8 
F. A. Shillingford —On the Kusi River. 
[No. 1, 
large rivers formerly, and which have their sources (except Talaba) 
Other Rivers in N. in the neighbourhood of the detrital talus, 
Bhagalpur, probably ^ debouchure of the Kusi into the plains, 
former beds of the 1 r _ * 
Kusi. and whose courses, m their upper reaches 
have a westerly direction away from the banks of the Kusi, are, begin¬ 
ning from the East:— 
(1.) The Parman, or Parwan. 
(2.) The Talaba. 
(3.) The Dimra. 
(4.) The Tiljuga. 
All of these rivers have probably been, at one time or another, the bed 
of the main Kusi, but whether they will be occupied again it is difficult 
to form an opinion. The detritus brought down by other rivers tends 
to raise the country by degrees, and each successive oscillation of the 
Kusi, if not controlled by artificial means, would probably have a limit 
farther to the Eastward. 
Thus, we have the main waters of the Kusi, moving from the Kali 
Kusi into the Dhamdaha Kusi, between the years 1731 to 1807, and 
then into the Hiran—an adjoining stream — between 1811 and 1840, and 
further, we have the Kusi waters occupying the Hiran for over 33 years, 
and the Daus for exactly 20 years. As the Kusi, in its march west¬ 
ward, is traversing a higher lay of country in each successive shift, it 
appears probable that the duration of the occupation of each new 
channel to the west, will go on diminishing, and that, from analogy, 
we may infer that when the Easternmost Channel is re-opened, or re¬ 
occupied, it will hold the Kusi waters for some considerable length of 
time. 
With regard to historical allusions to a probable Eastern Channel 
_ , , , ^ . of the Kusi we have the Chinese pilgrim, 
cal allusions to the Hiuen lsiang, on his way to Kamarupa (about 
Kusi, an Eastward A. D., 638), crossing a great river, which 
Channel. General Cunningham (Ancient Geography 
of India, I. 1871, page 501) infers was the Tista, which is hardly a great 
river, nor is it likely to have been such in past times, looking at its 
restricted mountain drainage. Then the early Muhammadan Sultans 
of Bengal encountered a large river in their expeditions against Kam- 
rup and Bhutan, in the first half of the 13th Century, 1 and Husain 
Shah (1499-1520) also had to cross a large river on his way from Gaur 
to Kamrup. Dr. Hunter in his statistical account of Bogra, says, “ Tra¬ 
dition, and the present condition of this District, and of Pabna and 
Rangpur, to the south and north, show that a great river did once flow 
1 Stewart’s History of Bengal, 1813. Pages 46-66, Ut<j. 
