid detail by his court chronicler Shams-i-Siraj Afif in the Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi (Elliot & Dowson, Vol. III, pp. 319–339) and in the letters of Ain-ul-Mulk Multani (Insha-i-Mahru):

1. First Campaign (1365–1366 CE): Firuz Shah Tughlaq marched from Delhi via Ajodhan and Bhakkar down the Indus against Thatta with 90,000 cavalry, 480 war-elephants, and a fleet of 5,000 river boats. Jam Babiniya and Jam Juna mobilized the entire Sammat confederacy (20,000 cavalry and 400,000 fierce Sindhi infantrymen), defended the island ramparts of Thatta, burned supplies, and inflicted such devastating losses on the Delhi army that Firuz Shah Tughlaq was forced to retreat in humiliation through the lethal Rann of Kutch toward Gujarat—losing thousands of horses and soldiers to thirst before reinforcements reached him.
2. Second Campaign & Starvation Siege (1366–1367 CE): Returning from Gujarat with a fresh imperial army and reinforced from Delhi by Khan-i-Jahan Maqbul, Firuz Shah Tughlaq systematically burned the standing Rabi and Kharif harvests across lower Sindh, seized the grain boats on the Indus, enslaved thousands of rural Sindhi villagers, and blockaded Thatta into starvation.
3. The Hostage-Conversion & Subjugation of the Samma Royal House in Delhi:
4. Facing the total famine and extermination of their people, Jam Babiniya and Jam Juna agreed to surrender after the Sultan sent the powerful Suhrawardi Sufi Makhdum Jahaniyan Jahangasht of Uch Sharif to broker terms.
5. As Shams-i-Siraj Afif records (Vol. III, pp. 336–338), Firuz Shah Tughlaq dragged Jam Babiniya, Jam Juna, and the Samma royal princes in his train as hostages to Delhi, quartered them in the capital near the Sarai-i-Malika (which became known as the Palace of Thatta), assigned them a court pension, and installed a compliant Samma prince (Jam Tamachi and Rai Dinar) on the throne of Thatta as a tributary vassal paying 400,000 tankas annually—on the strict condition of total Islamic orthodoxy and obedience to Delhi and the Uch Khanqah!
6. When Jam Tamachi's son Salah-ud-din (Unar II), raised under Sufi/Sultanate supervision in Delhi, and later Jam Nizamuddin II (Jam Nindo, r. 1461–1508 CE—whose magnificent stone tomb at Makli looks exactly like a carved Hindu/Jain Gujarati temple with lotus medallions, Kalashas, and lintels salvaged from ancient Hindu shrines!) ruled Thatta, the dependent Sammat Rajput and Jat clans of Sindh (Sammo, Abro, Junejo, Unar, Korejo, Channa, Mahar) were steadily absorbed into Islam.

Even in the poetic soul of Sindh—immortalized by Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689–1752 CE) in Shah Jo Risalo—the Seven Heroines / Queens of Sindh (Satt Surmiyun: Marui, Momal, Sasui, Noori, Suhini, Sorath, and Lila) preserve the living memory of this pre-Islamic Indic world, where Sorath is the queen of the Hindu Rajput king Rai Diyach (Rao Khengar) of Junagadh, Momal is the Hindu Sodha Rajput princess of Kak Mahal (Mirpur Mathelo / Umerkot), and Noori is the humble fisher-maiden wedded by Jam Tamachi on Keenjhar Lake!

---

IV. The Indigenous Sindhi Sammat Clan Matrix

---

Chapter 19: Sindh II — Arghun-Mughal Slave-Raids (Mazhar-i-Shahjahani, 1634) & The Heroic Survival of the Lohanas, Amils & Bhatias

I. December 1520: Shah Beg Arghun's Ten-Day Sack of Thatta and the End of Native Sindhi Sovereignty

For five hundred years (1026–1520 CE), despite repeated attacks from Ghazni and Delhi, Sindh had been ruled by its own native sons—the Soomra and Samma Rajput dynasties—under whom the Sindhi language flourished and Hindu Lohana, Bhatia, and Sahta merchants and officials continued to thrive alongside their Islamizing Sammat cousins.

That indigenous autonomy came to a catastrophic, blood-soaked end in December 1520 CE (Muharram 927 AH), when the Turco-Mongol warlord Shah Beg Arghun—driven out of Kandahar by Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur—invaded Sindh, defeated the gallant Samma commander-in-chief and prime minister Darya Khan (Mubarak Khan, adopted son of Jam Nindo, who fell martyred on the battlefield outside Thatta on December 21, 1520 with an arrow through his throat), and unleashed a ten-day orgy of slaughter, rape, arson, and mass enslavement upon the capital city of Thatta.

As recorded by the Sindhi historian Mir Muhammad Masum Bhakkari in the Tarikh-i-Masumi (1600 CE) and Mir Tahir Muhammad Nasyani in the Tarikh-i-Tahiri (1621 CE, Elliot & Dowson, Vol. I, pp. 270–276): - For ten full days (from the 11th to the 20th of Muharram, December 1520), Shah Beg Arghun gave his Mongol-Turkic troops license to plunder every house in Thatta, slaughter thousands of unarmed Sindhi men, burn the city's colleges and libraries, and drag thousands of noble Sindhi women, girls, and children—both Hindu and Muslim Sammat—into slavery! - So terrified were the Samma and Hindu families of Thatta of falling into the hands of the Arghun soldiers that fathers locked their wives and daughters inside their homes and set them ablaze in Jauhar-like desperation. - Following the sack of Thatta, Shah Beg Arghun, his son Shah Hasan Arghun (1524–1554), and their successors the Tarkhans (Isa Khan Tarkhan, who sacked Thatta again in 1555 while Portuguese mercenaries burned the city and killed 8,000 inhabitants) systematically hunted down the surviving Samma, Machhi, Sahta, and Hindu chieftains across Sehwan, Bakhar, and Badin—demolishing the ancient brick fortification walls of Thatta and Bakhar (using bricks torn from ancient Hindu and Buddhist monuments of Alor), cutting down entire villages of Sindhi Jats and Samejas, and reducing the native Sindhis to a conquered subject race in their own homeland.

---

II. The Smoking-Gun Mughal Document: Yusuf Mirak's Mazhar-i-Shahjahani (1634 CE) on Imperial Slave-Raids in Sehwan and Bakhar

In 1591–1592 CE, Mughal Emperor Akbar's general Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan conquered Sindh from Jani Beg Tarkhan, annexing Thatta, Sehwan (Siwistan), and Bakhar (Sukkur/Rohri) as Sarkars of the Mughal Empire.

In popular Bollywood-style historiography, the Mughal era under Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan is portrayed as an age of benevolent administrative peace. Yet in 1634 CE (the seventh regnal year of Emperor Shah Jahan), a courageous Mughal official and scholar named Yusuf Mirak—whose father Mir Abul Qasim Namakin had served as the Mughal Jagirdar of Bakhar and Sehwan—wrote a confidential administrative report titled Mazhar-i-Shahjahani (critically edited and published from the original Persian manuscript by Pir Hussamuddin Rashdi, Sindhi Adabi Board, Hyderabad, 1962).

Yusuf Mirak's Mazhar-i-Shahjahani (1634 CE) is one of the most devastating primary-source exposures ever written of how Mughal imperial governors (Subahdars and Jagirdars) used tax extortion, village burnings, mass slave-raiding, and forced conversions across the Sarkars of Sehwan (Siwistan), Bakhar (Sukkur), and Thatta:

1. The Reign of Terror of Mirza Ahmad Beg Khan and Dindar Khan in Sehwan (1628–1634 CE):
2. When Emperor Shah Jahan appointed his wife Mumtaz Mahal's nephew Mirza Ahmad Beg Khan (and later Dindar Khan) as the Jagirdar of Sehwan, his rapacious brother Mirza Yusuf and his tax collectors turned the fertile Indus valley of Sehwan, Dadu, and Larkana into a slaughterhouse.
3. As Yusuf Mirak testified from personal eyewitness knowledge (Mazhar-i-Shahjahani, Part II, on the Administration of Sehwan): whenever a Sindhi village of Sammat peasants (Samejas, Unars, Channas, Laks) or Hindu Lohana/Sahta cultivators could not pay the illegally doubled and tripled Mughal Kharaj demands, Mirza Yusuf's Mughal cavalry rode out at dawn, surrounded a peaceful, law-abiding tax-paying village (Ra'iyati), slaughtered the adult men, bound the surviving village elders in iron chains, and confiscated every woman, young girl, boy, and cow as "booty" (Ghanimat)!
4. Selling Sindhi Women and Children in the Slave Markets of Kandahar:
5. Where were these thousands of enslaved Sindhi Hindu and Sammat women and children taken? Yusuf Mirak explicitly recorded that Mughal officials in Bakhar (Sukkur) and Sehwan drove chained caravans of enslaved Sindhi women and children up the Bolan Pass to the slave markets of Kandahar and Persia, selling them for cash to fill the Jagirdar's private treasury!
6. When grieving Sindhi fathers and husbands came to the Mughal fort at Sehwan begging to ransom their wives and daughters, Mirza Yusuf threw them into subterranean dungeons, tortured them with whips and hot irons until they died under the lash, and offered freedom only to those captives who recited the Kalima or surrendered their ancestral lands.
7. Why Entire Sindhi Villages Fled or Converted:
8. Yusuf Mirak lamented that as a direct result of fifty years of Arghun, Tarkhan, and Mughal slave-raids and tax terror (1580–1634 CE), formerly prosperous agricultural Parganas of Sehwan, Kahan (Gaha), Baghbanan, and Bakhar had been reduced to howling wildernesses, while the surviving indigenous Hindu and semi-converted Sammat peasantry had either fled into the Kirthar hills or submitted to full Islamization under the protective umbrella of powerful local Sayyid and Pir estates (Lakkiyari, Bukhari, and Shirazi Sayyids) simply to shield their wives and children from being dragged to the slave blocks of Kandahar!

