HARKING BACK: Of Greek coins and an age when Lahore ruled Ghazni

It might sound strange in this time and age, let alone with almost an entire population brain-washed about its magnificent past, that almost two thousand years ago coins with Greek markings were used in Lahore – or Al-Ahwar as the first invaders called it.

Many moons ago as a student hitchhiking to and from Lahore and London, at the Greek border the guards wore clothes that exactly matched those found even today in Waziristan. Even the shoes were typical almost like Peshawari ‘chappals’. Much later research led us to discover that the magnificent Puru of Bhera, whom the Greeks call Porus, as does the western world, had actually defeated Alexander, or Sikander as we call him. My friend Hasnain Almakky always laments the fact as to why we prefer to call our children Sikander and never Porus.

It now seems, as a lot of historians claim, that the two combatants reached an agreement whereby Greek forces would help the man in Bhera to capture the kingdom of Lahore for him. So to Sialkot, bypassing Lahore, he went and reached the River Beas and its size shocked the invaders, as did the 600,000 strong joint army of six kings waiting on the eastern bank. It was planned as an encirclement move, not knowing that the Puru of Lahore had made a tactical withdrawal and collected the armies of six rajas related to him. The small, recently-defeated and tired Greek force and their generals panicked.

Alexander decided it was time to return. On his way back he deliberately avoided Lahore. The ever courteous Puru of Bhera provided him a battalion of Dutts, the brave Punjabi Jats of Sargodha, who escorted him till Alexandria in Egypt, where the Greek conqueror died. A few centuries later the descendants of these very Dutts were to assist, on the instruction of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), his grandsons at Karbala. Seven of them, all Hindus, were martyred. Since then they are referred to as Hussaini Brahmins. These Dutts were to, ultimately, return to Punjab and to Lahore and in 1947 they left their Yakki Gate houses to move to India. The actor Sanjay Dutt belongs to one such family.

The twists of history are amazing, and the mysteries multiple. So let us return to the Greek coins that were being used in Lahore. A sample of coins found in the area might explain. The markings on one is BA?I?E?? in Olde Greek, which refers to the Arsacid ruler of Lahore Mithradates II (123-88 BC). Amazingly, if you ever visit the Lahore Museum you might be able to see a Kaniska era coin where a Persian form in Greek lettering are seen. So the Greek influence is very clear. Tibbi-e-Unani is before us all even today. A thousand years later that influence remained, but only events took a turn for the worse.

If we read Kasim Ferishta’s discourse of events in the sub-continent, we see the repeated use of the sentence “Jayapala, the greatest of the Raes of Hind and the Raja of Lahore’. We notice that the famous ruler of Lahore had four capitals, they being Peshawar, Taxila, Lahore and, finally, Bhatinda. In that age the entire stretch from the Hindukush in the west to Bhatinda in the east was part of Punjab. There was a time when even Ghazni was part of the empire of the Raja of Lahore. But with the ascendancy of the Sabuktigin (997 AD), a slave of Turkic origin born in Kyrgyzstan and sold as a slave to Alptigin, and later his son Mahmud, the Hindu Shahi Empire of the Rajputs of Lahore began to shrink.

Once Peshawar was lost Jayapala was to return to Lahore. Now here we see an amazing bias in the way Muslim court chroniclers depict the role of Jayapala of Lahore as a person who went back on his commitments to the Afghan invader. Research now tell us, and scholars are not surprised, that Sabuktigin and later Mahmud were blind to any moral excuses against invading the sub-continent. The reality is that they knocked down all buildings as they moved and carried away all the cattle and women and children to be sold as slaves. Plunder has always been the priority of all invaders.

As religious temples were rich places they were obviously a fair target for them. In such circumstances Jayapala, the Raja of Lahore, walked out of the city’s Mori Gate and drenched himself in ghee on a sandalwood pier and committed ‘johar’, the ultimate Rajput sacrifice of honour lost. To my way of thinking that place is sacred ground and needs to have a monument to a ‘freedom fighter against foreign invasion’. But we have yet to reach that way of thinking.

The descriptions of the event by both Al-Utbi in ‘Tarikh-e-Yamani’ and Kasim Ferishta in ‘Yarikh-e-Ferishta’ (translation by John Briggs) talk of the “infidel ruler descending to the lowest pits of Hell”. The sectarian divide was for the first time used to great effect, as it still is, to exploit and loot. That sectarian way of analysing history remains the vogue even today.

Just as very little is known about Greek influence in Punjab, or more correctly it is not researched and taught in our educational institutions, so also is the amazing reign of the Sahis. Let me conclude this piece by narrating the lineage of the two Sahis that ruled Lahore. Before the Hindu Sahi reign began in 850 AD, our lands were ruled by the Turki Shahiya family, who were Buddhists and one research claims of Tibetan origin.

In those days Lahore was purely a Buddhist city and the Buddha is said to have visited it staying, most probably, in Mohallah Maullian inside Lohari Gate. Their capital was Kabul and from there they ruled over most of Punjab with their last ruler being Lagaturman (850 AD). He was overthrown by his ‘wazir’ Kallar-Lalliya (850-870 AD) who founded the Hindu Shahi dynasty. This family was to rule for 175 years till 1026 AD when the Ghazni invaders ended their reign.

Jayapala was the fifth Hindu Shahi ruler of Lahore who ruled from 965 AD till his ‘johar’ in 1001 AD. His son Anandapala took over Lahore and died in 1013 AD and his son Tricanapala took over and ruled till 1021 AD and finally his son Bhimapala ruled till 1026 AD and then just disappeared into the mountains of Kashmir. By then Mahmud had decimated Lahore and left it in the hands of his slave Ayaz, a Georgian by origin and as legend has it very much in love with Mahmud.

So the ancient city of Lahore has seen many a ruler with influences from as far away as Greece and Russia and Turkey and Kashmir. In a way in all of us there is something of all these. Our DNA would make for amazing discoveries. Probably when our sectarian bend of mind recedes will we be able to study and research the ancient origins of Lahore, which we know now as a middle Harappa age city, with a population with origins whose diversity is amazing.