1886.] of the Punjab and its Rivers. 333 



Aa regards tlie date of the final drying up of this river the only 

 evidence we have is the couplet, quoted by Col. Todd,* which says that 

 the river dried up in the time of the Sodah prince Hamir. A prince of 

 that name was contemporary with the Bhatti rajah Doosaj who ascended 

 the throne of Jessalmer in A. D. 1044 : there is no proof that this 

 was the same Hamir as is referred to in the couplet, but we have already 

 found that the latest mention of the Hakra or Sankraf as a flowing 

 river is about 1000 A. D., and that it is not mentioned in any con- 

 temporary record of later date ; it is, consequently, possible that the two 

 Hamirs are one and the same, and that the drying up of this lost river 

 took place some time during the eleventh century. 



§ 2. We have next to decide from whence came the water that 

 filled this river bed ; the first hypothesis that may be mentioned is that 

 of M. de Saint Martin. He considered that it was the Saraswati of the 

 Vedas whose course had been shortened to its present limits through a 

 diminution of rainfall. This hypothesis is, however, untenable, for there 

 is no historic evidence of such an enormous climatic change as this im- 

 plies, nor could such an enormous rainfall on the Himalayas have existed 

 during the human period without leaving its traces in the boulder de- 

 posits of the streams where these issue from the hills on to the plains. 



Another theory, propounded by an anonymous writer in the Cal- 

 cutta Review, J is that the Hakra was originally occupied by the Jumna 

 or a branch of it. Whether it may ever have carried any of the waters 

 of the Jumna, I will afterwards consider, bat it is certain that it could 

 not have done so since the time of Manu, who mentions the Jumna as 

 joining the Ganges at the modern city of Allahabad ; and I have shewn 

 that the Hakra was probably a flowing river at a later period than 

 that. 



The third, and to me most probable, theory is that of the anonymous 

 es8ayist§ whom I have already quoted several times and shall quote 

 etill oftener, and who supposes the Hakra to be the old bed of the Sutlej, 

 which, previous to the thirteenth century, did not join the Beas, as it now 

 does, but pursued an independent course to the sea. 



This hypothesis was warmly combated by another anonymous writer 

 in the same periodical, and it will be convenient before passing on to 

 the evidence in its favour to consider one argument which has been 



* Annala of Rajasthan ; a sketch of tho Indian Desert, chapter I. 

 t These are the same word, many of these Western Kajpats being unable to 

 pronounce the letter S. 



X Calcutta Review, LX, 351, (1875). 

 § Ihid, LIX, pp. 1—27, (1874). 