---

III. How the Hindu Lohanas & Bhatias Became the Muslim Khojas, Memons, and Sindhi Sheikhs

Prior to the medieval and early modern conversions, the backbone of Sindh's urban commerce, state administration, and agriculture was the great Hindu Lohana (Lohano) and Bhatia Kshatriya-Vaishya community.

Look at the Chachnama (712 CE): at the time of Maharaja Chach and Maharaja Dahir Sen, the Lohanas (divided into sub-clans such as Lakha, Sahta, Channa, and Agham Lohana of Brahmanabad) were a powerful Hindu Kshatriya / Rajput-allied tribe (traditionally tracing their descent from Bhagwan Sri Rama's son Lava, founder of Lavapuri/Lahore, and Lohana-garh) who governed provinces and commanded forts across central and lower Sindh.

Over the next eleven centuries, the unified Hindu Lohana and Bhatia trunk of Sindh was cleaved into four distinct communities—three Muslim convert communities and one heroic surviving Hindu community:

flowchart TD
    LOHANA["THE ANCIENT HINDU LOHANA & BHATIA NATION OF SINDH<br/>(Kshatriya-Merchant Spine of Brahmanabad, Alor, Thatta, Nasarpur, Rohri & Shikarpur)"]
    LOHANA --> MEMON["1. SINDHI & KUTCHI MEMONS<br/>700 Lohana families of Thatta<br/>converted c. 1422 CE under Pir Yusufuddin<br/>into 'Mu'min' (Memon) traders"]
    LOHANA --> KHOJA["2. ISMAILI / TWELVER KHOJAS<br/>Lohanas of Upper Sindh & Punjab<br/>converted c. 14th–15th C. via Pir Sadruddin's<br/>Sanskritic 'Satpanth' Ginans (calling Ali the 10th Avatar)"]
    LOHANA --> SHEIKH["3. SINDHI 'SHEIKHS' (NAU-MUSLIMS)<br/>Thousands of Hindu Lohanas & Bhatias<br/>forcibly circumcised via Qazi Blasphemy Traps<br/>under Kalhora & Talpur Mirs (1701–1843 CE)"]
    LOHANA --> HINDU["4. SURVIVING SINDHI HINDU LOHANAS, AMILS, BHAIBANDS & BHATIAS<br/>Saved by Bhagwan Jhulelal (Uderolal) & Guru Nanak's Sikhi<br/>Kept Sanātana Dharma alive in secret 'Tikhanas'<br/>until 1.2 Million were exiled in 1947–48"]

Let us examine the three converted Lohana branches before celebrating the extraordinary survival of the fourth:

1. The Memons (c. 1422 CE at Thatta):
2. As documented in the Gazetteer of the Province of Sind (1907, p. 176) and the Memon community's own historical Abraz-ul-Haq, during the reign of Samma ruler Jam Markab Khan / Jam Raidhan at Thatta (c. 1422 CE), 700 prominent Hindu Lohana families led by their clan heads Seth Sundarji and Seth Hansraj were converted to Sunni Islam by the Qadiri preacher Sayyid Yusuf-ud-din Qadiri.
3. Given the title Mu'min ("Believer", corrupted in Sindhi/Kutchi to Memon), these converted Lohanas were immediately ostracized by their unconverted Hindu Lohana brethren, prompting large numbers of Memons to migrate from Thatta to Halar, Bhuj (Kutch), Surat, and Karachi—where they still retained Hindu Mitakshara inheritance laws (excluding daughters from inheriting family business property) until the British enacted the Cutchi Memons Act of 1920 and 1938!
4. The Khojas (14th–15th Centuries via Satpanth):
5. Another large section of Sindhi, Kutchi, and Punjabi Hindu Lohanas and Bhatias (including the exact ancestral family of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whose grandfather Poonja Gokuldas Meghji came from a Hindu Lohana/Khoja background in Paneli, Gondal State, Gujarat!) was converted to Nizari Ismaili (and later Twelver Shia/Sunni) Islam by the Persian Da'i Pir Sadruddin (14th century).
6. Knowing that Hindu Lohanas would never abandon their Vedic and Vaishnava cosmology for an alien Arab theology, Pir Sadruddin composed devotional hymns called Ginans in Sindhi, Gujarati, and Multani (Khojki script, a direct variant of the Hindu Landa/Lohana script!) teaching Satpanth ("The True Path")—in which the Ginans (Dashavatar) explicitly claimed that the Prophet Muhammad was Lord Brahma, that Hazrat Fatima was Goddess Shakti/Saraswati, and that Hazrat Ali was the long-awaited Tenth Avatar (Naklanki / Kalki Avatar) of Bhagwan Vishnu!
7. Bestowing upon the Hindu Lohana title Thakur ("Lord") its Persian translation Khwaja (corrupted in Sindhi to Khoja), this syncretic bridge drew tens of thousands of Lohanas into the Khoja fold before 19th- and 20th-century court cases (The Aga Khan Case of 1866 in the Bombay High Court) and orthodox clerics stripped away their Hindu Satpanth rituals.
8. The Sindhi Sheikhs (Nau-Muslims, 1701–1843 CE):
9. As documented in Part III (Chapter 11) through the harrowing eyewitness memoirs of Seth Naomal Hotchand (Memoirs, 1804–1878, pp. 34–52) and Sir Richard Francis Burton (Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus, 1851, Ch. XI), under the fanatical Kalhora (1701–1783) and Talpur (1783–1843) Mirs, tens of thousands of Sindhi Hindu Lohanas, Bhatias, and artisans were seized by mobs on fabricated verbal blasphemy charges (such as saying Rassi [rope] and being accused of saying Rasul [Prophet]), dragged before the Qazi, pinned down, forcibly circumcised on the spot, force-fed beef broth, and turned into the Muslim Sheikh (Nau-Muslim) caste of Hyderabad, Thatta, Shikarpur, and Sukkur!

---

IV. Jhulelal (Uderolal) and the Secret Tikhanas: How the Surviving Sindhi Lohanas, Amils, Bhaibands & Bhatias Saved Sanātana Dharma Against All Odds

Given that Buddhism vanished from Sindh by 1000 CE, that the Rajput warrior dynasties (Soomras and Sammas) were broken and Islamized by 1520 CE, and that under the Kalhora and Talpur Mirs (1701–1843 CE) Hindus in Sindh were legally forbidden from building any domed or Shikhar-crowned temple, riding a horse with a saddle, wearing fine clothes in public, or ringing a temple bell—how did 1.4 million Sindhi Hindus (nearly 25% of Sindh's population and 60% of its urban population in Karachi, Hyderabad, Shikarpur, and Sukkur by 1941!) manage to preserve their Sanātana Dharma across 1,230 years of Islamic rule?

Their survival is one of the greatest spiritual miracles in human history, anchored by two luminous shields:

1. The Covenant of Bhagwan Jhulelal (Uderolal / Darya Shah) (10th Century CE)

In the 10th century CE (Vikram Samvat 1007), when a tyrannical Islamic ruler at Thatta named Mirkhshah issued an ultimatum to the Hindu Panchayat of Sindh that every Hindu must either embrace Islam within forty days or be put to the sword, the desperate Sindhi Hindus gathered on the banks of the sacred Sindhu River at Thatta/Nasarpur, fasted for forty days in tears, and prayed to Lord Varuna (the Vedic God of the Waters / Sindhu).

On the fortieth day (Cheti Chand, the auspicious Hindu New Year of Chaitra Shukla Pratipada), a divine child riding upon a Palla fish rose from the waves of the Indus and took birth at Nasarpur in the Hindu Arora/Lohana house of Ratan Rai and Mata Devaki as Sri Uderolal (Jhulelal / Amarlal / Zinda Pir). Growing into a radiant youth who rode a white steed and commanded the waters and fire, Bhagwan Jhulelal confronted the tyrant Mirkhshah in his court at Thatta, extinguished the palace fires with a wave of his hand, demonstrated that the Divine Light (Jyot) and Water (Jal) belong to the One Supreme Lord, and compelled Mirkhshah to revoke his decree of forced conversion!

From that day forward, for a thousand years, the Dariya Panth—the worship of the eternal Sindhu River (Jal) and the undying Flame (Jyot) in the name of Jhulelal (Ayo Lal, Jhulelal!)—gave every Sindhi Hindu Lohana, Bhatia, and Arora an indestructible spiritual anchor that no iconoclast could ever smash, because you cannot smash a flowing river or extinguish the flame in a devotee's heart!

2. The Secret Courtyard Tikhanas and the Shield of Guru Nanak's Sikhi (Nanakpanthis)

Second, when Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji traveled down the Indus through Sukkur (Sadhu Bela), Shikarpur, Rohri, and Thatta during his Udasis, and when Udasi saints (following Guru Nanak's ascetic son Baba Sri Chand, whose monumental Darbar Sahib stands at Faqir Jo Goth / Bhiri in Sindh) established centers across Sindh, the persecuted Sindhi Hindus embraced the Guru Granth Sahib with their whole soul.

Because the Kalhora and Talpur Mirs forbade Hindus from constructing visible stone temples with Shikharas or domes, the brilliant Sindhi Hindu Amils (the educated administrative and scholarly Lohana class of Hyderabad and Khairpur who mastered Persian and ran the entire revenue treasury of the Mirs!) and Bhaibands (the global merchant class of Shikarpur, Hyderabad, and Thatta whose financial Hundis were honored from Bukhara, Samarkand, and Astrakhan in Russia to Cairo, Bombay, and Panama!) devised the institution of the Tikhana (also called Darbar or Mandir): - Outwardly, from the street, a Sindhi Tikhana in Hyderabad, Shikarpur, Larkana, or Thatta looked like an ordinary, windowless mud-brick residential house, so that no passing Qazi or mob could target it. - Inside the hidden courtyard, however, the Bawa (Udasi/Sindhi priest) installed the sacred Guru Granth Sahib on a central throne alongside the small bronze and marble Murtis of Bhagwan Jhulelal, Lord Shiva, Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, Hanuman Ji, and Mata Hinglaj, while lighting the eternal Akhand Jyot! - Whenever a fanatical official burst in searching for "idolatry," he saw only a sacred book (Kitab — the Guru Granth Sahib) being recited in Gurmukhi or Sindhi; and inside that sacred sanctuary of Sanātani-Nanakpanthi unity, the Sindhi Hindu Lohanas, Amils, Bhaibands, Bhatias, Sahtas, and Sodha Rajputs kept the lamp of Vedic Dharma burning through the darkest centuries of tyranny—until British conquest in 1843 allowed them to build Karachi, Hyderabad, and Sukkur into the richest, most educated cities of western India, only to have their entire 5,000-year homeland stolen from them in 1947–1948!

