tailieunhanh - THE PANJAB, NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE AND KASHMIR - 1

In his opening chapter Sir James Douie refers to the fact that the area treated in this volume—just one quarter of a million square miles—is comparable to that of AustriaHungary. The comparison might be extended; for on ethnographical, linguistic and physical grounds, the geographical unit now treated is just as homogeneous in composition as the Dual Monarchy. It is only in the political sense and by force of the ruling classes, temporarily united in one monarch, that the term Osterreichischcould be used to include the Poles of Galicia, the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia, the .Szeklers, Saxons and more numerous. | THE PANJAB NORTH-WEST FRONTIER PROVINCE AND KASHMIR BY SIR JAMES DOUIE . . SEEMA PUBLICATIONS C-3 19 R. P. Bagh Delhi-110007. First Indian Edition 1974 Printed in India at Deluxe Offset Press Daya Basti Delhi-110035 and Published by Seema Publications Delhi-110007. EDITOR S PREFACE In his opening chapter Sir James Douie refers to the fact that the area treated in this volume just one quarter of a million square miles is comparable to that of Austria-Hungary. The comparison might be extended for on ethnographical linguistic and physical grounds the geographical unit now treated is just as homogeneous in composition as the Dual Monarchy. It is only in the political sense and by force of the ruling classes temporarily united in one monarch that the term Osterreichischcould be used to include the Poles of Galicia the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia the Szeklers Saxons and more numerous Rumanians of Transylvania the Croats Slovenes and Italians of Illyria with the Magyars of the Hungarian plain. The term Punjabi much more nearly but still imperfectly covers the people of the Panjab the North-West Frontier Province Kashmir and the associated smaller Native States. The Sikh Muhammadan and Hindu Jats the Kashmírís and the Rájputs all belong to the tall fair leptorrhine Indo-Aryan main stock of the area merging on the west and south-west Pg vi into the Biluch and Pathán Turko-Iranian and fringed in the hill districts on the north with what have been described as products of the contact metamorphism with the Mongoloid tribes of Central Asia. Thus in spite of the inevitable blurring of boundary lines the political divisions treated together in this volume form a fairly clean-cut geographical unit. Sir James Douie in this work is obviously living over again the happy thirty-five years which he devoted to the service of North-West India his accounts of the physiography the flora and fauna the people and the administration are essentially the personal recollections of .