22 
F. A. Shillingford —On the Kusi River. 
[Ko. 1 , 
the sixteenth century, as given by Wilson,the Padma is already shown 
as a wide and established stream, but the present Bhaglrathi is shown 
as throwing a narrower branch off westward and flowing into the Estuary 
in the neighbourhood of the outlet of the Rupnarain, and to this western 
channel probably the Damuda, alluded to by Wilson, 2 was an affluent. 
In the map the name Hugli is not mentioned, but that river is called 
the Granges, no town or village is marked where we should expect to 
find Calcutta, but Satgao, spelt Satigam, near the modern Hugli, is 
shown higher up the river and formed the trading mart of the Portu¬ 
guese in those times, and there was sufficient water for the larger 
vessels to come up the river as far, at all events, as the present site 
of Calcutta and for the smaller vessels to go right up to Satgao. 
Now if tradition is to be trusted in this instance, and De Barros’ 
map has been correctly interpreted by me, then it would appear that the 
original Bhaglrathi which flowed into the sea near the Rupnarain open¬ 
ing, had been then already deserted, and the deeper channel was the 
present Hugli. That a wide deserted channel can be silted up and 
obliterated in the short space of twenty years, we have seen in the case of 
the Hiran, and to those who have watched the process it is easy to 
understand, and that the old channel of the Bhaglrathi should have 
disappeared after a lapse of three centuries is in no way surprising. 
In the same way that the Granges probably broke away into the Padma, 
owing to the accession of the waters of the Kusi, the sluggish Bhagi- 
rathi after the withdrawal of the bulk of its waters was unable to 
keep clear the major stream, and to prevent it from silting up, and 
contented itself with the minor bed of the Hugli. The curious 
coincidence of the “ Da Asia ” being published just about the time Gaur 
became unhealthy and pestilential, which I have surmised to have been 
due to the Kusi coming into the Kalindri, i. e., leaving its eastern courses 
and coming into the Ganges, which then flowed under the western walls 
of the old city, may be noted. According to Wilson, the “ Da .Asia” 
was published in parts, from 1552 to 1613, and the seat of Government 
was removed, owing to insalubrity, from Gaur 
to Tanda, by Sulaiman Shah in 1564-65, and 
ten years later the great pestilence broke out 
which depopulated Gaur, which was finally abandoned in favour of 
Rajmahal in 1592. It was about this time, according to Hunter’s 
Mdldah, that the Ganges ceased to flow under the walls of Gaur, and this 
would be the natural result of the Kusi deflecting it westward. From 
1 Topography of the Hugli in the 16th Century, by C. R. Wilson, Jour. As. Soc. 
Beng., Yol. LXI., 1892. 
3 Jour. As. Soc. Beng., Yol. LXI., 1892, note, page 112. 
Final abandonment 
of Gaur. 
