|
GOG
491
Otherwise it is hard to see why the names of the component streams, Kauriala and Sarda, are abandoned, and a third name adopted at this confluence. Some indeed suppose that it was always another name of the Sarda; if tliis were so, the joint streams would have borne the name of Gogra from Shitabi Ghat, at which place up to about 1812 the Sarda's waters flowed in; up to 1860 they joined the Kauriala at Bahramghat, much lower down. Now, when the Sarda's waters have altered their course and taken the middle channel of the Dahawar, about half-way between its earlier and later points of junction, it is hard to say where the name Kauriala ceases to apply and the Gogra commences. In the seventh century the name Sarju was applied to this stream at Fyzabad, as also in the Ramayana;* indeed the Sarju proper is said to have joined the Gogra a few miles east of Ajodhya. It is a great river, whose minimum discharge in the cold weather is 18,000 feet per second at Bahramghat, and whose maximum discharge is little under half a million; 25,000 feet is elsewhere giv-en as the discharge On the 28th January Its main affluent is the Kauriala. at Bahramghat. 1857, its period of lowest flood was 850 feet broad, maximum depth 12 J feet, surface velocity 3'67 feet per second, and discharge 13,082 cubic The Sarda a ad the Girwa are also first-class rivers ; the feet per second.i"
Chauka, Sarju, Dahawar, Ul,
&c., are
minor streams.
^
are all described severally at length, and there is little to say of the Gogra, except touching the changes of its course. Its waters have shown the same inclination towards abandoning lateral channels and On both banks of the selecting one central one as those of the Sarda.
They
throughout Sitapur and Bara Banki on the west side, and Bahraich and Gonda on the east, are seen ancient channels of the river, and high banks beneath which it once flowed. A great inroad of the Gogra took place about 1600 A.D., which swept away the town of Khurasa in Gonda, and overwhelmed the raja with his family. river,
There were formerly three channels probably, whose volumes varied each year as accidental circumstances diverted the greater part of the water For one hundred years there has been little change in into one or other. the present channel, which is the central one, the eastern and the western having
silted up.
It has frequently happened, even recently, that a village or fort has been swept away in a night during the rains it was of course much more common when there were several channels, and almost the entire volume of one might be added to that of another, both swollen by the monsoon.
Formerly, too, for purposes of protection from enemies, or to command the river, forts were built among swamps close to the water's edge they were constantly surrounded by the water in the_ rains. This itself would do no harm, but it would conceal any change in the deep channel the floods, might at night sap and river itself, its course thus concealed by the
- Cunningliam's Archaeological Survey, vol. I, page 320.
Saunders' Kepor* on Oudh, page 20.
t Sarda Canal Keport, page t See Gonda district
article.
7.