---

Chapter 20: The Death of Gandhara & Sacred Uddiyana — Gorakhatri, the Expulsion of the Swatis (1515–1530) & the Lost Vedic Valleys of Waziristan

I. The Erased Heartland of Gandhara and Uddiyana (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa)

Cross the Indus at Attock / Hund (Udabhandapura) into modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North-West Frontier Province / NWFP)—spanning Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi, Nowshera, Swat, Buner, Dir, Kohat, Bannu, Karak, Kurram, and Waziristan.

Today, in global media, this frontier province is synonymous with Deobandi Madrasas, Taliban militancy, and Pashtun tribalism. Yet for three thousand years before 1001 CE, this very soil was Gandhara (Gāndhāra) and Uddiyana (Uḍḍiyāna / Suvāstu)—perhaps the most intellectually incandescent, artistically sublime, and spiritually revered province of the entire Sanskritic Hindu-Buddhist world!

Consider what stood on the soil of modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa before the Ghaznavid, Yusufzai, and Mughal swords fell: - Shalatura (modern Lahor village near Hund in Swabi District): The birthplace of Maharishi Panini (c. 5th–4th century BCE), who walked these very riverbanks while composing the Ashtadhyayi—the 3,959 algebraic sutras that forever standardized classical Sanskrit; - Pushkalavati (modern Charsadda, Bala Hisar and Shaikhan Dheri): The ancient lotus-capital of Gandhara, founded according to the Valmiki Ramayana (Uttara Kanda) by Prince Pushkala, son of Bharata and nephew of Bhagwan Sri Rama, and home to the famous shrine of Goddess Bhima Devi / Syama Devi on Mount Karamar (Kharामार, visited and described by Xuanzang in 630 CE); - Purushapura (modern Peshawar): Imperial capital of Emperor Kanishka the Great, where the 400-foot Kanishka Stupa (then the tallest man-made structure in Asia, excavated at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri outside Ganj Gate in 1908–1909 by Dr. D.B. Spooner) stood alongside the great Shiva and Yogi sanctuary of Gorakhatri; - Takht-i-Bahi, Jamal Garhi, and Sahri-Bahlol (Mardan District) and Butkara, Barikot (Bazira), and Udegram (Ora) in the Swat Valley (Uddiyana): Where the world's first anthropomorphic images of Gautama Buddha, Bodhisattva Padmapani, Surya, Shiva-Maheshvara, Skanda-Kartikeya, and Hariti were sculpted in blue-grey schist stone, and where Guru Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche, born on the lotus lake of Dhanakosha in Swat) carried Vajrayana Buddhism from Pakistan's Swat Valley to become the state religion of Tibet and Bhutan!

How was this entire 3,000-year Gandharan Hindu-Buddhist population—whose Iron Age and historic skeletons (1200 BCE–1000 CE) excavated at Loebanr, Udegram, Barikot, and Katelai in Swat were proven by Vagheesh Narasimhan and David Reich in Science (2019) to be genetically identical to modern Punjabi, Hindkowan, and North Indian Hindus—wiped out, expelled, or converted between 1001 and 1675 CE?

---

II. From Purushapura to Peshawar: Emperor Babur, Jahanara Begum & the Destruction of Guru Gorakhnath's Gorakhatri (1505–1640 CE)

Even after Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni defeated Maharaja Jayapala at Peshawar (Nov 27, 1001 CE) and Maharaja Anandapala at Waihind (1008 CE), burned the great Buddhist monastic university of Kanishka Vihara, and sacked the Hindu Shahi capital at Hund (Udabhandapura), Sanātana Dharma did not disappear from the Peshawar Valley.

For another six hundred and fifty years (1001–1650 CE), the highest mound inside the walled city of Peshawar was crowned by one of the greatest Hindu pilgrimage shrines in all of Asia: Gorakhatri ("The Hill / Bowl of Guru Gorakhnath"), the subterranean Matha and sacred tank of the Kanphata ("Split-Eared") Nath Yogis, twin to Tilla Jogian in Jhelum.

We do not have to rely on Hindu tradition to prove that Gorakhatri was the beating spiritual heart of Peshawar in the 16th century. We have the first-person eyewitness diary entries of the Mughal Emperor Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur (Baburnama, 1505 & 1519 CE), his grandson Emperor Akbar's chronicler Abul Fazl (Ain-i-Akbari, 1595 CE), and Emperor Jahangir (Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, 1607 CE)!

1. Emperor Babur at Gorakhatri in Peshawar (1505 & March 1519 CE):
2. In 1505 CE, during his first raid through the Khyber Pass to Kohat, Babur heard startling accounts of the subterranean Yogi shrine of Gorakhatri (Gorkhattri) at Peshawar (Bigram). On March 26, 1519, Babur rode personally into the Gorakhatri complex in Peshawar and recorded what he saw in his Baburnama (trans. Annette S. Beveridge, Vol. I, pp. 230, 394): > "We rode out from the camp at dawn and went to see Gorkhattri [Gorakhatri in Peshawar]. Nowhere in the world had I seen so narrow and dark a subterranean hermitage... After going down the steps and entering a narrow dark passage where one has to creep along in total darkness, we saw an immense quantity of hair of the head and beard which the Hindu Jogis and pilgrims had shaved off and left there as a sacred offering during many years. There are a great many dark cells around Gorkhattri, like the cells of a college or monastery."
3. Emperor Jahangir's Anger at the Yogis of Gorakhatri (1607 CE):
4. Eighty-eight years later, when Mughal Emperor Jahangir visited Peshawar on his march to Kabul (Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, trans. Rogers & Beveridge, Vol. I, p. 102), Gorakhatri was still overflowing with Hindu Yogis—leading Jahangir to write sourly in his memoirs that he visited the shrine only to finding "a herd of spiritual-less Jogis" whom he viewed with contempt.
5. Princess Jahanara Begum's Demolition of the Gorakhatri Yogi Sanctuary (c. 1640–1641 CE):
6. The fatal blow fell during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan (1628–1658 CE) and Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707 CE). Around 1640–1641 CE, Shah Jahan's eldest daughter Princess Jahanara Begum ordered the demolition of the ancient Hindu Nath Yogi monastery, subterranean cells, and temples of Gorakhatri, leveling the sacred mound to construct a sprawling 64-cell Mughal caravanserai (Sarai Jahanabad) with two monumental gateways and a grand Jama Masjid right in the center of Guru Gorakhnath's sacred compound!
7. Later, in 1669–1672 CE, Emperor Aurangzeb's governor of Subah Kabul (Mirza Fidai Khan and Muhammad Amin Khan) carried out Aurangzeb's imperial temple-destruction edict across Peshawar, Charsadda, and Hasan Abdal (Maasir-i-Alamgiri).
8. Only when Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his legendary general Sardar Hari Singh Nalwa liberated Peshawar (1818–1834 CE) and appointed the Italian general Paolo Avitabile as governor inside Gorakhatri was a small, twin-domed Gorakhnath Shiva Mandir rebuilt inside one corner of the Gorakhatri compound—where Peshawar's surviving Hindkowan Khatri and Arora Hindus worshipped until the pogroms of 1947 shut its doors for over sixty years!

---

III. The Death of Sacred Uddiyana (Swat Valley): From Mahmud of Ghazni's Sack of Raja Gira's Castle (1010 CE) to the Yusufzai Expulsion of the Indigenous Swatis (1515–1530 CE)

Turn north from Peshawar and Mardan up the Malakand Pass into the emerald paradise of the Swat Valley—watered by the Rigvedic Suvāstu ("River of Fair Dwellings", Rigveda 8.19.37) and revered across the Buddhist and Hindu world as Uḍḍiyāna ("The Royal Garden").

When Xuanzang walked through Swat in 630 CE, he recorded that 1,400 Buddhist monasteries (Sangharamas) once lined both banks of the Swat River where 18,000 monks chanted the Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures, alongside more than ten Hindu Deva Temples and the sacred mountain peak of Mount Ilam (Ilam Jogiano Sar / Hi-lo, 9,200 feet high, standing between Swat and Buner, where Hindus until 1947 made an annual pilgrimage to the stone throne of Ram Takht and the Pandavas).

How was this 100% Buddhist and Hindu valley of Uddiyana (Swat) transformed into an exclusively Pashtun Muslim valley where, in 2007–2009, Pakistani Taliban militants dynamically blew off the face of the 7th-century rock-carved Giant Buddha of Jahanabad (Shakhorai) near Manglaur?

