Growth of cultures from Pind: An overview

‘Pind’ is a Persio-Arabic word that connotes the seat, the mound, the elevated place where an individual sits, rests or a group of people assemble, sit, rest, converse, communicate, debate and even settle. There is one more Persian term, ‘Pand’, which means an advice, counsel, exhortation, admonition, moral, doctrine. Its correlation to ‘Pind’ is non ben definito. As yet, it being the fact that Pind was the seat of mutuality between the groups of people to communicate, exchange ideas, share the stories of their hometowns, villages, cities, conditions of people, and of the kings, the chieftains, the poets and the language, the Pind culture might have helped in building of the human societies from early times.

‘Pindi’ is the modified form of ‘Pind which means ‘village’. So, Pind or Pindi are used for the places where people settled, inhabited and lived; the places which earned name and fame by human habitations. The two terms are used inter-changeably in Punjabi and other Hindustani languages, exactly as Kashmiri Penj being the modified form of Pind is used, not exactly with similar notions as underlying Pind and Pindi. There is a subtle difference between the two which we will notice later.

Pind or Pindi is an aphorism that gives us the truth about the places and the people. There are several places of historical importance in [United] Punjab of Hindustan which bear suffix or affix of Pind or Pindi, but surprisingly there seems to be not any village or town or locality, to my knowledge in Kashmir which bears the name of Pind or Pindi or Penj even. We will come to it later in this discussion. Well, on the other hand, in Hindustani Punjab, we had have Pind Gheb, Pind Bhattian,  Pind Sultani, Baoti Pind, Pind Dadan Khan, Pindi Chari and Rawal Pindi.  Pindi Gheb is a historical place that was once known as the best of the horse-breeding tracks of West Punjab with hardest inhabitant chieftains of Maliks and Khans for the Sikh Kardars during the Sikh rule right from the Ranjit Singh’s time.

The Ghebas  of the Pind Gheb were the non-Afghan tribe who were the descendants of Gheb, son of Sial, a Punwar Rajput Jat, who in his wanderings from his home in Daranagar Allahabad had come in spiritual contact with Baba Farid ud Din Gunjshakar [d 1265 AD] of Pak Pattan Punjab and at the great saint’s eloquent exhortations he converted to Islam. The saint had predicted him that one day he will become Chieftain of a great Ilaqa and Sialkote, where he later built a fort, is in his name.

The Ghebas were valiant soldiers of the Mughal army. Pindi Gheb was ‘formerly known as Pindi Malika e Shahryar’ , probably after the wife of Prince Shaharyar son of Emperor Jahangir but, after conversion of Gheb to Islam , as stated above, the town became also famous as ‘Malika e Auliya’ or the ‘Queen of the saints” and was ancestral home of  Punwar Rajput Maliks who founded it in thirteenth century. Pind Bhattian was founded by the Bhattis in the Emperor Akbar’s time. They were expelled by the Sikhs but reinstated in their hometown by the British after their victory in Anglo-Sikh war of 1845-1846. Pind Sultani is the town or village in Pakistani Punjab where the followers, known by the name of Sarwaria Sultanis, of Punjabi mystic, Sultan Sakhi Sarwar of eleventh century lived.

Baoti Pind or Bhoti Pind is a historic site since Buddhist time near a mound or Pind on the bank of an ancient stream of Bhoti near Hassan Abdal of Pakistani Punjab. On the right bank of Jhelum district in Pakistani Punjab is a village Pind Dadan Khan after the name of respectable lambardar, Dadan Khan, of Dewal, who was murdered by rival tribal groups in late nineteenth century. In British Era, this city was reputed for supply of pink salt to the entire Hindustan from Khewra salt mines. In Montgomery Punjab, there was Pindi Chari in Kangara district which, in second century AD of Kanishka’s time, was one of the prominent sites of a Buddhist stupa, which went in ruins after decline of Buddhism in India. Before partition, the site was known Pindi Chari. Now only, Chari in Kangara.

