British Punjab was a province of British India. Most of the Punjab region was annexed by the British East India Company on 29 March 1849, and declared a province of British rule; it was one of the last areas of the Indian subcontinent to fall under British control. In 1858, the Punjab, along with the rest of British Raj, came under the direct rule of the British Crown. It had a land area of 358,355 square kilometers.
The province comprised four natural geographic regions – Indo-Gangetic Plain West, Himalayan, Sub-Himalayan, and the North-West Dry Area – along with five administrative divisions Delhi, Jullundur, Lahore, Multan, and Rawalpindi – and a number of princely states.In 1947, the Partition of India led to the province’s division into East Punjab and West Punjab, in the newly independent dominions of India and Pakistan respectively.
The region was originally called Sapta Sindhu Rivers, the Vedic land of the seven rivers originally: Saraswati, Indus, Sutlej, Jehlum, Chenab, Ravi, and Beas.The Sanskrit name for the region, as mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata for example,
was Panchanada which means “Land of the Five Rivers”, and was translated to Persian as Punjab after the Muslim conquests.The later name Punjab is a compound of two Persian words Panj (five) and āb (water) and was introduced to
the region by the Turko-Persian conquerors of India and more formally popularised during the Mughal Empire.Punjab literally means“(The Land of) Five Waters” referring to the rivers: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Chenab being the largest.
