stations, is Government House, the official residence of the lieutenant-governor of the Punjab, formerly the house of the Jamadar Khush-hál Singh, a Brahman who, with varied fortunes, held high offices under Ranjit Singh. The original building round which the present large house was erected was the tomb of Sayid Nur-ud-dín, called also Nur-ul-Alam, of Bokhara (1616), which is the lofty square apartment in the middle of the present building. The tomb of Nadirah Begam was fitted up in the early days of British rule as the station church, and continues to be used for this purpose. (A large new church has been commenced, which will now be the cathedral of the lately constituted diocese of Lahore.) The tomb of Shah Chirágh (1660 A.D.) is, with large additions made from time to time, the office of the accountant-general of the province. The báradari or summer house (commonly called chau-burji, the building with four turrets) of Nawab Wazir Khan (1631), long occupied by the museum, is now the station library and reading room.
Educational and other Institutions. – The Punjab University College, established in 1869 to give special encouragement to the cultivation of Oriental learning, and instruction in European science through the vernacular languages, is supported with much zeal by the chiefs and native gentlemen of the Punjab. It is now about to be raised to the status of a university, with power to confer degrees. The other educational institutions of Lahore are the Government college, the normal school, the Oriental college, the district Anglo-vernacular school, the high school for boys of European parentage, the Anarkali school for girls, another girls' school of the same class near the railway station, chiefly for the children of the railway employés, St James's orphanage and free school, for poorer children, European and Eurasian. The large and prosperous school of the American Presbyterian mission in the city has been mentioned above. The medical school, established in 1860, gives a five years' course, in the English language, qualifying for a diploma as licentiate in medicine, and for employment in the Government service in the grade of assistant-surgeon. A three years' course, in the Urdu language, trains a lower class of students for the grade of hospital assistant or native doctor. The number of students in the upper class is between fifty and sixty, in the lower from eighty to one hundred. The Mayo school of industrial art has in view mainly the cultivation of Oriental art as applied to decoration and manufactures, and, in aid of this purpose, instruction in drawing, modelling, &c. Among other works on which the trained pupils have been employed is the production of plaster casts of the Buddhist sculptures in the museum, obtained from explorations in the north-west districts of the Punjab. St John's Divinity College (Church Missionary Society) gives theological instruction, in the Urdu language, to native Christian students, ten of whom are now pastors of native congregations in different parts of northern India.
There is a Government book depot for the sale of educational and other books; and from the depository of the Punjab Religious Book Society there is a large and increasing sale of books of religious and general literature in English and in the vernacular languages. A large number of books in the native languages are issued annually from the local presses. Nine newspapers in Indian languages are published at Lahore – seven in Urdu, one in Hindi, and one in Arabic. One of the Lahore Urdu papers has the largest circulation of any native paper published out of Bengal. There is one daily English paper, and one under native editorship and management in the English language.
In the Lahore central jail, which is capable of receiving 2000 inmates, many useful manufactures are carried on by the. prisoners. For the carpets made in this jail there is a large demand in the English market. Besides the two smaller jails, the district jail and the female jail, there is a Thaggi jail and school of industry, in which the few remaining Thags (or Thugs – highway stranglers and robbers) are taught useful work, chiefly tent making. A large lunatic asylum occupies the enclosed buildings of one of the old Sikh cantonments.
Trade. – The Lahore municipality has an annual income of nearly 170,000 rupees, the chief source of which is the octroi. Lahore imports from other parts of the Punjab, and the hill countries beyond, tobacco, dyes, bamboos, hides. Kashmir paper, felts, and silk fabrics; from Bengal and the southern provinces, indigo, spices, English piece goods, and other foreign products and manufactures; from Bombay, metals and metal work, cutlery, &c., and drugs. The chief manufactures of Lahore – but they are none of them on a great scale – are woollen and silk fabrics for clothing, carpets (cotton and woollen), embroidery on leather, ivory carving, toys, pottery, turnery, metal work of various kinds, arms, jewellery, &c. Lahore has long been noted for its carpets. One of the travelling agents of the East India Company in 1617, writing from Agra, reports the purchase of various articles, including thirty Lahore carpets. Soon after he writes from the same place, "It requires a long time to get well chosen carpets. True Lahore carpets are not suddenly to be gotten." Two years later, December 1619, another, writing from Sirhind about carpets, says, "Lahore is the chief place for that commodity." A little later in the same century it is observed that from Lahore were obtained fine muslins, flowered and embroidered silks, woollen drapery, and all sorts of carpets.
