days of Ferozeshah in the previous campaign. And it needed the crushing defeat of Gujrat, on the 21st of February 1849, to bring the war to a conclusion, and this time to give the Punjab to England. It was annexed on the 2nd of April 1849.
For the government of the new province, including the Jullundur Doab, previously annexed, and the cis-Sutlej states, a board of administration was appointed consisting of three members. In place of this board a chief commissioner was appointed in 1853, aided by a judicial commissioner and a financial commissioner. British troops, European and native, of the regular army were stationed at the chief cities and other places east of the Indus and at Peshawar. For the rest of the trans-Indus territory a special body of native troops, called the Punjab frontier force, was raised and placed under the orders of the chief commissioner. During the Mutiny of 1857 the Punjab, under Sir John Lawrence as chief commissioner, was able to send important aid to the force engaged in the siege of Delhi, while suppressing the disturbances which arose, and meeting the dangers which threatened, within the Punjab itself. In 1858 the Delhi territory, as it was called, west of the Jumna, was transferred from the North-Western Provinces to the Punjab. The enlarged province was raised in rank, and on the 1st of January 1859 the chief commissioner became lieutenant-governor. In 1901 the frontier districts beyond the Indus were severed from the Punjab and made into a separate province called the North-West Frontier province.
See J. D. Cunningham, History of the Sikhs (1849); S. S. Thorburn, The Punjab in Peace and War (1904); Sir Lepel Griffin, Ranjit Singh (“Rulers of India” series, 1892); P. Gough and A. Innes, The Sikhs and our Sikh Wars (1897); Professor Rait, Life of Lord Gough (1903); Mahomet Latif, History of the Punjab (Calcutta, 1891); and Punjab Gazetteer (2 vols., Calcutta, 1908).
PUNKAH (Hindostani pankha), strictly a fan. In its original sense the punkah is a portable fan, made from the leaf of the palmyra; but the word has come to be used in a special sense by Anglo-Indians for a large swinging fan, fixed to the ceiling, and pulled by a coolie during the hot weather. The date of this invention is not known, but it was familiar to the Arabs as early as the 8th century, though it does not seem to have come into common use in India before the end of the 18th century. Of recent years it has largely been supplanted by the electric fan in barracks and other large buildings.
PUNSHON, WILLIAM MORLEY (1824–1881), English Non-conformist divine, was born at Doncaster, Yorkshire, on the 29th of May 1824. He was educated in his native town, and, after spending a few years in business, at the Wesleyan College, Richmond. In 1845 he received his first appointment, at Marden, Kent, and soon became famous as a preacher. After serving the usual period of probation he was ordained at Manchester in 1849 and for the next nineteen years travelled in several circuits, including some of the London ones (1858–1864). In 1868 he went to Chicago as the representative of the Wesleyan Methodist conference, and settling in Canada did much to advance the cause of his denomination. His preaching and lecturing drew great crowds both in the Dominion and in the United States, and he was five times president of the Canadian conference. He returned to England in 1873, was elected president of conference 1874, and in 1875 one of the missionary secretaries. He published several volumes of sermons, and a book of verse entitled Sabbath Chimes (1867, new edition 1880).
PUNT (from Lat. ponto, pontoon; connected with pons, bridge), a flat-bottomed boat, used for shallow waters, and propelled by a pole, by paddles, or occasionally by sails. Formerly the word was applied to many such flat boats used for ferries, barges, lighters, &c., but it is now generally confined to a light flat boat very long in proportion to its width, with square ends, both at stem and bow, slightly narrowing from the centre, and propelled by pushing against the bottom of the river or other water by a long pole. Such boats are much used for sport or pleasure on rivers with shallow and hard gravelly beds; a small punt with a mounted duck gun and propelled by paddles or short oars is used for wild-fowling. A professional punting championship of England was instituted in 1876, and an amateur championship in 1886. Etymologically considered, “punt” certainly was adapted from ponto, a word used by Caesar (Bell. civ. p. iii. 22) of a light vessel for transport in Gaul. Later (as by Gallius and Ausonius) it was also applied to a floating-raft used as a bridge, a pontoon, and so connected with pons, bridge.
There are two other words which must be distinguished from the above. One means, in Rugby football, to catch the ball in the hands, drop and kick it before it reaches the ground, as distinguished from a “drop-kick,” where the kick is given half-volley, as it reaches the ground. This word is probably cognate with “bunt,” a dialect word meaning to push, and both represent nasalized forms of the onomatopoeic “put” or “but.” The second, in the substantive “punter,” used in the general sense of a gambler or better, originally referred to one who at card games such as basset, baccarat, &c., stakes against the bank. Both “punt” and “punter” are to be referred to Fr. ponter, and ponte, which is usually taken as an adaptation of Span. punto, a point.
PUNTARENAS, or Punta Arenas, a seaport and capital of the district (comarca) of Puntarenas, Costa Rica; on the Gulf of Nicoya, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and at the western terminus of the interoceanic railway from Limón. Pop. (1904), 3569. Puntarenas is the principal harbour of Costa Rica on the Pacific, and a port of call for the United States liners which ply between San Francisco and Panama. It has an iron pier and ample warehouse accommodation for its large and growing export trade in coffee and bananas. The district of Puntarenas comprises the entire littoral from Burica Point to the Rio de las Lajas, an affluent of the Gulf of Nicoya.
PUPIL (Lat. pupillus, orphan, minor, dim. of pupus, boy,
allied to puer, from root pu- or peu-, to beet, cf. “pupa,” Lat.
for “doll,” the name given to the stage intervening between the
larval and imaginal stages in certain insects), properly a word
taken from Roman law for one below the age of puberty
(impubes), and not under patria potestas, who was under the protection
of a tutor, a ward or minor (see Infant; and Roman Law).
The term was thus taken by the Civil Law and Scots Law for a
person of either sex under the age of puberty in the care of a
guardian. Apart from these technical meanings the word is
generally used of one who is undergoing instruction or education
by a teacher. In education the term “pupil-teacher” is
applied to one who, while still receiving education, is engaged
in teaching in elementary schools. The system was introduced
into England from Holland about 1840. At first the education
which the pupil-teachers received was given at the schools to
which they were attached. During the last quarter of the 19th
century was developed a system of “pupil-teacher centres”
where training and education was given. In 1907 was introduced
“bursaries,” as an alternative; these enable those
intending to become teachers to continue their education at
training colleges or selected schools as “student teachers.” (See
Education.)
A special use of the Lat. feminine diminutive pupilla has been adopted in English and other languages for the central orifice in the iris of the eye, the pupil. The origin of the sense may be found in the parallel use in early English of “baby,” referring to small images seen reflected in that part of the eye (see Eye and Vision).
PURBECKIAN, in geology, the highest and youngest member of the Jurassic system of rocks. The name is derived from the district known as the Isle of Purbeck in Dorsetshire where the strata are splendidly exposed in the cliffs west of Swanage. The rocks include clays, shales and marls with marly, tufaceous and shelly limestones and occasional oolitic and sandy strata. Nodules of chert are present in some of the limestones. The Purbeck beds follow the line of the Jurassic outcrop from Dorsetshire, through the Vale of Wardour, Swindon, Garsington, Brill and Aylesbury; they have been proved by borings to lie beneath younger rocks in Sussex; in Lincolnshire they are represented in part by the Spilsby Sands, and in Yorkshire by portions of the Speeton Clay. The thickness of the series in Wiltshire is 80 to 90 ft., but in Dorsetshire it reaches nearly 400 ft. In most places the Purbeckian rests conformably upon