Archaeological excavations by Sir Aurel Stein (On Alexander's Track to the Indus, 1929) and the Italian Archaeological Mission (ISMEO) led by Prof. Giuseppe Tucci and Domenico Faccenna (1956–2006), combined with the 17th-century Persian chronicle Tawarikh-i-Hafiz Rahmat Khani (1624 CE, written by Pir Moazzam Shah summarizing Shaikh Malli's Daftar), reveal that Swat was destroyed in two distinct historical catastrophes:

flowchart TD
    STAGE1["CATASTROPHE 1: THE GHAZNAVID INVASION (c. 1010–1020 CE)<br/>Mahmud of Ghazni's General Khushhal Beg storms<br/>RAJA GIRA'S CASTLE at Udegram (Ancient Ora)<br/>➔ Hindu Shahi Garrison Slain • Buddhist Monasteries Burned"]
    STAGE1 --> INTERIM["THE DARDIC-INDIC 'SWATI / GABRI' INTERREGNUM (1050–1515 CE)<br/>Indigenous Dardic/Hindko-speaking 'Swatis' & 'Dehqans'<br/>ruled by Jahangiri Sultans (Sultan Pakhal & Sultan Awais at Manglaur)<br/>Retained Dardic language, Indic agriculture & pre-Pashtun identity"]
    INTERIM --> STAGE2["CATASTROPHE 2: THE YUSUFZAI CONQUEST & EXPULSION (1515–1530 CE)<br/>Recorded in 'Tawarikh-i-Hafiz Rahmat Khani' (1624 CE)<br/>Invading Yusufzai Pashtuns under Malik Ahmad storm Malakand & Thana<br/>➔ 1. Over 100,000+ Indigenous SWATIS driven across the Indus into Hazara (Mansehra)<br/>➔ 2. Every acre of Swat land confiscated under Shaikh Malli's 'Wesh'<br/>➔ 3. Surviving native Gandharans reduced to landless 'Fakir / Dehqan' serfs & Islamized"]

Catastrophe 1: The Storming of Raja Gira's Castle at Udegram (c. 1010 CE)

High on the precipitous rocky amphitheater overlooking Udegram (ancient Ora, besieged by Alexander the Great in 327 BCE) in Lower Swat stand the Cyclopean stone walls of Raja Gira's Castle—the last mountain citadel of the Hindu Shahi kings in Swat.

When Sir Aurel Stein (1926/1929, Ch. VI) and Prof. Giuseppe Tucci (1956–1960) excavated Raja Gira's Castle and the town of Udegram below it, they found the exact archaeological layer of the 11th-century Ghaznavid invasion (c. 1010 CE): - After the fall of Hund (1001–1002 CE) and Chhachh (1008 CE), a Ghaznavid army commanded by General Khushhal Beg (whose tomb at the foot of the cliff is still called Ghazi Baba) besieged the last Hindu ruler of Swat, Raja Gira (Hodigra), inside Udegram Castle. - When the fortress fell after a desperate siege, the Hindu Shahi garrison was slaughtered to the last man, the great Buddhist stupas of Butkara, Panr, and Saidu Sharif were torched and toppled, and the Ghaznavids built one of the oldest mosques in northern Pakistan (dated by an Arabic inscription to 1048–1049 CE / 440 AH, excavated by Umberto Scerrato on the flank of Raja Gira's mountain!) directly out of stones stripped from the ruined Hindu-Buddhist fortress!

Catastrophe 2: The 1515–1530 CE Yusufzai Conquest & Ethnic Cleansing of the Indigenous Swatis

Yet even after the Ghaznavid sack of Udegram, the Pashtuns still did not live in Swat! For the next five hundred years (1020–1515 CE), the Swat, Panjkora (Dir), and Buner valleys continued to be inhabited by their original indigenous Dardic/Indic Gandharan population—known historically as the Swatis, Gabris, Mitrawis, and Dehqans, ruled from Manglaur and Thana by the indigenous Jahangiri / Gabri Sultans (Sultan Pakhal and Sultan Awais Swati), while huge pockets of Lower Dir, Bajaur, Buner, and Kohistan remained openly non-Muslim ("Kafirs").

Then, between 1515 and 1530 CE, occurred the total demographic upheaval recorded in Pir Moazzam Shah's Tawarikh-i-Hafiz Rahmat Khani (1624 CE) and Akhund Darweza's Tazkirat-ul-Abrar wal-Ashrar (c. 1600 CE): 1. Expelled from Kabul after his uncle Mirza Ulugh Beg massacred 700 of their tribal elders, the Yusufzai and Mandanr Pashtun confederacy—led by Malik Ahmad—migrated into the Peshawar plain (dispossessing the older Dilazak tribe) and set their sights on the lush, fertile garden of Swat. 2. After treacherously assassinating the guards at Shahkot / Malakand Pass, the Yusufzai tribal Lashkars poured into Lower Swat, slaughtered the indigenous Swati defenders at Thana (1515 CE), stormed Sultan Awais's capital at Manglaur, and waged a fifteen-year war of conquest across Swat, Buner, and Panjkora (aided in 1519 CE by a marriage alliance with Emperor Babur, who married Bibi Mubarika, daughter of the Yusufzai chief Shah Mansur!). 3. What happened to the indigenous Gandharan inhabitants of Swat? - Mass Expulsion Across the Indus (The Swatis of Hazara): Over 100,000+ indigenous Dardic/Hindko-speaking Swatis—led by their displaced chiefs—were driven out of their ancestral valley at sword-point, forced to flee eastward across the Indus River into Pakhal, Mansehra, Baffa, Balakot, and Kaghan in Hazara District, where their millions of descendants live today! That is why, to this very day in Pakistan, the people bearing the tribal name "Swati" do not live in Swat—they live in Mansehra (Hazara) and speak Hindko, while the people living in Swat are Yusufzai Pashtuns who arrived in 1515 CE! - Enslavement as Fakirs and Dehqans under Shaikh Malli's Wesh: As for the surviving indigenous Gandharan farmers, weavers, potters, and non-Muslim villagers who could not flee Swat and Buner, the Yusufzai chronicler Shaikh Malli (c. 1530 CE) drew up his famous land-settlement register (Daftar-i-Shaikh Malli). Under this system (Wesh), 100% of the proprietary ownership (Daftar) of every field and stream in Swat and Buner was confiscated and divided exclusively among the conquering Yusufzai Pashtun clans, while the original indigenous Gandharan inhabitants were legally stripped of all land ownership, barred from sitting in the tribal Jirga, reduced to hereditary landless serfs called Fakirs, Dehqans, and Hamsayas, and forcibly converted and Pashtunized by the fiery orthodoxy of Akhund Darweza (d. 1638 CE)!

---

IV. The Lost Vedic Valleys of Southern KP: The Burned Hindu Capital of Akra (Bannu) and the Rigvedic Krumu (Kurram) & Gomati (Gomal)

Now look at the southern half of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—Kohat, Karak, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, the Kurram Valley (Parachinar), North Waziristan (Tochi/Dawr), and South Waziristan (Gomal).

If anyone ever claims that Waziristan, Bannu, and Kurram were never part of Vedic India, open Mandala 10, Sukta 75, Verse 6 and Mandala 5, Sukta 53, Verse 9 of the Rigveda (composed over 3,200 years ago):

“Tr̥ṣṭā́mayā prathamáṃ yā́tave sajū́ḥ susártvā rasáyā śvetyā́ tyā́ | tváṃ sindho kúbhayā gómatīṃ krúmuṃ mehátvā sarathaṃ yābhir ī́yase ||” (“O Sindhu [Indus], first united with the Trishtama to flow forth, with the Susartu, the Rasa, and the Shvetya—thou speedest in the same chariot with the Kubhā [Kabul River], the Gomatī [Gomal River of Waziristan], the Krumu [Kurram River], and the Mehatnu!”) — Rigveda 10.75.6 (Nadistuti Sukta)

The very names on modern Pakistani military maps of Waziristan and the tribal belt—Kurram and Gomal—are pure Rigvedic Sanskrit words: Krumu and Gomatī ("Abounding in Sacred Cows")!

Even more astonishing is the physical evidence sitting in the middle of the Bannu Basin (watered by the Kurram and Tochi rivers), just seven miles south of Bannu city: the colossal archaeological mound of Akra (covering over 80 acres and rising 100 feet above the plain).

When the British Settlement Officer S.S. Thorburn surveyed Bannu in 1872–1876 and published his classic ethnography Bannu; or, Our Afghan Frontier (London: Trübner & Co., 1876, Chapter II, pp. 14–22), and when the British Museum – Peshawar University Bannu Archaeological Project (led by Prof. F. Raymond Allchin, Kenneth Thomas, and Farid Khan) excavated Akra Mound in the 1990s, they uncovered the entire buried history of pre-Islamic Bannu and Waziristan:

1. Xuanzang's Fa-la-na (Varana, 630 CE) & the Hindu Shahi Metropolis of Akra:
2. For over 1,500 years (500 BCE – 1020 CE), Akra was the wealthy, fortified Hindu and Buddhist royal capital of the Bannu and Tochi basin (visited by Xuanzang in 630 CE as Varana, where he saw dozens of Buddhist monasteries and five major Hindu Deva temples of Maheshvara/Shiva, and ruled in the 9th–10th centuries by the Hindu Shahi kings, and according to local tradition, by the Hindu monarch Raja Bharat / Rustam).
3. What Washes Out of the Soil of Bannu After Every Rain (Thorburn, 1876):
4. In Bannu; or, Our Afghan Frontier (1876, pp. 15–16), S.S. Thorburn recorded what he witnessed with his own eyes at Akra: > "The mound of Akra is an unexhausted mine of antiquity... After every heavy shower of rain, the villagers search the gullies of the mound and pick up ancient coins—Greco-Bactrian, Indo-Scythian, and Hindu Shahi silver and copper coins bearing the Bull of Shiva (Nandi) and the Horseman with Devanagari/Sharada legends (Sri Samanta Deva)—along with carved terracotta figurines of Hindu deities, beads, and fragments of burned brick ramparts. A thick layer of black wood-ash and charcoal running across the mound proves that the ancient Hindu city of Akra perished in a sudden, catastrophic conflagration."
5. The Destruction & Erasure of the Indigenous Population (1005–1500 CE):
6. During the Ghaznavid (Sultan Mahmud, 1005–1025 CE) and Ghorid (Muhammad Ghori, 1180–1205 CE, who marched repeatedly through the Tochi/Kurram passes) invasions, the Hindu capital of Akra was stormed, its Shiva temples and brick palaces burned to the ground (leaving the thick ash layer excavated by archaeologists), and its Hindu and Buddhist defenders slaughtered or enslaved.
7. Over the 13th to 15th centuries, as successive waves of Mangal, Hani, Shitak (Bannuchi), Waziri, Marwat, and Bangash tribes pushed down from the western Suleiman mountains into the Kurram, Tochi, and Bannu valleys, the surviving indigenous Vedic-Gandharan cultivators were dispossessed of their lands and absorbed as client Hamsayas—leaving only the resilient Bannuwal and Kohati Hindu Khatris and Aroras (who still spoke their ancient Hindko/Saraiki dialect and maintained ancestral temples in Bannu, Lakki, Karak [including the sacred Samadhi of Sri Paramhans Ji Maharaj at Teri], Kohat, and Parachinar right down to the January 11–12, 1948 Gujrat Refugee Train Massacre and Parachinar Camp Massacre, when the last remnants of a 3,500-year Vedic presence in the valleys of Krumu and Gomati were wiped out!).

