Rajput Tribes: Chanab
This article is an extract from PANJAB CASTES SIR DENZIL CHARLES JELF IBBETSON, K.C. S.I. Being a reprint of the chapter on Lahore : Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916. |
Rajput: Tribes Chanab
The Hiraj (No. 7)
The Hiraj is a Sial clan which holds a tract on the banks of the Ravi just aliove its junction with the Chanab. It is possible that some of the clan have returned themselves as sial simply, and are therefore not represented in the figures. The Hiraj oi Multan have returned themselves as Sial Hiraj to the number of 3,380, and are shown in both columns.
The Sial (No. 8) — The Sial is politically one of the most important tribes of the Western Plains. As Mr. Steedman observes, the modern history of the Jhang district is the history of the Sial. They are a tribe of Punwar Rajputs who rose to prominence in the first-half of the 18th century. Mr. Steedman writes : They were till then probably a pastoral tribe, but little given to husbandry, dwelling on the hanks of river, and grazing their cattle during the end of the cold and the first mouths of the hot weather in the low lands of the Chanab, and during the rainy season in the uplands of the Jhang bar. The greater portion of the tract now occupied by them was prob ably acquired during the stormy century that preceded the conquest of Hindustan by the Mughals. During this period the country was dominated from Bhera, and sometimes from Multan. The colletion of revenue from a nomad population inhabiting the fastnesses of the bar and the deserts of the ihal could never have been easy, and was probably seldom attempted. Left alone, the Sial apphed themselves successfully to dispossessing those that dwelt in the land — the nols, Bhangus, Mangans, Marrals, and other old tribes — amusing themselves at the same time with a good deal of internal strife and quarrelling, and now and then with stiffer fighting with the Kharrals and Biloches.
Then for 200 years there was peace in the land, and the Sials remained quiet subjects of the Lahore Subah, the seats of local government being Chiniot and Shorkot. Walidad Khan died in 1747, one year before Ahmad Shah Abdali made his first inroad and was defeated before Dehli. It is not well known when he succeeded to the chieftainship, but it was probably early in the century ; for a con.siderable time must have been taken up in the reduction of minor chiefs and the introduction of all the improvements with which Walidad is credited. It was during Walidad's time that the power of the Sials reached its zenith. The country subject to Walidad extended fi-om Mankhera in the Thai eastwards to Kamalia on the Ravi, from the confluence of the Ravi and Chanab to the ilaka of Pindi Bhattian beyond Chiniot. He was succeeded by his nephew Inayatula, who was little if at all inferior to his uncle in administrative and military ability. He was engaged in constant warfare with the Bhangi Sikhs on the north, and the chiefs of Multan to the south. His near relations, the Sial chiefs of Rashidpur, gave him constant trouble and annoyance. Once indeed a party of forty troopers raided Jhang, and carried off the Khan prisoner. He was a captive for six months. The history of the three succeeding chieftains is that of the growth of the power of the Bhangis and of their formidable rival the Sukarehakia misl, destined to be soon the subjugator of both Bhangis and Sials. Chiniot was taken in 1803, Jhang in 1806. Ahmad Khan, the last of the Sial Khans, regained his country shortly after in 1808, but in 1810 he was again captured by the Maharaja, who took him to Lahore and threw him into prison. Thus ended whatever independence the Sial Khans of Jhang had ever enjoyed.
The Sials are descended from Rai Shankar, a Punwar Rajput, a resident of Daranagar between Allahabad and Fattahpur. A branch of the Punwars bad previously emigrated from their native country to Jauupur, and it was there that Rai Shankar was born. One story has it that Rai Shankar had three sons, Seo, Teo, and Gheo, from whom have descended the Sials of Jhang, the Tiwanas of Shahpirr and the Ghebas of Pindi Gheb. Another tradition states that Sial was the only son of Rai Shankar, and that the ancestors of the Tiwanas and Ghebas were only collateral relations of Shankar and Sial. On the death of Rai Shankar we are told that great dissensions arose among the members of the family, and his son Sial emigrated during the reign of Allanddin Ghori to the Panjdb. It was about this time that many Rajput famihes emigrated from the Provinces of Hindustan to the Panjdb, including the ancestors of the Kharrals, Tiwanas, Ghebas, Chaddhars, and Punwar Sials. It was the fashion in those days to be converted to the Muhammadan religion by the eloquent exhortations of the sainted Bawa Farid of Pak Pattan ; and accordingly we find that Sial in his wanderings came to Pak pattan, and there renounced the religion of his ancestors. The Saint blessed him, and prophesied that his son's seed should reign over the tract between the Jhelam and Chanab rivers. This prediction was not
- General Cunningham states that the Sial an; supposed to be descended from Raja Hudi, the
Indo-Seytbian opponent of the Bbatti Raja Rasalu of Sialkot ; but I do not find this tradition mentioned elsewhere.very accurate. Baba Farid died abont 1264-65. Sial and his followers appear to have wandered to and fro in the Bechna and Jctch doahs for some time before they settled down with some degree of permanency on the right bank of the .jelam. It was during this unsettled period that Sial married one of the women of the country, Sohag daughter of Bhai Khan Mekhan, of Saiwal in the Shahpur district, and is also said to have built a fort at Sialkot while a temporary resident there. At their first settlement in this district, the Sials occupied the tract of country lying between Mankhera in the that and the river Jhelam, east and west, and from Khushab onthe north to what is now the Garb Maharaja ilaka on the south.
The political history of the Sial is very fully described in the Jhang Settlement Report from which I have made the above extract, while their family history is also discussed at pages 502 ff and 520 of Griffin's Panjdb Chiefs. The clans of the Sials are very numerous, and are fully described by Mr. Steedman in his Jhang Report, who remarks that it is fairly safe to assume that any tribe (in Jhang only I suppose) whose name ends in ana is of Sial extraction.
The head-quarters of the Sials are the whole southern portion of the Jhang district, along the left bank of the Chanab to its junction with the Ravi, and the riverain of the right bank of the Chanab between the confluences of the Jahlam and Ravi. They also hold both banks of the Ravi throughout its course in the Multan and for some little distance in the Montgomery district, and are found in small numbers on the upper portion of the river. They have spread up the Jahlam into Shahpur and Gujrat, and are found in considerable numbers in the lower Indus of the Derajat and Muzaifargarh. Who the Sials of Kangra may be I cannot conceive. There is a Sial tribe of Ghiraths ; and it is just possible that some of these men may have returned their caste as Sial, and so have been included among Rajputs. Mr. Purser describes the Sial as large in stature and of a rough disposition, fond of cattle and caring little for agriculture. They observe Hindu ceremonies like the Kharral and Kathia, and do not keep their women in pardah. They object to clothes of a brown {uda) colour, and to the use of brass vessels.
