The Geography of the Puranas c11.s2.48

c11.s2.48

The name Punjab or Pañjanad was applied originally only to the five great rivers east of the Salt range—in the days when the Beas did not join the Sutlej up to Bahawalpur. All of these rivers have always been of great importance, the distribution and movements of the people depended wholly and directly on them, and though their courses have been changing and still change within certain limits and their shoals shift, they carry a considerable amount of water and have always formed, with few exceptions, boundaries between the janapadas of ancient India and also the districts of today. But the boundaries have been largely related to the vagaries of the rivers which have been changing their courses all the time. For instance, in the extreme south of the Sind-Sāgar Doāb, the Indus changed its course over a canal dug from the Chenab to the Indus, and the Chenab had to make a new confluence with it about 60 miles further south. Multan once stood on an island in the 'Ravi,' and Tamerlane's men could work down the Ravi into the Chenab; but the Ravi joins the Chenab now above Multan—fully thirty miles above.