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Hill States of India

former country

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ1130797
Source-derived summary

The Hill States of India were princely states lying in the northern border regions of the British Indian Empire. The historic terms Punjab Hills and Pahari Hills were used to describe the foothills of the Western Himalayan-range prior to the independence of India in 1947.

History

Punjab Hills

Prior to the late 1940s, the region that is now classified as Jammu and Himachal Pradesh was termed the "Punjab Hills". The Punjab Hills are around 483 kilometres (300 miles) long and 161 kilometres (100 miles) wide. It consisted of a range of foot-hills, known as the Shivalik Range, meeting the Punjab Plains. The hills of the region are stony and rough. The term "Punjab Hills" is now only generally used in the present era to describe painting styles produced in the courtly settings of Mankot, Guler, Kangra, Kulu, Mandi and Basohli states. The Punjab Hills are not to be confused with the Punjab Plains (i.e. the Punjab proper, being the plains-region with five rivers running through it). There were 35 states located in the Punjab Hills.

Editorial summary

“Hill States of India” enters the record as former country. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hill, States and India can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1947—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Hill, States and India.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Hill States of India” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hill, States and India provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1130797. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hill States of India”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hill States of India primary sources, Hill States of India archive and Hill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Hill States of India” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.