---

Chapter 21: Towers of Skulls in the Hindu Kush — Babur's 1519 Bajaur Massacre, the 1896 Kafiristan Genocide & The Last 4,000 Kalash

I. The Last Bastion of the Vedic Mountain Peoples

Look northwest from the Peshawar and Swat valleys toward the towering, 20,000-foot snow-crowned peaks of the Hindu Kush—spanning Bajaur, Dir, Panjkora (the ancient Vedic Gaurī river), Swat Kohistan, and Chitral inside Pakistan, and the neighboring valleys of Kunar, Pech, Waigal, Bashgal, and Ramgal (historic Kafiristan, now called Nuristan) just across the Durand Line in eastern Afghanistan.

Few people today realize a staggering historical fact: more than eight hundred years after Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh (712 CE) and five hundred years after Mahmud of Ghazni invaded Peshawar (1001 CE), the entire high mountain arc from Bajaur, Dir, and Buner to Chitral and Kafiristan remained overwhelmingly non-Muslim—inhabited by free, unconquered Indo-Aryan Vedic/Dardic polytheistic peoples!

Calling these mountain peoples "Kafirs" (Siah-Posh and Safed-Posh Kafirs, "Unbelievers") or "Gabris", medieval Persian and Mughal chroniclers testified that across hundreds of Alpine valleys between Kabul and the Indus, the indigenous inhabitants still worshipped the ancient Vedic-Indo-Aryan pantheon: - Imrā / Māra (from Vedic Yama Rājā, Lord of Creation and Death); - Indr / Giś (Vedic Indra, the War-God of Thunder and Lightning); - Mahāndeo (Sanskrit Mahādeva / Shiva); - Dezaū (Sanskrit Dyaus, the Sky-Father); - Sanū / Sūrya (the Sun-God); and - Disānī / Jeṣṭak (Goddess of the Hearth, Fertility, and Family).

How were these ancient Vedic-Dardic peoples of Bajaur, Dir, Kafiristan, and Chitral systematically exterminated, enslaved, or forcibly converted between January 1519 and the 21st century—until only ~4,000 embattled Kalash survivors remain on earth today, huddled in three tiny valleys of Chitral?

---

II. January 7, 1519: Emperor Babur's Massacre of 3,000 Indigenous "Kafirs" at Bajaur and the Tower of Severed Skulls

Seven years before he defeated Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat (1526 CE) to found the Mughal Empire in India, Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur marched from Kabul through Kunar into Bajaur (today's Bajaur District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, bordering Dir and Mohmand).

In January 1519 (Muharram 925 AH), Bajaur—centered around the mountain citadel of Gibar Kot / Bajaur Fort—was still inhabited by an indigenous non-Muslim Dardic-Indic population ruled by their chieftain (Sultan Haidar Ali Bajauri, whose tribe, as Babur himself noted, had thrown off nominal Islam and practiced their ancient pre-Islamic "Kafir" religion and customs).

For the first time in the history of the North-West Frontier, Babur brought Ottoman-style matchlock muskets (Tufang) and heavy gunpowder artillery (Feringiha) against a mountain tribe that had only seen bows, arrows, and swords. When the defenders of Bajaur laughed at the strange iron tubes on the morning of January 6–7, 1519, Babur's matchlockmen led by Ustad Ali Quli blew the defenders off the ramparts, breached the northeast bastion at noon on Friday, January 7, 1519, and stormed the fortress.

What happened next was not written by a hostile critic of the Mughals. It was written verbatim by Emperor Babur himself in his own Chagatai-Turki diary, the Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur, translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge, London, 1922, Vol. I, pp. 370–371, Entry for Muharram 5–6, 925 AH / January 7–8, 1519):

"As the Bajauris were rebels and at enmity with the people of Islam, and as, by reason of the heathenish and hostile customs prevailing in their midst, the very name of Islam was rooted out from their tribe, they were put to general massacre and their wives and children were made captive. At a guess, more than 3,000 men went to their death; as the fight did not reach to the eastern side of the fort, a few got away there... The fort taken, we entered and inspected it. On the walls, in houses, streets, and alleys, the dead lay in what numbers! Comers and goers to and fro were passing over the bodies... On the following day [January 8, 1519], we marched into the Bajaur valley, halted near Baba Qara's spring, and with my mind at ease about the important affair of the Bajaur fort, we marched, on Tuesday the 9th of Muharram, one kuroh (2 m.) down the dale of Bajaur and ordered that a tower of heads should be set up on the rising-ground.... At the same time, Khwaja Kalan was entrusted with the government of Bajaur, and we gave the captured wives and children to our begs and soldiers." — Emperor Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur, Baburnama (January 7–8, 1519 CE)

Even that single-day slaughter of 3,000 indigenous Bajauri men and the erection of a minaret of severed skulls (Kalla-Minar) on the hill of Bajaur was only the opening act. Five days later, on January 12, 1519, Babur recorded riding up a side-valley of Bajaur (Chuar-kunda), trapping another group of fleeing indigenous Bajauris on a rocky spur, slaughtering them, cutting off their heads, and dispatching the severed heads of the Bajauri "Kafirs" as trophies to Kabul, Badakhshan, and Balkh (Baburnama, Vol. I, p. 372)!

Over the next eighty years (1520–1600 CE), Yusufzai and Tarklani Pashtun Lashkars—spurred on by the inquisitorial cleric Akhund Darweza (Tazkirat-ul-Abrar wal-Ashrar)—hunted down the surviving indigenous Dardic and Kafir villages across Bajaur, Jandul, Maidan, Dir, the Panjkora Valley, and Buner, slaughtering those who resisted, burning their ancestral wooden shrines, and forcing the survivors into Islam or driving them high into the freezing gorges of Indus Kohistan and Kafiristan.

---

III. The Winter 1895–1896 Genocide of Kafiristan ("Nuristan"): How the Last Vedic Homeland of Afghanistan Was Eradicated in Ninety Days

West of Bajaur and Chitral across the Kunar river lay the high, forested mountain sanctuary of Kafiristan ("Land of the Non-Muslims")—stretching across the Bashgal (Kamdesh), Waigal, Pech (Wama/Parun), and Ramgal valleys of the Hindu Kush.

For nearly one thousand years (990–1895 CE), while every surrounding lowland from Ghazni and Kabul to Peshawar and Swat was Islamized, the 60,000 to 100,000 Indo-Aryan Kafirs (Kata, Kam, Vasi, Ashkun, Kalasha-ala) of Kafiristan heroically defended their mountain valleys against Mahmud of Ghazni (1020 CE), Amir Timur (1398 CE, who had to be lowered down the snow cliffs of Kafiristan in a basket after failing to subdue their inner valleys!), Emperor Babur, and Emperor Akbar.

In 1890–1891, just four years before the end, the British Surgeon-Major Sir George Scott Robertson spent nearly a year living inside Kafiristan at Kamdesh and Kushteki, publishing his monumental 600-page eyewitness ethnography The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896). Robertson documented a living Vedic-Indo-Aryan civilization frozen in time: - In the sacred central valley of Parun (Prasun) stood the grand carved cedarwood temple of Imrā (Māra)—adorned with carved effigies of deities on horseback, sacred pillars, and stone fire-altars where cedar branches, ghee, and goat sacrifices were offered amidst Vedic-style choral chants; - Every village honored Giś (Indr), Mon (Mandi), Bagisht (the River/Wealth Deity), and Disani; and - The Kafirs looked toward their eastern brothers across the Indus—whom they explicitly called their kinsmen—asking British travelers why their Hindu brothers in India did not send them modern rifles to defend themselves against the surrounding Afghan raids!

Then, on November 12, 1893, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand signed the Durand Line Agreement in Kabul with Emir Abdur Rahman Khan ("The Iron Emir" of Afghanistan). In a cynical geopolitical bargain that sealed the fate of an entire ancient people, the British transferred sovereignty over the whole of Kafiristan (west of the Chitral watershed) to Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, while simultaneously supplying the Emir with millions of rupees in British subsidies and thousands of modern breech-loading Martini-Henry rifles and Krupp mountain artillery!

