18 
F. A. Shillingford —On the Kusi River. 
[No. 1, 
Rate of silt accu 
mulation. 
depression consisting of a series of caurs, or low lands, leading into one 
another.” This is the case with all the abandoned courses of the Kusi 
and it is these very shallow depressions, or caurs , which the Kusi works 
into and carves out new channels on a return to the locality. In the case 
of the Hiran, or main Kusi, of the surveys of 
1840-47 its channel is now nearly obliterated ; 
its former course in places being marked by a 
high ridge, and when the Kusi next re-visits this locality it will flow 
along the chaurs flanking the original course of the river of 1840, and 
the present low lands will become in part the high banks of the future 
river, and vice versa. To give an instance, Nipania, situated between beds 
of the Hiran and Dhamdaha Kusi about 30 miles above where these 
rivers fall into the Granges, was a working indigo factory belonging to a 
brother of mine, and obtained its water supply from an artificial tank 
upon the raised banks of which stood the dwelling-house and masonry 
outworks. I saw it in working condition in 1869, and on my re-visiting 
the spot in 1877 no trace of the tank or indigo vats could be seen, but 
the upper portion of the boiler building with chimney stood out from 
the sands, marking the spot round which the factory compound and 
works formerly stood, the place having been covered up with about 10 
feet of sand by a turn in the flow of the Hiran, just previous to the 
Kusi abandoning this river and going into the Daus swamps. 
The great changes that have occurred in the courses of the Indus 
and other Panjab rivers in the western half 
Panjlb^ivers 11 ^ ie I n( P>-Gangetic Plain are well known, 
though I believe they have never been syste¬ 
matically worked out. 1 
It is well known that the Granges or Bhaglrathi in former times 
Bhagirathi the real flowed P ast Suti or Sonti in the Murshidabad 
Hindu name of the District into the sea through Diamond Har- 
G-anges. bour, or along the direction in which the Hugli 
now flows, and this is the river up to the present day regarded by the 
Hindus as their sacred Ganges, or Bhagirathi; and the portion of the 
Ganges called the Padda or Padma, between Sonti and its junction 
with the Brahmaputra, at Jafirganj, is not held sacred. It is important 
to bear in mind that the real name of the Ganges from Gapgotri 
near its source in the western Himalayas to Sugar on the sea is the 
Bhaglrathi, and the word Gaijga simply signifies river , and as applied 
to the Bhaglrathi means the river par excellence of the Hindus. 
1 [See, however, Major Raverty’s Article on the Mihran of Sindh, appearing 
ae an Extra number of the Journal of the Society for 1893. Ed.] 
