National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

impressed me more than the contrast between the elevated terraces on the right
bank rising everywhere steeply over the flood bed, and the level flat of the low
ground stretching away eastwards beyond it, unbroken as far as the eye with
the aid of strong glasses could carry. The steepness of the cliffs bounding both
the cultivated land and the ground occupied by the riverine villages to the west
showed unmistakably how the current set against them at flood time. Similarly
it was easy to see that this process of erosion was being materially aided by the
constant succession of ravines, large and small, in which the drainage from the
plateau-like ground descends to the river cutting through, and breaking up,
the bank. The physical forces which account for the configuration of the ground
on the right bank of the river could thus be studied with ease mile after mile as
we rode along.

From this study on the ground a clear conclusion could be drawn as to the
change which those forces at work during many centuries must have brought
about in the riverine tract to the east. This conclusion was fully confirmed by
reference to the detailed maps, which show an absolutely flat area stretching
away as far as the towns of Jullundur and Dasūya and traversed from north to
south by the winding bed of the West or Black Beih. A look at the one-inch
sheets, as accurate here, no doubt, as I found them all along the ground visited,
is sufficient to show that this bed together with the line of marshes accompanying
it from about half-way between Jullundur and Dasūya and continuing it north-
ward in the direction of the bend of the Beās, represents an earlier course of the
river. The distance between the present course of the Beās and the one marked
by the West Beih and those marshes varies from about 7 miles in the south to
less than 2 where the bend of the Beās is approached.

Considering the absence of exact historical records and, as far as the maps
show, of any remains such as mounds marking earlier riverine settlements, it is
impossible to form any definite view as to the length of time since this westward
shift of the Beās took place. But the absolute flatness of the intervening ground
makes it appear very probable that the move was a gradual one and that the
erosion accompanying it would result in the effacement of any artificial mounds,
such as Alexander's altars, once standing by the river's old bank. And here it
may conveniently be mentioned that an examination of the detailed map (Sheet
No. 43. p. 12) showing the river's course between its bend and the debouchment
from the hills suggests a similar shift having taken place there, in this case from
south to north.

While to the east, antiquarian evidence is so far wanting that might permit us
to gauge the extent of the river's movements within historical times, conditions
have fortunately proved more favourable on the present right bank. Along this