Hindi-speaking regions), and Himachal
Pradesh (from the hill regions). The
Punjab region is replete with history, for it
has been the traditional route by which
invaders have gained access to the north-
ern Indian plains. The first of these were
the Aryans, who coined its name from the
five rivers (pancab) flowing through it.
The abundant waterfrom these rivers,
carried by an extensive irrigation net-
work, has made the Punjab exceptionally
fertile, and today it remains the largest
wheat-growing area of India.
The Punjab is famous as the birthplace
of the Sikh religious community, and is
today the only Sikh-majority state. The
partition of India into Hindu and Muslim
states in 1947 hit the Sikhs the hardest,
since the division essentially carved their
homeland in half. In the aftermath of the
partition millions of people became
refugees, and many of them fell victim to
the atrocities of the time. For most of the
1980s, Sikh proindependence groups
waged an undeclared war against the
Indian government. In one of the most
dramatic events of this period, the Akal
Takht, the traditional symbol for Sikh tem-
poral power, was stormed by the Indian
army in June 1984, and the Indian prime
minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated
four months later. By the mid-1990s this
movement seemed to have been quelled,
although no one can predict whether this
is permanent. Punjab is most famous for
the Sikh Harmandir (Golden Temple) in
Amritsar, a short distance from the
Jallianwala Bagh, site of a massacre that
was one of the pivotal events in the strug-
gle for Indian independence. For general
information about Punjab and all the
regions of India, an accessible reference is
Christine Nivin et al., India. 8th ed., Lonely
Planet, 1998.
Punya
(“holy”) Word most often used as a noun
to mean “religious merit”—sometimes to
denote the religious distinction arising
from a particular deed, but more often
to refer to the collective body of religious
merit one has accumulated through the
good deeds in one’s karmic career.
(According to the theory ofkarma, all of
one’s deeds will eventually be realized,
so the merit one has earned in the past is
stored up to bring benefits in the future.)
Its opposite is pap, the most general
word for religious demerit.Purana
(“old”) An important genre of smrtitexts,
and the repository of traditional Indian
mythology. The smrtis, or “remembered,”
texts were a class of literature that,
although deemed important, was consid-
ered less authoritative than the shrutis, or
“heard” texts. In brief, the shrutis denoted
the Vedas, the oldest and most authorita-
tive Hindu religious texts, whereas the
smrtis included the two great epics, name-
ly the Mahabharataand the Ramayana,
the dharma literature, the Bhagavad Gita,
and the compendia known as the puranas.
According to one traditional defini-
tion, a purana should contain accounts
of at least five essential things: the cre-
ation of the earth, its dissolution and
recreation, origins of the gods and patri-
archs, the reigns of the Manvantaras,
and the reigns of the Solarand Lunar
Lines. In practice, the puranas are com-
pendia of all types of sacred lore, from
mythic tales to ritual instruction to exal-
tation of various sacred sites (tirthas)
and actions. Individual puranas are
usually highly sectarian and intended to
promote the worshipof one of the
Hindu gods, whether Vishnu, Shiva, or
the Goddess. By tradition the major
puranas number eighteen, but there are
hundreds of minor works. Along with
the epics, the puranas are the store-
houses of the mythic tales that are the
common religious currency for tradi-
tional Hindus. In this respect the
puranas are much more influential than
any of the Vedas, because the tales in
the puranas are common knowledge.
The contents of the Vedas, though more
authoritative, are less well known.
Judgments on the importance of indi-
vidual puranas vary according to sec-
tarian persuasion, but some of thePunya