ABSTRACT
According to Hindu legend, the god Loh, son of Rāma, founded Lahore, or Loh-awar, meaning Loh's Fort. This account may not satisfy modern scholars, but it is all we have, for any other knowledge of the city's origins disappeared from human memory long ago. Lahore may have been the city referred to by Ptolemy of Alexandria when, in A.D. 150, he wrote of a city called Labokla. Five hundred years later a Chinese writer, Xuan Zang, visited a city near the Rāvi River that contained many Brahman families-those of the highest Hindu caste. Was this also Lahore? It is safe to state that Lahore has been inhabited since the beginning of the second century, when a series of Hindu dynasties controlled the Punjab. Subject to the vagaries of war, politics, and com merce, it was destined to prosper and suffer alternately. The Rāvi River, one of the major tributaries of the Indus, provided the site with fertile land, while its position between the kingdoms of Afghanistan, Persia, and India ensured that it would play a significant role in the great political and com mercial events of the region.
