Sanatan Dharma / Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Regional Sanatan Traditions III: Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir and the Northwestern Borderlands

Jhūlelāl, Śiva, river traditions, Sikh and Sufi interactions, Sanatan Dharma Śāhis, Gandhāra and the religious worlds of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan.

1. The northwest was never a cultural dead end

The Indus basin, Punjab, Kashmir, Gandhāra and the Kabul region were long-distance corridors connecting South Asia with Iran and Central Asia. Trade, migration, dynastic politics and pilgrimage moved ideas in multiple directions. The northwest therefore preserves some of the strongest evidence for a shared but changing religious history.

2. Jhūlelāl and Sindh

Jhūlelāl, also known as Uderolāl in Sindhi traditions, is a particularly important example of regional religious evolution. Anita C. Ray's study argues that the Sindhi worship of Varuṇa persisted over a very long period and examines the emergence of Jhūlelāl as a major manifestation in the medieval period and the revival of his worship after Partition. Ray, “Varuṇa, Jhūlelāl and the Sanatan Dharma Sindhis,” South Asia, 2012.

3. Do not turn Jhūlelāl into a simple genealogy

The responsible formulation is that Sindhi Sanatan Dharma traditions identify Jhūlelāl with Varuṇa and preserve river-associated symbolism. It is not historically justified to claim that we can prove a continuous, unchanged cult from the Ṛgveda directly to every modern Jhūlelāl practice. Ray herself frames the history as a long conversation between faith and cultures. Different Sindhi communities also narrate the figure differently.

4. Shared sacred space

Research on Sindh records overlapping memories and sacred associations involving Sanatan Dharma communities, Muslims, Sufis and Sikhs. At Uderolāl, traditions associated with Jhūlelāl have been linked in local memory with Muslim veneration of Khwāja Khizr/Shaikh Tāhir. The existence of overlapping traditions is historically significant, but it should not be rewritten as evidence that Sanatan Dharma communities and Muslims had identical theology.

5. Partition and religious geography

Partition transformed Sindhi Sanatan Dharma religious geography. Jhūlelāl shrines and rituals were reproduced in India, including among displaced communities in Maharashtra. Boivin and Rajpal's work shows how Jhūlelāl became a vehicle for constructing Sindhi identity across the new India-Pakistan border. Boivin and Rajpal, “From Udero Lal in Sindh to Ulhasnagar in Maharashtra,” 2018.

6. Gandhāra and Brahmanical temples

Present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan also contain substantial evidence for Brahmanical religious institutions. Oxford's archaeological overview of Gandhāra reports that after a period of Buddhist-monastery crisis, literary and archaeological evidence indicates several Brahmanical temples in and around Gandhāra, supported first by the Turki-Śāhis and later by the Sanatan Dharma-Śāhis. Oxford Research Encyclopedia, “The Archaeology of Gandhāra”.

7. The Sanatan Dharma Śāhis and Kabulistan

The Sanatan Dharma Śāhi period is particularly important because it demonstrates that the northwestern religious landscape remained connected to Indian religious traditions even as political boundaries and dynasties changed. Archaeology, coins, inscriptions and later literary accounts must be combined because no single source gives a complete picture.

8. Śaiva evidence in Pakistan

Archaeological work on the Śaiva temple at Gāndhiyān near Mansehra examines the date, architecture and Śivaliṅga of a living Sanatan Dharma Temple in Pakistan. Shah, “The Śaiva Temple at Gāndhiyān,” 2013. This kind of evidence is valuable because it moves the discussion beyond generalized statements about “lost Sanatan Dharma temples” toward specific archaeological cases.

9. Afghanistan as a religious crossroads

Afghanistan's ancient regions—Gandhāra, Bactria, Kabulistan and adjoining areas—were connected to India, Iran and Central Asia. Buddhist institutions were especially important, but Brahmanical temples and Sanatan Dharma Śāhi institutions are also attested in later periods. The correct historical picture is therefore plural rather than a simple narrative of one religion replacing another.

10. Kashmir and the northwestern Sanatan Dharma world

Kashmir developed influential Śaiva and Śākta philosophical traditions, especially the schools later grouped under Kashmir Śaivism. Its intellectual history shows that a regional tradition can achieve pan-Indian philosophical influence while remaining deeply rooted in a particular landscape.