Rawal Pindi was undoubtedly the most important historical, geographical, cultural and commercial place in the cultural history of ‘Pindis’ that connected Kashmir to Punjab via Jhelum and Muree. Etymologically, the Rawal Pindi is after the names of Rawals who dominated this place.  But, who were they? With Scythian origin, they were wandering tribe of Brahman Jogis who were given to singing, begging, telling fortunes, exorcising evil spirits, and cheating. Rawalpindi was founded by their Brahman ancestor, Rawal, and towards the end of the eighteenth century, Rawalpindi, was ‘inhabited by Rawal mendicants’. ‘Rawals were hereditary astrologers of the Punjab’ who travelled for begging, stealing to then ‘Central Provinces and the Deccan and even visit Bombay and Calcutta’. It must be noted here that some of them were also pretentious Muslim ascetics, “Rawal Jogis” , feigned-hakims on roadsides, Ziarats, who did beat the drums at shrines and lived on begging and offerings like their Hindu counterparts. They were ‘averse to circumcision’.

Well, as noticed above, the term ‘Penj’ is a dialectical variation of ‘Pind’ as, for instance, before 1947, Kashmiris often talked about their kith and kin had gone to or had been to ‘Rawal-Pinje’, not Rawalpindi, in connection with their business or visiting a relative or a friend and so on. ‘Kar Sa Aakh Rawal-Pinje Pethe’, when you returned from Rawalpindi, people would ask the Rawalpindi-returnee. ‘Pind’ and ‘Penj’ are well known to spoken as well as written Kashmiri language. Sometimes, the two words are used interchangeably but there is a clear variation in their connotation and the contextual import.

Not only this, with Persian root though, Pind in Kashmiri is used for nouns other than villages or towns or cities or for phrasal nouns. There is name of one famous spot on Kohi Maran bearing affix of Pind or Pindi. In the declivity of the Ziarat of Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom, the great saint of the valley, there is a mound called Kastur-Pind or Kastur-Pindi. Kastur is the Kashmiri name of Tickell’s thrush, a lovely bird with melodious voice. It is often caged by bird lovers to listen to its melodious songs for which the poets also metaphorically called the bird,  Hazar Dastan, teller of thousand stories. Then, there is another phrasal noun, Thake-Pind which generally refers to early times when people travelled on foot or bullock-carts or horses or by water-transport. In simmering hot seasons, they would halt in their trip and take rest on a mound in the shade of trees, near a stream, in order to rejuvenate themselves for continuation of the sojourn. The spot, the mound, was referred to as Thake-Pind or Behan-Pind.

In the past, we known, the shops had wooden set of shutters, called Phalav, and when the shopkeeper after day’s work closed the shop by setting together wooden shutters or frames with lock, it was called Phava-Diyun. The shops had a quadrangular spot in front of the shop, a wooden platform for the convenience of the customers, called ‘grahakh’, on which they waited till they were served by the Dukandar. The wooden platform was called Wan-e-Pind and despite the fact that iron and cement are now used in construction of shops, the name Wan-e-Pind has remained intact in Kashmiri language for the said spot. More often than not, in absence of radio, television, and media as such, Wan-e-Pind served as a rich social platform for the members of Kashmirian community to exchange greetings, inquire about each others’ health, homes, relations, jobs, births and deaths, political and many other affairs of life. The tradition of using Wan-e-Pind for debates and discussions mostly on political matters continued in Kashmir even after emergence of public media platforms in post-1947 period.

Pind also means one’s home. Pind-Puran is a common Kashmiri phrase which implies house and attached courtyard and which is generally used to describe bare minimum socio-economic status of a proposed bridegroom for finding a match. Puran was a patch of land the length and breadth of which was worked out by certain measure of cubits.

Now, Penj? Iterating, it’s modified shape of Pind but when used as compound noun, it carries with it negative meaning. For example, Pinje-Boj, or ‘Pinje-Yar’, one who sharers some wan e Pinje, or some other place, spot, house, with others, idly, ‘for gambling or debauchery’ even. Pinje-Fakeer is also the ridicule often employed to those who idly sit and gossip on such spots or it also meant simply beggars sleeping on Wan e Pinje.

M J Aslam, Historian and Author