In November 1895, deliberately choosing the dead of winter when the high snow passes were blocked so the Kafirs could not coordinate between valleys or flee to Chitral, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan launched a four-pronged invasion of Kafiristan with 40,000 regular Afghan troops commanded by his ruthless Field Marshal (Sipah-Salar) Ghulam Haidar Khan Charkhi: 1. Marching simultaneously from Asmar (Kunar) up the Bashgal Valley, from Laghman into Ramgal, from Jalalabad into Waigal, and from Panjshir (Munjan) from the north, Afghan regiments armed with modern Martini-Henry rifles mowed down Kafir warriors armed only with daggers, bows, and ancient flintlocks. 2. In the sacred valley of Parun, Waigal, and Katar/Gambir, villages that resisted were put to the sword or burned alive; every single carved cedarwood temple of Imra, Gish, and Disani across Kafiristan was torched to ashes (save for a handful of wooden ancestor and deity statues stripped as war trophies and carted to the Kabul and Paris museums). 3. Over 10,000+ Kafir men, women, and young boys from the western and central valleys were marched in chains through the snow to Kabul and Paghman, where thousands perished of exposure and typhus, boys were drafted as slave-pages (Ghulam-bachas) into the Emir's regiments, and entire clans were forcibly resettled under guard in Paghman. 4. Across every valley of Kafiristan, Afghan Mullahs accompanied by armed soldiers pinned down and forcibly circumcised the surviving male population, shaved off their sacred Hindu-style Karunch scalp-locks (identical to the Vedic Shikha / Choti!), forced them to eat beef, burned their genealogical effigies, erected mosques on the ashes of their temples, and placed a Mullah in every village with power to flog anyone who uttered the names of Imra or Gish! 5. By Spring 1896, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan issued a royal decree erasing the very name Kafiristan ("Land of the Non-Muslims") from the map of the world, renaming the conquered country "Nuristan" ("Land of Islamic Light"), and renaming its religious heartland of Parun as "ishtragh / Devletshah"! (Only ~1,200 desperate Kata and Kam "Red Kafirs" managed to flee through the waist-deep snows across the Durand Line into the Rumbur, Bumburet, and Urtsun valleys of Chitral, where they were granted asylum and eventually converted to Islam in the 1920s–1930s as Sheikhs.)

---

IV. The 700-Year Siege of the Kalash of Chitral (1320–2026 CE): From 15+ Valleys to 4,000 Survivors in Bumburet, Rumbur & Birir

Across the high ridge from Nuristan, inside modern Chitral District (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan), live the last ~4,000 unconverted indigenous Indo-Aryan polytheists in the entire Hindu Kush–Indus region: the Kalash (Kalasha) of the three tiny valleys of Bumburet (Mumret), Rumbur (Rukmu), and Birir (Biriu).

In modern Pakistani tourism brochures, the Kalash are absurdly portrayed as an exotic "lost Greek tribe of Alexander's soldiers"—a colonial fable thoroughly debunked by both Indo-Aryan linguistics and 21st-century genome-wide DNA: - Linguistic Proof (Georg Morgenstierne, 1932–1973 & Richard Strand): The Kalasha language contains zero Greek vocabulary or grammar; it is a pure, archaic Northwest Indo-Aryan (Dardic) language directly descended from Old Indo-Aryan (Vedic Sanskrit*), where a Kalash speaker calls the Creator Dezau, the Thunder-God Indr (Vedic Indra*), the Great God Mahandeo (Sanskrit Mahadeva*), the winter solstice festival Chaumos (Sanskrit Chaturmasya*), purify-by-juniper-smoke Onjeshta (pure) vs. Pragata (impure), and greets a brother as Baya (Sanskrit Bhrātr̥ / Bhāī)! - Genomic Proof (Rosenberg et al., Science 2002; Hellenthal et al., 2015; Narasimhan et al., Science 2019): The Kalash carry 100% ancient indigenous West Eurasian / Ancestral North Indian (Indus Periphery + Steppe Pastoralist) DNA with 0% Arab or East Asian admixture—representing an isolated, unmixed genetic snapshot of the ancient Vedic and Gandharan populations of North-West India**!

What Pakistani textbooks never mention is that the Kalash did not originally live only in three narrow side-ravines. As documented by Major John Biddulph (Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, 1880, pp. 126–133), Norwegian linguist Georg Morgenstierne (Report on a Linguistic Mission to North-Western India, 1932), and Italian anthropologists Alberto and Augusto S. Cacopardo (Gates of Peristan, 2001 & Pagan Christmas, 2016), up until the 14th to 16th centuries CE, the Kalash and their unconverted Kho brethren were the majority ruling population of the entire Lower and Central Chitral Valley!

Let us trace the 700-year geographic contraction (1320–2026 CE) that reduced the Kalash from a regional kingdom to 4,000 besieged survivors:

flowchart TD
    ERA1["14TH–16TH CENTURY CE: THE KALASH KINGDOM OF CHITRAL<br/>Kalash Kings RAJA WAI (at Barenis) & BULA SINGH (at Chitral/Broz)<br/>rule the main Chitral Valley and 15+ valleys from Mastuj to Drosh & Asmar"]
    ERA1 --> ERA2["1550–1895 CE: RAIS & KATOR MEHTAR CONQUEST & SLAVE-TRIBUTE<br/>Conquered by Rais and Kator Mehtars of Chitral<br/>➔ Driven out of main Chitral, Drosh, Lotkoh, Arkari & Shishi Kuh<br/>➔ Subjected to forced labor ('Begar') & annual HUMAN SLAVE-TRIBUTE<br/>(Kalash boys & girls sold to Badakhshan & Bukhara slave traders)"]
    ERA2 --> ERA3["1900–1950s CE: LOSS OF JINJIRET KUH, SWEER, KALKATAK & URTSUN<br/>Clerical & economic coercion converts Jinjiret Kuh (1920s–30s)<br/>and the entire 4th Kalash valley of URTSUN (1940s–50s) into 'Sheikhs'"]
    ERA3 --> ERA4["TODAY (2026 CE): THE LAST ~4,000 KALASH SURVIVORS<br/>Confined to just 3 tiny valleys: BUMBURET, RUMBUR & BIRIR<br/>Facing land-grabbing, militant threats & school-level conversion pressure"]

1. The Overthrow of Kalash Kings Raja Wai and Bula Singh (14th–16th Centuries CE):
2. In the oral chronicles of both the Muslim Kho of Chitral and the Kalash, Lower Chitral (around Chitral town, Broz, Ayun, and Barenis) was ruled until the 14th–16th centuries by the indigenous Kalash kings Bula Singh and Raja Wai (note the pure Hindu Kshatriya titles Raja and Singh!).
3. When the Islamic Rais Dynasty (c. 1320–1590 CE, from northern Mastuj/Turkestan) and later the Kator Mehtars conquered Lower Chitral, they slaughtered Bula Singh and his retainers at Broz/Chitral, seized all the fertile irrigated river terraces of the main Chitral valley, and forcibly converted the lowland Kalash into the Muslim Kho peasantry—while the unconverted Kalash retreated into the southern and western side-valleys (Lotkoh, Arkari, Shishi Kuh, Drosh, Kalkatak, Sweer, Jinjiret Kuh, Urtsun, Birir, Bumburet, and Rumbur).
4. Centuries of Begar (Forced Serfdom) and Human Slave-Tribute (1600–1895 CE):
5. Under the Kator Mehtars of Chitral, the conquered Kalash of the side-valleys were treated as state chattel: they were forced to perform unpaid corvée labor (Begar) carrying heavy loads over the passes and tending the royal herds, and every year, Kalash villages were forced to surrender young Kalash boys and beautiful Kalash girls as human tax-tribute to the Mehtar of Chitral, who traded them to Central Asian slave merchants from Badakhshan, Kokand, and Bukhara in exchange for hunting dogs, horses, and muskets!
6. To escape having their children dragged to the slave markets of Central Asia, one Kalash valley after another (Lotkoh, Arkari, Shishi Kuh, Drosh, Broz, and Ayun) capitulated and recited the Kalima, becoming Muslim Kho and Sheikhs.
7. The 20th-Century Loss of Jinjiret Kuh, Kalkatak, and Urtsun (1910–1955 CE):
8. Even in the 20th century, the erasure continued unabated. When Georg Morgenstierne visited Chitral in 1929, Kalash religion was still practiced in Jinjiret Kuh, Kalkatak/Sweer, and the large southern valley of Urtsun (making four main Kalash valleys alongside Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir).
9. Within a single generation (1930s–1950s), intense clerical missionary campaigns, usurious debt-traps over walnut trees and grazing pastures, and the conversion of the last chief in Urtsun wiped out the Kalash faith in Jinjiret Kuh and Urtsun completely—leaving only Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir.
10. The Contemporary Siege (1970–2026 CE):
11. Today, even inside their last three tiny valleys (Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir), the ~4,000 surviving Kalash are a minority on their own ancestral land—surrounded by converted Sheikhs, Gujjar settlers, and Afghan/Chitrali timber and hotel owners who bought up Kalash walnut groves through debt mortgages in the 1970s and 1980s, subjected to compulsory Islamiyat indoctrination in local schools, and targeted by cross-border Taliban militants (who slaughtered Kalash shepherds in Bamburet/Rumbur in 2016 and attacked border posts in 2023). Yet every December at the winter solstice of Chaumos, as the last 4,000 Kalash light blazing pine torches in the snow and chant to Indr and Mahandeo, they stand as the living biological proof of who the entire population of the Hindu Kush once was.

---

Chapter 22: Boloristan (Gilgit-Baltistan) & Kalat-i-Sewa (Balochistan) — The 5,000 Sanskrit Rock Carvings, the Shina Dards & Mata Hinglaj

I. From the Roof of the World to the Arabian Sea: The Two Forgotten Flanks

To complete our province-by-province forensic reconstruction of modern Pakistan, we must travel to its two most remote geographical extremes: 1. In the freezing north, where the Karakoram, Western Himalayas, and Hindu Kush collide around 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat (Sanskrit Nagna Parvata, "The Naked Mountain", and Dyāmir / Deva-Meru, "Mountain of the Gods") and K2: the region of Gilgit-Baltistan (Pakistan-Occupied Northern Areas, comprising Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar, Chilas, Astor, Ghizer, Skardu, and Khaplu); and 2. In the sun-baked southwest, stretching from the Bolan Pass and the Kalat Plateau down to the Makran Coast on the Arabian Sea: the vast province of Balochistan.

At first glance, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan appear to be worlds apart. Yet both hold some of the most astonishing archaeological, epigraphic, and ethnographic evidence in the world proving that their indigenous populations were deeply Buddhist and Sanātani Hindu for over a thousand years before medieval invasions and tribal absorptions erased their memory.

