ABSTRACT
As has been stated before, the early Hindus wrested the fertile tracts on the banks of the Indus and its tributaries from the primitive races of the Punjab; but the aborigines did not give up their birthright without a struggle. Retreating before the more civilised organisation and valour of the Hindus in the open field, they still hung round in fastnesses and forests near every Hindu settlement and village, harassed them in their communications, waylaid and robbed them at every opportunity, stole their cattle, and often attacked them in considerable force. Well might they exclaim with the Gaels of Scotland, who had been similarly dispossessed of their fertile soil by the conquering Saxons, and had similarly retreated to barren fastnesses :-
Unfortunately, however, they had no poet to hand down
to us their view of 4-he case, and the only account we have of this long war of centuries is from the conquering Hindus, It is needless to say that the conquerors viewed the aborigines with the contempt and hatred which have marked the conduct of all conquering nations, whether on the banks of the Indus seventeen hundred years before Christ, or on the banks of the Mississippi, seventeen hundred years after Christ! "History repeats itself; and the Punjab was cleared of its non-Aryan aborigines just as the United "States of America have, in modern times, been cle.ircd of the many powerful and brave Indian races who lived and hunted and ruled within" its primeval forests.
