332 R. D. Oldham — On probable Changes in the Geography [No. 4, 



crossing it ; the latter, when they saw that their fathers had come 

 after them, immediately " threw themselves into the stream, swam their 

 horses over, and joined Khan-i-Zaman."* 



The Sankra here is evidently what we now call the Narra, and the 

 name given is the same as Hakra or Sakra, which is applied to the dry 

 bed of the lost river in Rajputana, while the mention of the horses 

 swimming the river shews that this must have been of some depth, quite 

 sufficient to be navigable for country boats. 



It seems then that, as late as the beginning of the eleventh century, 

 the Eastern Narra was occupied by a considerable stream of water, and 

 was known as the Hakra, Sakra, Wand an, Dahan, Wadhawah, Dadhawah, 

 or Wahind. These names really resolve themselves into three. Hakra or 

 Sakra is the name still applied to the dry river bed which can be traced 

 through the Western desert, where the letter S is almost invariably 

 changed to H. The next four are also one word, D and W being easily 

 confounded in the character in which these chronicles were written, and 

 the termination ' wah ' simply meaning a stream. While the last appears 

 to be a separate name which translated means the " river of Hind," a 

 name which appears of itself to separate this river from the Mihran, the 

 " river of Sind " now known as the Indus. But I have already shewn 

 that the Indus must have flowed west of Aror since the beginning of the 

 eighth century, so that there is little difficulty in accepting the conclnsion 

 that the Eastern Narra marks the course of a dried up river which can be 

 none other than that which the names applied to it indicate, the *' Lost 

 River of the Indian Desert." 



II. The Lost Biver of the Indian Desert. — We lost sight of the dry 

 bed of the old river Wandan in Lat. 28° i& , Long. 70° 33'. Above this 

 comes a stretch of sixty miles in which the river bed has either been 

 completely obliterated by drifting sand or at any rate is not marked on 

 the Revenue Survey maps of Bhawalpur, but in Lat. 28° 46', Long. 71° 

 25' we again find a dry river bed which, under the varying names of 

 Hakra, Sotra, Choya, &c. can be traced through Bhawalpur, Bikanir, 

 and the Sirsa district till it is lost near Tohana in the Hissar district. 



Although the connection of these two dry river beds has not yet 

 been traced (unless we may take a passagef in the essay which has more 

 than once been alluded to to mean that the writer had personally traced 

 the connection), there can be but little doubt that the two were originally 

 continuous and are the sole i-emaining traces of that great river which, 

 according to the traditions prevalent throughout the desert, once flowed 

 through this now barren tract to the sea, or, according to other accounts, 

 to the Indus at Sukkur. 



* Ihid, p. 285. t Calcutta Review, LIX, 17, (1874). 



