Vol. VI, No. 10.] The Rivers of the Delta. 551 



[N.S.] 



river to break south have continually been checked by this 

 counteracting north-eastward tendency. 



It is not unnatural to suppose that this tendency should 

 incline the river to break away from its original course where- 

 ever the first vulnerable point offered itself, and it is obvious 

 that this inclination would assert itself in the strongest degree 

 where the old course commenced to curve away to the south ; 

 both these conditions happened in 1787 to exist at the same 

 place, namely, at the point where Rennell's Callyganga River 

 flowed east from the Padma to join the Meghna at Chiddypour, 

 where the north-eastward tendency would incline the river to 

 force its way into the smaller stream (see Map XVII of the 

 Bengal Atlas). It does not appear from his journal that Rennell 

 actually surveyed this stream ; he has at least omitted an impor- 

 tant town of the name of Serripur (Sripur) , a town mentioned by 

 Jao De Barros(1553), Nicholas Pimenta (1599), Pierre du Jarric 

 (1610), Ralph Fitch and others as a town of much importance 

 and which certainly had not disappeared in Rennell's day. He 

 has also given the river a wrong name. Calliganga was the name 

 of the stream flowing from Ganganagar 1 through Luricool and 

 Mulfatganj to Chiddypour. Be that as it may, the main stream 

 of the Padma was flowing through Rennell's Calliganga by the 

 year 1818. The change was clearly a gradual one ; there is no 

 local tradition, as is so commonly the case even when unwar- 

 ranted by the facts, of a sudden irruption of the river, and even 

 so late as 1840 a large mass of water was still finding its way 

 through the old course by Ganganagar, which still retained the 

 name Ganges or Padma as against the Kirtinassa of the new 

 stream. The new course was in origin a widening of Rennell's 

 so-called Callyganga River. The interesting aspect of the 

 struggle now commences, for the Kirtinassa was the weapon 

 with which the Brahmaputra armed its ally the Ganges against 

 the Meghna. The river had broken entirely new ground ; Ren- 

 nell's Callyganga, the real name of which was the Naya Nadi 

 Rathkhola, 2 had but a few years previously been a sacred road, 

 and for 200 years at least before that date, no river had crossed 

 the isthmus. The struggle which ensued must be described 

 briefly. 



The current of the Kirtinassa was exceedingly strong, per- 

 haps due to a difference in the level of the Ganges and Meghna 

 Rivers ; the Meghna, at least, appears to have been taken at 

 a temporary disadvantage ; the big char, Pommanarra, shown 



1 The Kaliganga Mahal near Ganganagar still marks the site of this 

 old and forgotten river. 



* New river of the car path. In former days it is said that the 

 sacred car was drawn along this road in the Sripur Rathjatra (Car 

 festival). It is said that the weiirht of the car hollowed out the path and 

 this formed a khal by the influx of water from the Ganges to the 

 Meghna. 



