1886.] of the Pimjah and its Bivers. 337 



thirty miles south of the junction of the combined rivers, he places a 

 " divarication of the Indus towards Mt. Ouindion " and the " source 

 of the divarication " in Lat. 27®, Long. 127°. This, allowing for the 

 vagaries of Ptolemy's geography, would agree fairly well with the 

 commencement of the Sotar, and it may be noticed that many maps 

 which profess to shew the ancient geography of India make the 

 *' Neudrus " follow the course of the Sotar for some way and join 

 the Indus about where Ptolemy places this divarication. It is not neces- 

 sary here to enter into a discussion of the exact meaning of that extra- 

 ordinary phrase of Ptolemy's " 17 Trrjyri Trj<; eKxpoTr^s," for it is evident that 

 in this matter he was given to a looseness of language, or an inaccuracy 

 of information, which led him to confuse together affluents and effluents, 

 tributaries and distributaries.* 



After Pfcolemy, a long night fell upon our knowledge of India, and, 

 when, with the advent of the Arab invaders, the dawn again begins to 

 lift, we find much that is with difficulty reconcileable with Ptolemy's 

 account. We have firstly the marches of Chach and Muhammad Kasim 

 from Aror to Multan, in both of which the " Biyas " is the first river 

 crossed after leaving Arore, thus ignoring the " divarication towards 

 Mount Ouindion " of Ptolemy ; but a far more noteworthy fact is that, 

 throughout the chronicles translated in the first two volumes of Sir 

 H. Elliot's History of India, the name " Biyah " is invariably applied 

 to the combined Beas and Sutlej rivers. It is needless for me to give 

 instances in detail, for they are numerous, and many of them have 

 already been quoted by the anonymous reviewer so frequently referred 

 to.f The only mention of the Sutlej by any of the historians that 

 I can find is in the description of one of Mahmud's campaigns, where 

 he is said to have crossed the Sihun (Indus), Jelam Chandraha, Ubra 

 (Ravi), Bah (Beas) and Satladur (Sutlej) ; but, as it is also stated that 

 all the rivers bear along with them great stones, he must clearly have 

 crossed them near the foot of the hills, and consequently above any 

 possible confluence of the Sutlej and Beas. Col. Tod, in his Annals of 

 Rajputana, mentions that the same nomenclature is found in the native 

 annals of the state of Jessalmer,;|; which formerly embraced the whole 

 of what is now Bhawalpiir and Sind east of the Indus as far south as 

 Arore. 



So peculiar a nomenclature as this of the greater river losing its 



* Ancient India as described hy Ptolemy, by J. W. McCriiidle, M. A., M. R. A. S. 

 London, Calcutta and Bombay, 1885, pp. 91 to 95. 



t Calcutta Review, LIX, p. 11 et. seq. 



X Annals and Antiquities of Bajasthan, footnote to chapter V of the Annals of 

 Jessalmer. 