11. Ritual connections

Across the northwest, recurring ritual themes include river reverence, pilgrimage, lamps, offerings, fasting, sacred bathing, ancestor remembrance, protective vows, temple processions and devotional singing. Some of these are very widespread South Asian practices and cannot be assigned to one single historical source.

12. What survives of the common past

Modern borders divide places that were historically connected through the Indus, Himalayan and northwestern corridors. This does not mean that all inhabitants shared one religion. It means that religious traditions developed through sustained contact. Jhūlelāl is a particularly vivid case because his modern significance is inseparable from Sindhi migration, Partition and memories of the Indus.

Do not overclaim. Evidence of Sanatan Dharma temples in Gandhāra or Kabulistan does not establish that the entire region was “Sanatan Dharma” in a modern demographic sense. Likewise, shared Sindhi sacred traditions do not erase Sanatan Dharma-Muslim theological distinctions. The evidence supports historical interaction and layered identities.

14. Sindhi, Punjabi and Kashmiri memory

Partition makes the northwest especially important for understanding how religion survives geographic rupture. Communities carried household deities, songs, food traditions, pilgrimage memories and ritual objects across the new border. Jhulelal became not merely a deity but also a symbol of Sindhi continuity. Similar processes affected Punjabi and Kashmiri communities, although each has its own historical trajectory and should not be collapsed into a single northwestern Sanatan Dharma story.

15. The evidence of absence must be handled carefully

The destruction or disappearance of a temple does not by itself prove why it disappeared. Archaeological gaps can result from rebuilding, erosion, reuse of stone, changing settlement patterns, conflict or later religious transformation. Conversely, surviving shrines cannot automatically be dated to the earliest period of the tradition. The history of the northwest therefore requires unusually careful separation of archaeology, inscriptional evidence, literary memory and later community tradition.

16. Borderlands and cultural exchange

Northwestern religious history includes movement of merchants, monks, soldiers, scholars and pilgrims. Exchange can produce translation, borrowing and hybrid artistic forms, but the direction of influence must be demonstrated rather than assumed. Similar iconography in two regions can result from shared conventions, direct transmission or independent development. Inscriptions, dated objects, textual parallels and archaeological context provide stronger evidence than visual resemblance alone.

17. Kashmir as a multilingual intellectual region

Kashmir is important not only for temple and pilgrimage history but also for Sanskrit intellectual traditions, Śaiva philosophy, Buddhist history and later Persianate cultural worlds. Texts associated with Kashmirian Śaivism should not be treated as representative of every form of Śaivism. They are one highly sophisticated regional intellectual formation whose concepts later travelled beyond Kashmir. The same principle applies to other borderland traditions: regional specialization should not be mistaken for universal Sanatan Dharma doctrine.

18. Sindh and the problem of partitioned archives

Modern national borders can obscure older regional networks. Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir and the northwestern frontier have histories that cross present-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Partition also displaced communities and changed which archives remained accessible to particular scholars. Oral memory, diaspora institutions and archaeological evidence can therefore become especially important, but each has limitations. A responsible history records where evidence is strong, where archives are incomplete, and where later community memory fills gaps.

Northwestern Sanatan Dharma worlds: evidence, continuity and rupture

This section strengthens the chapter’s historical method by separating textual evidence, material evidence, later tradition, and modern interpretation. The goal is not to flatten disagreement but to identify what can be established securely, what is plausible, and what remains debated.

Historical method

The northwestern subcontinent was a zone of movement rather than a cultural cul-de-sac. Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir, Gandhāra, and the regions beyond the Hindu Kush connected South Asia with Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Religious traditions in these regions were shaped by trade, military power, migration, pilgrimage, dynastic change, and multilingual interaction. Modern national borders can obscure these older connections, so historical reconstruction must work across present-day political boundaries. The distinction is important because religious traditions are cumulative: later communities frequently preserve older names and stories while giving them new meanings, and modern communities may read ancient texts through categories that did not exist in the same form in antiquity.

Textual and material evidence

Evidence from the northwest is uneven. Archaeological remains, inscriptions, coins, manuscripts, temple fragments, Buddhist monuments, and later literary traditions each preserve different kinds of information. A broken sculpture can demonstrate iconographic presence, but it cannot by itself reconstruct the beliefs of an entire population. A royal inscription can demonstrate patronage, but not necessarily popular devotion. The strongest interpretations triangulate different forms of evidence. The distinction is important because religious traditions are cumulative: later communities frequently preserve older names and stories while giving them new meanings, and modern communities may read ancient texts through categories that did not exist in the same form in antiquity.

