must have been an accomplished fact, perhaps for some time already. It is then that we can imagine the first Aryan detachment-soon to be followed at intervals by others-emerging, still awe-struck and bewildered, with a sense upon them as of a wonderful escape, from the sinuous and beetling mountain passes through which they had followed at a venture the bounding, tumbling Indus where, with a sharp southward bend, the river for which a continent is named, digs and breaks its rocky bed out of gloom and wildness, into a region of sunlight and peaceful plains.

4. It was the PENJÂB. A land of many rivers and broad valleys, of mountains grading down into hills, wooded, forest-clad, of moderate clime and ever-bearing soil. It had everything to invite settlers and to keep them a long, long time, even to isolation. For a glance at the map will show that this garden in the shape of a corner or triangle, while fenced from the outer world on two sides by a wellnigh impassable barrier, is on the third side separated from its own continent by a wide belt of desert; and its wonderful system of rivers is entirely its own; their course, with the exception of the giant, Indus, —begins and ends within its limits. Five bountiful streams descend from various points of extreme Western Himâlaya, their courses converging, uniting by twos, now here, now there, until their waters blend into one short but wide, deep, and rapid river which has always borne the collective name PANTCHANÂDA, "The Five Rivers "—a name which was transferred, unaltered, to the land itself, and of

which "Penjâb" is the Persian form. The Indus, the while, has been gathering volume and swiftness all by itself, without any contributions from affluents, of which it receives only a few inconsiderable ones in the upper portion of its course before it emerges into the open land. It advances, solitary, majestic, to where the Pantchanâda brings it the united tribute of "The Five," and then rolls down towards the sea, such a mighty, often storm-tossed, mass of waters, that the early poets habitually described it by that very name, Samudra-which they used for the accumulation of atmospheric moisture in the shape of rain-clouds-the celestial ocean--and which was given later to the sea itself when the Aryas from the Penjâb, probably by navigation down the Indus, reached at last the Indian Ocean.

5. There is a name under which the land we know as Penjâb was even more widely designated both in the early or Vedic, and the later, so-called

1 The five rivers can show up between them about five times as many names, which, to a beginner, is confusing. Their modern names are different from those of the Epic Brahmanic period, while the very oldest have been discovered in the Vedic literature of a remoter era still. Then the Greeks, who knew this portion of India tolerably well, had their own names for them, with a slight assonance to the native ones. The list begins with the westernmost, modern JHELUM, the Epic and Vedic VITASTÂ, of which the Greeks made HYDASPES; next comes Vedic ASIKNI, Greek AKESINOS, now TCHENÂB; these two unite and for a considerable distance flow on in one stream of double volume and rapid current, as indicated by the picturesque Vedic name MARUDVRIDHÂ, “The Wind-Swelled "; its later Sanskrit name, TCHANDRABHAGA, hellenized into SANDROPHAGUS, it still retains. There is a pretty story of this river having set a term to Macedonian Alexander's Indian campaign; its Greek

Classic periods: it is SAPTA-SINDHAVAH," the Seven Rivers." This is the Hapta-Hendu of the Eranians,—the land mentioned in the famous geographical chapter of the Avesta among the earliest creations of Ahura-Mazda, and in the rock-inscription on the tomb of Dareios I. in the list of the Persian Empire's tributary provinces. It is, indeed, a far more correctly descriptive name, as it takes due count of the Indus,—the SINDH of Indian antiquity' -and includes a seventh river, of high and even sacred legendary fame, the SARASVATÎ, which may be described as the eastern boundary of this first Aryan dominion in India, since it skirts the edge of the Indian desert already mentioned. That river has, in the course of ages, undergone some rather peculiar changes. It springs from the western slopes of the slight watershed which divides the riversystem of the Penjâb and the Indian Ocean from

name meaning “Devourer of Alexander," the conqueror is said to have accepted it as an evil omen and decided on returning. The modern Râvî or IRÔTI is easily recognized in the Epic IRAVÂTÎ, but not in the Vedic PARUSHNÎ or the Greek HYDRAOTES, while both SHUTUDRI and the later SHATADRO are little altered in the Greek ZADADRES, and leave a slightly reminiscent sound in the modern SUTLEDJ; just as in the name of the VIVAS or BIAS there is a faint echo of the Vedic VIPASÂ, transparently hellenized into HYPASIS, HYPANIS, or, closer still, VIPASÌS. Of the five, the Sutledj is by far the most considerable, in length and volume, and the most frequently mentioned-almost as the Indus' twin sister river; Indus and Sutledj" go together just as "Ganges and Djumna," the two leaders of the other twin system, that of the Gulf of Bengal.

1 "Sindh" means "River." This is another instance of a country's principal stream being styled by the inhabitants "The River" par excellence.

that of Eastern Hindustân and the Gulf of Bengal, and used to accomplish its travels in the customary manner, and end them in the Indus, as indicated on the map by the punctured line which designates its original course. But the Sarasvatî does not seem to have had the vigor of its sister-rivers. Perhaps from scantness of water at the start, or from the spongy nature of the soil which, being dry and sandy, absorbed too much of its volume-be it as it may, its waters gave out, and at some time it stopped midway and got lost in the sands of the desert. This must have happened already at a very early period, for quite ancient manuscripts mentioned the place as a landmark, observing that such or such a locality is distant so or so many days' march from where the Sarasvatî disappears into the ground. What is left of it is now known, in its upper course, as the SARSUTÎ, and, lower down, it changes its name to GHARGHAR. At the present time it has no importance save that which it derives from old poetic and legendary associations and from having been one of the original "Seven Rivers" that graced and nourished the first Aryan settlements in the land"the Seven Sisters," or "the Seven Mothers," as the ancient bards often gratefully and prettily addressed them in their songs.

6. A people's life and pursuits were mapped out for it in such a country: agriculture and cattlebreeding the cornfield and the pasture, the barn and the dairy, together with the few simple auxiliary crafts which make primitive farming self-sufficingpottery, carpentering, hide-tanning, spinning, and