Lieut. Burnes’ Memoir on the Eastern Branch of the River Indus, §c. 551 
natives made a brave stand for their independence against a Sindian inva- 
sion of eighty thousand men, the eastern branch of the Indus, commonly 
called P’harrdn, emptied itself into the sea by passing the western shore 
of Cutch, and the country on its banks participated in the advantages 
which this river bestows throughout its course. Its annual inundations 
watered the soil and afforded the natives a plentiful supply of rice, the 
whole country on its banks, then known by the name of Saira,* being cul- 
tivated. 
These blessings, which nature had bestowed on this otherwise barren 
region, perished with the battle of Jharra, for Mir GuotAm Sudu Catora, 
irritated at the unsuccessful result of the expedition which he had led into 
Cutch, returned full of vengeance to Sinde, and inflicted a deep injury on 
a country which he had otherwise failed to humble. At the village of 
Mora he threw a mound of earth, or as it is called a band, across that 
branch of the Indus which fertilized Cutch, and by thus causing the stream 
which so much benefited its inhabitants, to ow into other branches of the 
river, and by leading it through canals to desert portions of his own 
dominions, he at once destroyed a large and rich tract of irrigated land, 
and converted a productive rice-country, which had belonged to Cutch, 
into a sandy desert. 
This original band did not entirely prevent the water of the Indus reach- 
ing Cutch, but it so impeded the progress of the main stream that all agri- 
culture depending on irrigation from it ceased. In process of time, how- 
ever, this trivial remnant of former prosperity disappeared, and the TAururs, 
the successors of the CALoras in the government of Sinde, caused numerous 
other bands to be raised, and twenty-five years ago, ALi Murin, the present 
chief of the Tharr,t put a finishing blow to the work of ruin by throwing 
up the band at Ali Bander, since which time no fresh water has passed 
to the sea, even during the swell of the river. 
The strip of land which at one time formed the perganah of Saira, on the 
banks of this fruitful river, has not since then yielded a blade of vegetation, 
and has become a part of that Runn on which it bordered. The channel 
* Saira included the country between Lacpat, Saira, and Minddn, and extended a few miles 
north of Sindr?. 
+ The country north of the Runn, and between the Indus and Parcar, is so called. 