Regional and social variation

Kashmir provides an especially rich example because Sanskrit intellectual traditions, Śaiva philosophy, Buddhist history, Persianate culture, and later political transformations intersected there. Kashmir Śaivism itself was not one doctrine but a family of philosophical and ritual traditions, including Trika-related systems. Its sophisticated texts demonstrate that regional traditions could generate major contributions to Sanskrit intellectual history while remaining rooted in a particular landscape. The distinction is important because religious traditions are cumulative: later communities frequently preserve older names and stories while giving them new meanings, and modern communities may read ancient texts through categories that did not exist in the same form in antiquity.

Modern reception

Sindh and Punjab similarly show how shared sacred geographies could survive changing political and religious boundaries. The history of figures such as Jhūlelāl is particularly sensitive because later communities may interpret the same sacred figure through different theological frameworks. Historians should document those interpretations without forcing them into a single ancient genealogy that the evidence cannot establish. The distinction is important because religious traditions are cumulative: later communities frequently preserve older names and stories while giving them new meanings, and modern communities may read ancient texts through categories that did not exist in the same form in antiquity.

What the evidence allows us to say

Partition transformed the geography of Sanatan Dharma, Sikh, and Muslim sacred sites. Shrines that had once been part of regional networks could become inaccessible or acquire new communal meanings. Diaspora communities also recreated selected memories and practices abroad. Thus the modern history of the northwest is simultaneously a history of continuity, displacement, reconstruction, and selective remembrance. The distinction is important because religious traditions are cumulative: later communities frequently preserve older names and stories while giving them new meanings, and modern communities may read ancient texts through categories that did not exist in the same form in antiquity.

Selected scholarly anchors

For further verification, this discussion is anchored in Oxford Academic scholarship and, where relevant, additional Oxford research on Sanatan Dharma history and practice. These sources are used as scholarly reference points rather than as substitutes for primary evidence.

Another important issue is the danger of reading contemporary borders backward. Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir, and Gandhāra were connected through routes that crossed political frontiers repeatedly. A community living in one historical polity cannot automatically be assigned the modern national identity of the territory in which an archaeological site now stands. Historians instead reconstruct networks of language, patronage, trade, pilgrimage, and political authority at the time under study. This additional layer is important because it prevents a common error in civilizational history: treating continuity of vocabulary or mythology as proof that social institutions and practices remained unchanged. Historical continuity can coexist with major transformations in meaning, authority, and practice.

Partition-era testimony requires similar care. Memories of displacement are historically important, but memory is not identical to an archaeological chronology. Oral histories can preserve details absent from official records, while official records can preserve administrative facts that individuals did not experience directly. Using both allows a more complete history of how religious geography changed without assuming that any single source contains the whole story.

This chapter distinguishes three layers whenever possible: the historical evidence, the later community’s interpretation of that evidence, and the modern scholar’s reconstruction. This distinction does not weaken religious tradition; it makes the history more precise. It also prevents modern categories from being projected backward onto periods in which communities organized identity, law, ritual, and sacred geography differently. Where evidence is uncertain, the appropriate conclusion is uncertainty rather than a confident but unsupported reconstruction.

Punjab, Kashmir and the northwest through Indian voices

The northwest was a zone of intense linguistic and religious interaction. Guru Nanak's compositions are especially important because they show how Punjabi devotional language could absorb Sanskritic, Persian and Arabic vocabulary while articulating a distinct theology. The SGPC's presentation of the Guru Granth Sahib highlights this multilingual environment and the importance of popular poetic forms.

Puran Singh's literary account of the Sikh Gurus adds an Indian interpretive layer to the historical narrative. Kabir's presence in the wider North Indian devotional field provides another bridge, while later Punjabi and Kashmiri traditions developed their own distinctive institutions and philosophies. The region should therefore be represented as a network of overlapping literary and devotional worlds, not as a simple frontier between fixed religious blocs.

The key distinction is between contact and identity. Shared vocabulary and pilgrimage routes document interaction; they do not erase the distinct theological and institutional identities that later developed.

Indian-source reading trail: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Puran Singh, The Book of the Ten Masters, Gobind Singh Mansukhani, Introduction to Sikhism, Hazariprasad Dwivedi, Kabir.

References cited in this chapter

Clickable scholarly, primary, institutional, and documented traditional sources named or used in this chapter.