---

II. Boloristan & Dardistan (Gilgit-Baltistan): The Sanskrit Patola Shahi Kings, the 5,000+ Indus Rock Carvings & the Gilgit Birch-Bark Manuscripts

Today, Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar, Chilas (Diamer), Astor, and Baltistan (Skardu & Khaplu) are 100% Muslim (divided among Sunni, Twelver Shia, Ismaili, and Nurbakhshi sects). Ask a resident of Chilas or Gilgit about his pre-Islamic past, and he has almost no schoolbook knowledge that for more than fifteen hundred years (200 BCE – 1400 CE), his homeland—known to Sanskrit geographers as Daradadeśa ("Land of the Dards"), to Chinese chroniclers and Xuanzang as Po-lu-lo (Bolor / Boloristan), and in local inscriptions as Paṭola / Bruzha—was a magnificent kingdom of Sanskrit-writing Buddhist and Shaiva-Vaishnava monarchs!

Look at the three towering pillars of physical proof sitting in the valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan today:

1. The Gilgit Sanskrit Manuscripts (5th–7th Centuries CE) and the Patola Shahi Kings

In May 1931, shepherd boys tending cattle above the village of Naupur, two miles west of Gilgit Cantonment, dug into a ruined earthen mound—a collapsed 7th-century Buddhist Stupa—and pulled out wooden boxes packed with hundreds of ancient birch-bark (Bhurjapatra) and paper manuscripts written in classical Sanskrit (in the Gilgit/Bakhshali Brahmi and Proto-Śāradā scripts).

Studied by Sir Aurel Stein and French orientalist Sylvain Lévi, the Gilgit Manuscripts (5th–7th centuries CE) turned out to be the oldest surviving manuscript library in the Indian subcontinent (containing the Lotus Sutra / Saddharmapundarika, Samadhiraja Sutra, Vinaya Pitaka, and Tantric Dharanis). Even more thrillingly, the colophons of the Gilgit Manuscripts and the famous Hatun Sanskrit Rock Inscription (671 CE) in Punial/Ishkoman revealed the exact names and royal titles of the indigenous kings who ruled Gilgit, Hunza, and Baltistan in the 6th to 8th centuries CE: the Paṭola Śāhi Dynasty (Shahi Kings of Bolor), who claimed descent from the Bhagadatta lineage and bore resplendent Sanskrit names and Shiva-devotee titles (Paramamaheśvara)*: - Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara Śrī Nava Surendrāditya Nandīdeva - Śrī Jayamaṅgalavikramāditya Nandī - Śrī Vikramāditya Nandī - Śrī Surendra Vikramāditya Nandī - Along with their queens Anangadevī and Śrīmahādevī Trailokyadevī and their commander-in-chief Makarasiṃha***!

Just outside Gilgit town at Kargah Nullah, carved fifty feet high into the sheer cliff face above the stream, still stands the monumental 7th-century Kargah Buddha (Yashani), while in Baltistan ("Little Tibet")—around Skardu (Skardo), Shigar, and Khaplu—stand the carved 9th-century Manthal Buddha Rock (showing Gautama Buddha surrounded by twenty Bodhisattvas and Maitreya carvings), the ancient stupas of Chunda, and wood-carved mosques in Shigar and Khaplu built directly on the foundations and architectural plans of destroyed Tibetan-Kashmiri Buddhist Gompas (Lhakhangs)!

2. The 5,000+ Sanskrit, Brahmi, Kharosthi & Sarada Rock Carvings of Chilas, Thalpan, Shatial & Hunza

Between 1979 and 2010, following the opening of the Karakoram Highway along the Upper Indus gorge through Chilas (Diamer District), Thalpan, Hodar, Oshibat, Shatial, Gilgit, and the Sacred Rock of Haldeikish in Hunza, a joint German–Pakistani Archaeological Mission led by Prof. Karl Jettmar (Heidelberg Academy of Sciences), Prof. Harald Hauptmann, and Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani (Antiquities of Northern Pakistan: Rock Inscriptions in the Indus Valley, 5 Vols., 1989–2004) documented a discovery that stunned the scholarly world: - Across a 60-mile stretch of boulders and granite cliffs along the Indus River in Chilas, Thalpan, and Shatial, and at Haldeikish in Hunza, the ancestors of the local population had carved over 5,000 inscriptions (in Kharosthi, Gupta Brahmi, Proto-Śāradā, and Sogdian—over 85% of them in Sanskrit and Prakrit!) alongside more than 30,000 rock petroglyphs! - What do those 30,000+ rock carvings in Chilas and Gilgit depict? Not only exquisite architectural drawings of multi-tiered Buddhist Stupas, Jataka scenes (such as King Shibi giving his flesh to save a dove), and Gautama Buddha, but also the oldest dated rock carvings (1st century BCE – 2nd century CE) of Bhagwan Vasudeva-Krishna (holding the Sudarshana Chakra and Shankha) and Balarama (holding the plow Hala and club Gada) anywhere in the northwest, alongside images of Shiva with Nandi, Surya, Ganesha, and Hariti!

---

III. Mirza Haidar Dughlat's Jihad Raids (1532–1548 CE) & Major John Biddulph's Shocking 1880 Discovery: Why the Muslim Shins of Gilgit Still Refused to Drink Cow's Milk or Touch Beef!

How was this vibrant Buddhist and Hindu civilization of Baltistan ("Little Tibet") and Dardistan (Gilgit-Chilas-Astor-Hunza) converted to Islam between 1400 and 1700 CE?

In Baltistan (Skardu and Khaplu), after initial preaching by Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani's followers and Nurbakhshi Sufis under the converted Maqpon and Yabgo rajas in the 15th century, the decisive military blow was struck in 1532–1533 CE (and again in 1541–1548 CE) by the Chagatai Turco-Mongol warlord Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat (cousin of Emperor Babur and author of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, trans. E. Denison Ross, 1895, pp. 404–423).

Marching from Kashgar and Ladakh into Baltistan (Balor), Mirza Haidar Dughlat waged a ruthless winter Holy War (Ghazat) against the unconverted "infidels of Balor" (Baltistan and the surrounding Dardic valleys): - In his own Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Dughlat boasted of storming the mountain strongholds of Balor (Baltistan / Gilgit-Chitral borderlands), slaughtering the adult male Buddhist and Dardic defenders, plundering their cattle and sheep, driving their women and children into slavery, and forcing the Balti chiefs (such as Bahram Cho of Skardu) into submission to Islam. - Over the 16th and 17th centuries, under the Trakhan Dynasty of Gilgit and the Maqpon rulers of Skardu, every surviving Buddhist monastery in Baltistan and Gilgit was demolished or turned into a Khanqah, and in the early 19th century, the fierce Sikh-Dogra General Zorawar Singh (1840 CE) found that while neighbouring Ladakh had remained Buddhist, Baltistan ("Little Tibet")—speaking the exact same archaic Tibetan dialect as Ladakh!—had been completely Islamized.

Major John Biddulph's Eyewitness Bombshell (1880 CE) — The Hindu Cow-Taboo and Funeral Pyres of the Shins of Gilgit!

Yet in Gilgit, Astor, Chilas, Gor, and Punial, where the dominant aristocratic tribe is the Shin caste (speakers of the Indo-Aryan Shina language, who gave their name to Shinaki and ancient Cīna/Darada), nominal conversion to Islam took place so late (16th–18th centuries CE, and in pockets of Gor and Chilas less than three generations before the British arrived!) that their Hindu religious practices were still fully alive in the late 19th century!

In 1877–1881, Major John Biddulph served as the first British Political Officer stationed inside Gilgit, traveling through every village of Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar, Astor, Gor, and Chilas. In 1880, the Government of India published Biddulph's landmark ethnographic study, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1880).

Open Pages 34–39 and Pages 108–118 of Biddulph's Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (1880) and read what he witnessed with his own eyes among the converted Muslim Shins (Dards) of Gilgit, Astor, Gor, and Chilas:

"The Shins form the principal and dominant race of Gilgit, Astor, Gor, and Chilas, and trace their origin to an ancient Hindu stock (Shin, Yashkun, Kremin, and Dom forming a strict four-tier Hindu caste hierarchy!). Although they now profess the Muhammadan religion (being Sunnis in Chilas and Darel, and Shiahs in Gilgit), their conversion is of comparatively recent date, and they retain extra-ordinary Hindu customs completely at variance with Islam... The most striking feature of the Shin race—even among the strictest Muhammadans of Gilgit and Chilas—is their intense, sacred abhorrence of the cow [i.e., their ancient Hindu taboo against violating the sanctity of the cow, inverted after conversion into a fear of touching anything bovine!]. A Muhammadan Shin will not eat beef, will not drink cow's milk, will not touch a vessel containing butter or ghee made from cow's milk, and will not even wear shoes or touch a rope made of cowhide or calfskin! If a Shin's garment accidentally touches a newly-born calf, the garment must be purified with water or cast away; and in the remote valley of Gor (opposite Chilas on the Indus), cows are banned altogether... Furthermore, until just two or three generations ago (and within the memory of old men still living in Gilgit and Gor), the Shins burned their dead on Hindu funeral pyres (cremation), collected the calcined bones and ashes in earthen urns or wooden boxes to bury beneath stone altars (Chabutra), celebrated the Hindu winter solstice festival of Nos / Chilli with sacred bonfires and cedar purification, and revered the sacred cedar tree (Shili) and stone pillars of their pre-Islamic goddesses!" — Major John Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Calcutta, 1880, Chapter III: "Castes — The Shins", pp. 34–39, & Chapter IX: "Habits and Customs — Religious Beliefs and Festivals", pp. 108–118)

Pause and reflect on the magnitude of Biddulph's 1880 eyewitness report: 1. The society of Gilgit, Chilas, and Astor is still organized around a four-fold Indo-Aryan caste system (Shin, Yashkun, Kremin, Dom); 2. Up to the early 19th century, the inhabitants of Gilgit and Gor were still cremating their dead on Hindu funeral pyres and preserving the Asthi (ashes) in urns!; and 3. Even in 1880, the Muslim Shins of Gilgit and Chilas still held such an ingrained, centuries-old Hindu taboo against cow-slaughter that when Islamic preachers banned them from worshipping the cow (Gau-Mata), the Shins inverted the taboo—refusing to eat beef, drink cow's milk, or touch cowhide leather under any circumstances!

