Attock District (Urdu: اٹک) is a district in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. The district was created in 1904 by the merger of Talagang tehsil in the Jhelum District with the Pindigheb, Fatehjang and Attock tehsils from Rawalpindi District of the Punjab province of British India. Attock District is bordered by the Haripur and Swabi districts of North-West Frontier Province to the north, the district of Rawalpindi to the east, the district of Chakwal to the southeast, the district of Mianwali to the southwest, and North-West Frontier Province districts of Kohat and Nowshera to the west and northwest. The river Indus forms the western boundary of the district. Attock District was originally named Campbellpur after the Briton Sir Campbell who founded the city of Campbellpore. The name of the district was changed to Attock as of 1978.[1] Attock city is the district headquarters.
The district has a population of 1,274,935 of which 20.45% were urban in 1998.[2] The Awans, Milars and Khattars are the main tribes of Attock District.
According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India:
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The history of the District is practically the same as that of Rawalpindi district. Hassan Abdal, the chief relic of the Buddhist period, was one of the towns subordinate to the capital of Taxila, and under the Gakhars, Mughals, and Sikhs the District followed the fortunes of Rawalpindi. The chief historical events recorded are the defeat of Anand Pal near Ohind by Mahmud of Ghazni, the foundation of ATTOCK by Akbar, and its vicissitudes in the Sikh Wars. The District was constituted in 1904, the tahsils of Attock, Pindi Gheb, and Fatahjang being transferred from Rawalpindi District, and that of Talagang from Jhelum.[4]
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Ancient History
Pāṇini was an ancient Indian scholar who was born between the 7th and 4th centuries BC in Shalatula, a town near to Attock on the Indus river in present day Pakistan. He is regarded by scholars as one of the most innovative people in the whole development of knowledge. He was a Sanskrit grammarian who gave a comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and morphology.[5]
The Astadhyayi (also known as Astaka) is Panini's major work.
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In this work Panini distinguishes between the language of sacred texts and the usual language of communication. Panini gives formal production rules and definitions to describe Sanskrit grammar. Starting with about 1700 basic elements like nouns, verbs, vowels, consonants he put them into classes. The construction of sentences, compound nouns etc. is explained as ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner similar to modern theory. In many ways Panini's constructions are similar to the way that a mathematical function is defined today
