485 
1892.] H. G. Raverty— The Mihrdn of Sind and its Tributaries. 
Burton (“ Scinde : ” Vol. I, p. 202), wlio saw a good deal of Sind 
when employed in the Survey, says, “ the province is a sloping surface 
he effected; and on awaking in the morning of the day on which the days of grace 
expired, instead of a broad and deep river running near Alor, what did the tyrant 
discovei’, but its bed full of mud, and some muddy watei\ The river had left it, 
and was running towards Siw-istan and the Lakhhi mountains, and the merchant 
and his vessels had been wafted thereon far beyond his reach, and Alor ruined. 
The diverted river, lower down, betaking itself to the nearest depression, got, 
in all probability, into the channel of the Knmbh of the Ohach Namah. 
According to another slightly different version, the merchant was on his way 
to Makkah ; and after his return from thence, by another route, he took up his l'esi- 
dence near the kasbali of Ratta, which is said to have been at one time a great city, 
and thei’e he was bui’ied. It is added, that, by this hand-maid, Badi’-ul-Jamal, he had 
two sons, one Ratta, the other Matta, and that the tombs of all thi'ee are at this 
place, known as Ratta-Matta to this day, after his two sons. 
The Tarikh-i-Tahiri contains this tradition with a slight variation. It says : 
“ Below the city of Alor, or Aror [that is, that the city stood higher than the river, 
which was at a little distance from it on the east] the river constituting the Panj Ab 
flowed, which is likewise called Hakra, Wahindah, and Wahan, indiscriminately, 
which sends its waters into the great sea. Dilu Ra’e governed the territory between 
Alor and Muhammad Tur, # # * From the merchants who brought their 
merchandize by the river from Hind, on their way to the port of Dewal, he levied 
one half as toll.” Then the demand is made by the Rajah for the possession of the 
merchant’s hand-maid; and the merchant obtains three days’ grace, and the 
author continues : “ During this period he collected a number of skilled men, who, 
in the piercing of mountains, exceeded the renowned Farhad, and were able to 
close a breach in a rampart like that of the Sadd-i-Sikandar (or Alexander’s Wall). 
He bestowed on these men whatever they desired, gold, gems, valuable cloths, and 
the like, his object being to throw up a sti-ong embankment on the river above 
Alor, and divert the waters in the direction of Bakhar. Night after night these 
strong workmen laboured to excavate a fresh channel and throw up an embank¬ 
ment, and thereby turned the river aside towards Sihwan and the Lakhhi Hills, and 
with such force, that the merchant, through God’s mercy, was speedily carried 
away beyond the reach of the tyi'annical Rajah.” The latter is said to have com¬ 
manded his people to turn the river back again into its old channel, but was told 
by all, that now that the water had flowed elsewhere, it could not be done It did 
not strike them possibly to remove the band or dyke, but, perhaps that would 
then have.been useless, the river having cut a new channel for itself. 
I may mention here that this tradition is universal in these parts up to the present 
time; and, in the l'eign of Akbar Badshah, descendants of this very merchant ai’e 
represented as being then living. After Bakhar and its dependencies, in 982 H. 
(1574-75 A.D.), fell into the possession of the Badshah, after the death of Sultan 
Mahmud Khan (who held it independently after the fall of the Arghun power in 
Sind), consequent on the disputes which had arisen between the officials sent fi'om 
the court to take possession, “ it was determined in 983 H. (1575-76 A.D.) to make 
the Nawwab, Tarsun Muhammad Khan, jdgir-dur of Bakhar ; and, in the first 
month of that year, Muhammad Tahir Khan, son of Shah Muhammad, a descendant 
