Rivers and regions
The five rivers and their old names, the doabs between them, Majha, Malwa, Doaba and the bars.
The doabs and regions
Tap a doab or regionThe rivers
Vedic, Greek and modern namesJhelum
725 kmFlows through Srinagar and the Wular lake, out of the mountains at Jhelum town, where Alexander fought Porus on its banks.
Kashmiri poets sang of the Vitasta, and Mughal emperors built their gardens along its lakes.
Source: Verinag spring in the Kashmir valleyChenab
974 kmThe largest of the five. It cuts through deep gorges in Jammu before entering the plain near Akhnoor and flowing past Wazirabad and Jhang.
The river of lovers: Sohni swam it on a clay pot to meet Mahiwal and drowned when her sister-in-law swapped it for an unbaked one; Heer's village of Jhang stands near it.
Source: The Chandra and the Bhaga meeting at Tandi in LahaulRavi
720 kmFlows past Lahore, where Guru Arjan was taken into its waters in 1606, and past Kartarpur, where Guru Nanak lived out his life.
The Rigveda's Battle of the Ten Kings was fought on its banks.
Source: Bara Bangahal in the Dhauladhar rangeBeas
470 kmFlows through the Kullu valley and the Kangra hills, past Goindwal, to join the Sutlej at Harike.
Where Alexander's army refused to march further east in 326 BCE.
Source: Beas Kund near the Rohtang passSutlej
1,450 kmCuts through the Himalaya at Shipki La, is dammed at Bhakra, and flows past Ropar, Ludhiana and Ferozepur. It was the frontier between Ranjit Singh's kingdom and the British from 1809.
Anandpur and Kiratpur stand on its banks; Sikhs scatter their dead's ashes in it at Kiratpur.
Source: Near Lake Rakshastal in TibetIndus
3,180 kmThe great river that gives India its name. The five rivers join it as the Panjnad near Mithankot.
Attock, where its crossing was guarded, was long held to be the edge of Hindustan.
Source: The Tibetan plateau near Mount KailashWho gets which river
The Indus Waters Treaty, 1960Regions
- Majha
- The Bari Doab between the Ravi and the Beas, around Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Lahore. The 'middle land': birthplace of most of the Gurus' towns and of the misl armies.
- Doaba
- Between the Beas and the Sutlej: Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Nawanshahr. Fertile, densely settled, and the home of much of the Punjabi diaspora in Britain and Canada.
- Malwa
- South of the Sutlej: Ludhiana, Patiala, Bathinda, Sangrur, Moga, Muktsar. The Phulkian states and the cotton and wheat belt; the largest region of Indian Punjab.
- Pothohar
- The rolling, rain-fed plateau between the Jhelum and the Indus around Rawalpindi, cut by ravines; country of soldiers.
- The Bars
- The Sandal, Ganji and Nili Bars, uplands between the western rivers, turned from grazing land into canal colonies such as Lyallpur (Faisalabad) after 1890.
- Kandi
- The foothill belt below the Shivaliks: thin soils, seasonal torrents (choes) and forest.
- Bet
- The low flood plains along the rivers, renewed by each year's silt.
- The five doabs
- Between the rivers lie the doabs, named by joining the rivers' names: Bist Jalandhar (Beas and Sutlej), Bari (Beas and Ravi), Rachna (Ravi and Chenab), Chaj (Chenab and Jhelum) and Sindh Sagar (Jhelum and Indus). Lahore and Amritsar stand in the Bari Doab, Gujranwala and Faisalabad in the Rachna, Gujrat in the Chaj.
- Puadh
- The country between the Sutlej and the Ghaggar around Ropar, Mohali and Ambala, with its own dialect, Puadhi, its own songs and its own akharas of kavishri.
- Thal and Cholistan
- The sandy desert of the Sindh Sagar Doab, the Thal, between the Jhelum and the Indus, and the Cholistan desert of Bahawalpur, where the old Hakra river once ran. Both are being turned to farmland by canals.
The land in figures
- Area of historic Punjab
- about 270,000 km² 205,344 km² in Pakistan, 50,362 km² in Indian Punjab
- Height of the plain
- 300 m to 100 m from the Shivalik foot down to where the last tributary meets the Indus
- Rainfall, Himalayan foothills
- over 100 cm a year two-thirds of it in the June–September monsoon
- Rainfall, Lahore
- about 50 cm a year
- Rainfall, Multan
- about 18 cm a year
- Hottest months
- May–June often above 40 °C; February brings night frosts
- Sikhs in Indian Punjab
- 57.7% Census of India 2011; Hindus 38.5%
- Sikhs in the world
- about 26 million about 2% of India's population
Sources: Facts and Details, Census of India 2011.