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



haps germane ; when, about the commencement of the century, the 

 Brahmaputra, a sacred river like the Saraswati, broke away from its 

 old course and flowed west of the Madhopur jungle to join the Ganges, 

 the new channel thus formed was immediately christened the Jamuna, a 

 name it retains to this day, while the old channel now deserted by the 

 main stream is still known as the Brahmaputra. Possibly, a similar 

 explanation may be assigned to the name of the Jumna, which, originally 

 known as the Saraswati, struck out a new course for itself during the 

 Yedic period and, doing so, acquired a new name. If this be so, the 

 native tradition that the old Saraswati joins the Ganges at Allahabad is, 

 unwittingly, a true statement of fact. 



The most weighty, and indeed almost the only, argument that can 

 be urged against this hypothesis must be derived from the mention of 

 both the Saraswati and the Jumna in the Yedas, and even in the same 

 verse of the same hymn. It may have been, however, that the Jumna, 

 after leaving the hills, divided its waters, as the Diyung does even now 

 in Assam, and that the portion which flowed to the Punjab was known 

 as the Saraswati, while that which joined the Ganges was called the 

 Yamuna. Possibly this was the hydrography of the country when the 

 Aryans entered India, but the name Yamuna seems to indicate that the 

 easterly flow of the Jumna was established subsequently to their arrival ; 

 the silence of the Yedic hymns on this point is not an objection of 

 importance, for the geographical references they contain are few and far 

 between, almost invariably incidental, and seldom go beyond the mere 

 mention of a name. 



The above is confessedly but an hypothesis, and is probably in- 

 capable of proof or disproof, yet it is one which has been proposed by 

 Mr. Fergusson, who, if not a Yedic scholar, was, at any rate, a careful 

 observer of the mode of action of rivers, and whose essay on the delta of 

 the Ganges is still the standard authority on the physiography of rivers 

 flowing through alluvial plains. If not true, it is at least a possible 

 explanation of the difficulty whose solution is by no means a matter of 

 purely antiquarian interest, for, if the explanation I have put forward is 

 the true one, it is evident that the present distinction between bhangar 

 and hhadir has originated since the Aryan immigration, and, as it is 

 hardly probable that there has been a sufficient change of level since 

 then to account for the erosion by the rivers which has taken place, we 

 must suppose it to be due to the extension of cultivation in the hills, 

 ivhich, by causing the rain to flow more quickly off the hill-sides, has 

 augmented the violence, and consequently the erosive power, of the 

 rivers when in flood, and thus caused them to lower their channels into 

 the plains over which they flowed. 