---

IV. Kalat-i-Sewa (Balochistan): The Forgotten Hindu Sewa Dynasty of Kalat (1907 Kalat Gazetteer), the Gondrani Caves & the Eternal Flame of Mata Hinglaj

Now journey from the glaciers of Gilgit down to the arid plateaus and turquoise Arabian Sea coast of Balochistan—spanning Quetta (Shalkot), Kalat, Mastung, Khuzdar, Sibi (Siwi), Kachhi, Lasbela (Armabel), and Makran (Hingol / Hinglaj).

Ask almost any educated citizen of South Asia today who ruled Kalat—the historic capital and highland heart of Balochistan—before the Brahui Khans of Kalat, and they will guess "Persian governors or Baloch chiefs."

Now open the official British Imperial Gazetteer: Baluchistan District Gazetteer Series, Volume VI: Sarawan, Kachhi and Jhalawan / Kalat (compiled by R. Hughes-Buller and C.F. Minchin, Bombay: Times Press, 1907, Chapter I: "History — The Sewa Dynasty", pp. 27–31), alongside the 19th-century archaeological travelogue of Charles Masson (Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Panjab, London, 1842–1843, Vol. II & Vol. IV: "Kalat") and Sir Henry Pottinger (1816).

What do these primary historical records and the oral traditions of the indigenous Brahui tribes themselves reveal? - That to this very day, in the Brahui language, the ancient citadel of Kalat is called Kalāt-i-Sewā ("The Fort of Sewa")—as distinguished from Kalat-i-Nichara! - Why is Kalat called Kalāt-i-Sewā? Because for centuries prior to the 15th–16th century rise of the Mirwari/Ahmadzai Brahui Khans, the entire highland plateau of Kalat, Mastung, Quetta, and Sibi was ruled by an indigenous Hindu dynasty known as the Sewa (or Sewa-Raja) Dynasty (linked to the Rai / Chach / Bhatia / Rajput rulers of Sibi [Siwi] and Sindh)!

Let us read the verbatim historical record from the Baluchistan District Gazetteer: Kalat (1907, pp. 29–31):

"Passing from the period of the Arabs and Ghaznavids, we come to the Sewa Dynasty, which according to universal local tradition ruled over Kalat for many generations prior to the Brahui ascendancy. From the founder, Raja Sewa, the citadel of Kalat derives its indigenous name of Kalat-i-Sewa, by which it is still known among the Brahuis. The Sewas were Hindus, and the last Hindu ruler of Kalat was Raja Sehwa (or Sangin). During his reign, bands of predatory mountaineers from the western hills harassed the Hindu kingdom of Kalat; Raja Sehwa invited the Brahui chieftain Kambar (or Mir Umar Mirwani) to serve as his military commander to repel the raiders. Having defeated the marauders, the Brahui chief turned upon his Hindu sovereign Raja Sehwa, deposed him, seized the fortress of Kalat-i-Sewa, and forced Raja Sehwa and his unconverted Hindu royal family to retreat down the Bolan Pass to Sibi, Kachhi, and Sindh, while the remaining indigenous Hindu agricultural population (Dehwars and Jats) of Kalat and Mastung was gradually converted to Islam." — Baluchistan District Gazetteer Series, Vol. VI: Sarawan & Kalat (Bombay, 1907, pp. 29–31) & Charles Masson, Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan (London, 1842, Vol. II, pp. 62–66)

Nor was Kalat-i-Sewa an isolated Hindu outpost in Balochistan: 1. Sibi (Siwi) and Kachhi: From the time of the Chachnama (712 CE, when Sibi / Siwistan was ruled by Hindu princes of Maharaja Chach's house) down to the 15th century CE (when Firishta and the Tarikh-i-Masumi record the Hindu ruler Jam Nanda / Rawal and the Sewa Ranas governing Sibi before Shah Beg Arghun seized it), Sibi and Kachhi were major Hindu principalities populated by Hindu Jat, Abra, Machhi, and Rajput cultivators (who were gradually Islamized into the Jattak, Lasi, and Kachhi Jat tribes). 2. Lasbela (Ancient Armabel / Rambakia) & the Buddhist-Hindu Cave City of Gondrani (Mai Gondrani): - When Muhammad bin Qasim marched through Makran toward Debal in 711 CE, the Chachnama specifically records that Armabel (modern Bela / Lasbela in southern Balochistan) was a rich Buddhist and Hindu kingdom governed by a Buddhist Samani prince loyal to Maharaja Dahir Sen! - Just twelve miles north of Bela in the cliffs along the Kud River stands the extraordinary rock-cut cave city of Gondrani (Shahr-i-Roghan / Mai Gondrani): over 500 artificial monastic chambers, verandahs, and shrines carved directly into the conglomerate cliff faces by 7th–9th century Buddhist monks and Hindu ascetics, locally remembered after the devout Hindu queen Mai Gondrani who sacrificed her life fighting demons/invaders! - And who are the native Muslim Lasi tribes of Lasbela (Jamot, Runjha, Sheikh, Angaria, Burra*, ruled by the Jam of Lasbela)? As documented in the Baluchistan District Gazetteer, Vol. VIII: Las Bela (1907, pp. 42–56), they are direct offshoots of the Sindhi Hindu-turned-Muslim Samma and Numria Rajputs (retaining the Hindu Rajput royal title Jam* right down to 1947 and today!).

---

V. The Undying Flame in the Makran Gorge: Mata Hinglaj Devi (Hiṅgulā Śakti Pīṭha)

Finally, travel 150 miles west of Karachi along the desolate desert coast of Makran (Lasbela District, Balochistan) into the Martian-like mud volcanoes (Chandragup, revered as the living form of Baba Chandranath / Lord Shiva) and the deep limestone canyon of the Hingol River (Aghor Nadi).

There, inside a natural sandstone mountain cavern beside the rushing stream, burns the eternal sacred flame of Maa Hinglaj Bhavani (Hiṅgulā Devī)—the First and Supreme of the 51 Shakti Peethas of Sanātana Dharma!

According to the Tantra Chudamani, the Kubjika Tantra, the Shivapurana, and the Devi Bhagavata Purana, when Lord Vishnu's Sudarshana Chakra severed the sacred body of Mata Sati to calm the cosmic Tandava of Bhagwan Shiva, the very crown of the head (Brahmarandhra / Kottari) of Goddess Sati fell here on the banks of the Hingol River in Balochistan:

“Brahmarandhraṃ Hiṅgulāyāṃ Bhairavo Bhīmalocanaḥ | Koṭṭarī sā Mahādevī tri-guṇā yā दिगम्बरी ||” (“At Hingula [Hinglaj in Balochistan] fell the Brahmarandhra [crown of the head]; there the Bhairava is Bhimalochana, and the Great Goddess is Kottari, who transcends the three Gunas!”) — Tantra Chudamani (Shakti Peetha Stotram)

Look at the civilizational power of Mata Hinglaj across the history of India and Pakistan: 1. The Patron Goddess of Every Kshatriya, Charan, and Nath Yogi Clan: - For over two thousand years, Maa Hinglaj was the supreme Kuladevi (Clan Goddess) of the HinduParmar (Soomra), Bhati, Jadeja (Samma), Chauhan, Sodha, Khatri, Bhanushali, Lohana, Brahmakshatriya, and Charan/Gadhvi clans of Sindh, Balochistan, Kutch, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, as well as the supreme western pilgrimage requirement of Guru Gorakhnath's Kanphata Nath Yogis (who wore the sacred red stone badge of Hinglaj after crossing the lethal desert from Thatta to the Hingol gorge!). 2. Why Even the Converted Muslim Baloch & Brahui Tribes Revere Hinglaj as "Bibi Nani" (Nani Mandir): - Even after the rural Hindu Sewa, Lasi, Jat, and Rajput populations of Kalat, Lasbela, and Makran were absorbed and converted into the Muslim Baloch, Brahui, Lasi, and Zikri tribes between the 15th and 18th centuries, they could not bring themselves to abandon their Mother Goddess! - As documented by Sir Thomas Holdich, Charles Masson (1842)*, and the Las Bela District Gazetteer (1907, pp. 35–39, 204–207), the converted Muslim Baloch, Brahui, and Lasi tribes renamed the cave of *Mata Hinglaj as "Nani Mandir" / "Nani Pir" ("The Shrine of the Maternal Grandmother, Bibi Nani")—continuing to walk in barefoot pilgrimage (Hajj-i-Nani) alongside Hindu Yatris, offering red cloth and coconuts at her stone altar, and taking up arms on multiple occasions over the centuries to defend the cave of Mata Hinglaj from outside Arab and Afghan iconoclasts! 3. The Unbroken Custodianship of Balochistan's Ancient Kalati / Hinglaj Hindus: - And who kept the daily Puja, the Trishul, and the Sindoor alive inside Hinglaj Mata and the Kalat Kali Mata Mandir (the second largest Kali temple in South Asia, founded at Kalat-i-Sewa during the Hindu Sewa era!) across thirteen centuries of invasions, the 1947 Quetta Holocaust, and the 2005–2023 kidnappings and target killings of Balochistan's Hindus? - The heroic, indigenous Balochistani and Sindhi Hindus—the Beloach/Kalati Khatris, Lohanas, Bhatias, and Meghwars/Bheels—who still walk barefoot across the burning desert of Lasbela every April, climb the roaring mud-volcano of Baba Chandragup* chanting "Bam Bam Bhole!" and "Jai Mata Di! Hinglaj Mata Ki Jai!"***, and bow their heads at the stone where Mata Sati's crown fell at the dawn of time.

---

VI. Master Summary Table: Gandhara, the Hindu Kush, Gilgit-Baltistan & Balochistan (Part V)