Health. – The general health of Lahore is good, but the city and civil station, as well as the cantonment of Mián Mír, have suffered from occasional severe visitations of cholera and fever, as well as of small-pox. A large amount of rain within a short space of time, though the total of the year may be under the average, is usually followed by malarious fever, while a larger rainfall, more distributed, is healthy. Of much importance to the health of Lahore is the large work which the municipality has executed for the supply of water to the city and suburbs. The water is pumped from wells in the bed of the river Rávi to a covered reservoir in a high part of the city, from which it is distributed. A scheme of drainage and sewerage works, dependent on this supply of water, is about to be carried out. For the military station of Mián Mír water has been brought in by a cut from the Bári Doáb canal.
Communication. – Lahore is in railway communication with the most important places in the Punjab, and with the other provinces of India. Its distance from Delhi is 323 miles (Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway); from Calcutta, 1277 miles (East India Railway); from Bombay by Delhi and Allahabad (East India Railway and Great Indian Peninsular), 1558 miles; from Bombay by Delhi and Ajmir (Rajputana State Railway), 1230; from Multan (Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway), 207; from Kurrachee, the nearest point on the sea-coast (Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway and Indus Valley State Railway), 814; and from the Afghan frontier at Peshawar (Punjab Northern State Railway), 271 miles. This last line still wants, to complete it, the great bridge across the Indus at Attok, now in course of construction. A narrow-gauge branch, from this line, for the salt traffic, is open to the bank of the Jhelum river, opposite Pind Dadan Khan. At Lahore there is one central railway station for all the lines, a short distance east of the Delhi gate.
History and Antiquities. – To this account of Lahore under British rule will now be added a short sketch of its previous history, and the works of former days which still remain.
Lahore is said to have been founded by Láva or Loh, one of the sons of Ráma; and it has borne the names Lavapúr, Loh-púr, Lóh-kót, Loháwar, Láhawar. The city of Lava is probably the Laulaha of the Raja Tarangini, or history of the kings of Kashmir. To Kashmir belonged for a long time the country (Lavana or Lavanya) as far south as Lahore, and beyond. Lavana, which also means salt, may have taken its name from the salt region west of Jhelum. Captain Wilford (As. Res., ix. 53) recognized Lahore in the (
Greek characters) and (Greek characters) of Ptolemy. Labaka is placed in the country of the Pandus about the Jhelum, and Labokla in Kashmir territory, which in reality embraced the other. Cunningham (Ancient Geography of India) suggests that Labokla should be read Labolka = Láva-laha or Láva-lók. There appears to be no mention of Lahore by the historians of Alexander; it used to be supposed that it was Sangala or Sagala, in the country of the Cathæ, but this place is better represented by the hill still called Sangala, to the west of Lahore, between the Rávi and the Chenáb.
At the time of the first Mohammedan invasion of India, in the 7th century, Lahore was in the possession of a Chauhán Rajpút prince of Ajmir. Towards the end of the 10th century Raja Jaipál, the ruler of the Lahore territory, was driven back after an encounter, on the frontier (978), with Sabaktagín, who had just risen to the throne of Ghazni. In 1001 Jaipál had to meet the first incursion of Sabaktagín's son Mahmúd. In his third invasion of the Punjab Mahmúd advanced as far as Bhera on the Jhelum, which used to be the raja's place of residence alternately with Lahore, and which had been for a time the Hindu capital. The sixth time Mahmúd came (1008), a great battle was fought near the Indus with the raja of Lahore, Anangpál, the successor of Jaipál. At length, on his fourteenth invasion of India (1023), Mahmúd took possession of Lahore, and appointed a governor, the raja, Jaipál II., having fled to Ajmir.
Under Mahmúd and seven successors Lahore continued to be ruled by governors appointed by them. When the kings of Ghazni were fully occupied in war with the Seljúks, their Indian subjects were roused to revolt, and, with the aid of the raja of Delhi, attacked Lahore. But the city was successfully held against them, and in the reign of Masaúd II., the eighth from Mahmúd, it was for a time made the seat of the government (1110). His successor Bahram went back to Ghazni; but his son, Khusrú Shah, after repeated defeats by the prince of Ghor, was driven to take refuge in the Punjab, and again made Lahore the capital. When Ghaiás-ud-dín and Shaháb-ud-dín of Ghor were ruling jointly at Ghazni, the latter proceeded to follow up the defeat of their Ghaznavi predecessors by an invasion of the Punjab, and, capturing Khusrú Malik, son of Khusrú Shah, took possession of Lahore (1186). It was next seized by the Gakkars, an ancient tribe of the hill country in the north-west of the Punjab. Shaháb-ud-dín succeeded in expelling them, but they murdered him on his way back to Ghazni, in 1206. Kutb-ud-dín, a Turki slave originally, who had held the chief command in India during these troubled times of his late master's reign, succeeded to the soveieignty of the
