348 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 1, 



§ III. Historical Evidence of Changes in the Delta of the Ganges. 



Having now run through all the principal phenomena to which I 

 wished to call attention, describing them from a topographical point 

 of view, allow me to recapitulate, as briefly as I can, the his- 

 torical events connected with them, in order that their approximate 

 dates may be judged of; for as all the events to which I have 

 alluded appear to me to have occurred within historical times, and 

 after the rivers had received their names from the Aryan races 

 inhabiting their banks, we may, without difficulty, connect history 

 with topography in this instance at least. 



"With the first dawn of history or tradition, about 3000 years B.C., 

 we find the immigrating Aryan Hindoos traversing the Punjaub, and 

 settling, so far as India is concerned, exclusively in the tract of 

 country between the Sutledge and the Jumna. Their rivers were 

 the Sareswati, the Caggar, and the Markandya, which must then 

 have been far more important streams than they are now. "Whether 

 their decay arose from neglect of cultivation, after breaking up the 

 soil, or from their raising their beds so as to spill towards the 

 Jumna, or from what other cause, is by no means clear. The last- 

 specified, however, is the most probable. The bed of the Sareswati, 

 at a distance of twenty-four miles from the Jumna, is thirty feet 

 higher than that river. The Caggar, at a distance of fifty miles, is 

 ten feet higher than the last; and the country gradually slopes 

 upwards till it reaches a height of fifty feet, close to the Sutledge, 

 whose waters at Loodiana are at the same level as those of the 

 Jumna at Kurnal*. 



This tract, though not quite a desert now, is nearly so. Its rivers 

 are insignificant streams, and lose themselves in the desert; and 

 Thaneswara and Samana, the old classical cities of Arya-Yaruta, are 

 now nearly deserted. 



The next capitals of this race were Delhi, on the extreme 

 northern spur of a range of hills on the right bank of the Jumna, 

 and Muttra, about eighty miles further down, but still on the 

 elevated right bank. The first cities really in the plain were 

 Hastinapora, on the Ganges, about fifty miles from the hills, and 

 Ayodya, on the Gogra, at about sixty miles from the Himalayas, 

 the last occupying the same position with reference to the valley of 

 the Ganges that Sudya does to Assam ; and it seems to have been 

 one of India's most important cities between 2000 and 1000 years b.c. 

 About the last-named date it appears to riave been superseded by 

 Cannouge, on the Ganges, this time 120 miles from the hills, being 

 the farthest advance into the plains before the Christian era. 

 Allahabad and Benares next rose into importance. 



In the fifth or sixth century before Christ, when we become 

 tolerably familiar with the geography of India, from the events of 

 Buddha's life, we find, in the south, Rajagriha on the hills, and Gya 

 close by, the most important cities of the central portion of the 



* These levels are taken from a survey by Lieut, (now Col.) Baker, Journ. 

 Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol.' ix. p. 688. 



