SOCIAL SCIENTIST 63. By a geographical appropriation of unmatchable boldness these authors have annexed Kachh (Kutch), not the Rann only but also the island, to the Ghaggar's [read "Sarasvati"] domain (ibid.,p.516). 64. Ibid.p.516. 65. R.Kochhar, Vedic People, p.135. 66. Letters of Balkrishan Brahman, & c., British Lib. Add. 16,859, ff 107a-109a. See I.Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, rev. ed., Delhi, 1999, p.358tn.; and Abha Singh, op.cit., in Medieval India-1, pp.55-57. 67. This view was held by S. Muzaffar Ali, 'The Problem of Desiccation of the Ghaggar Plains', Calcutta Geographical Review, IV(1) (1942), and 'Population and Settlement in the Ghaggar Plain', Indian Geographical Journal, XVII(3)(1942), pp.157-82, and is at least partly upheld by O.H.K. Spate and A.T.A. Learmonth, India and Pakistan, p.538. Possehl, Indus Age, 368-69, disputing the suggestion, wrongly attributes it to Shamsul Islam Siddiqui, who in 'River Changes in the Ghaggar Plain', Indian Geographical Journal, XIX(4), pp.139-46, and 'Physiography of the River Sutlej', in the same journal, XX(2), pp.69-75, actually held that the desiccation came because the Sutlej and the Yamuna abandoned their older courses leading into the Ghaghar. 68. R.T.H. Griffith (transl.), Hymns of the Rigveda, II, p.490. 69. Griffith,tr., Hymns of the Rigveda, p.339, again misplaces the rivers putting Apaya first. 70. Griffith, tr.,Hymns of the Rigveda, II, p.473. 71. Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, I,p.58. 72. The Avestan names are in the Vendidad, 1. Cf. Gherardo Gnoli, The Idea of Iran, Rome, 1989, p.55. Gnoli emphasizes the eastern-Iranian context of Avestan geography. One recalls an interesting article by Aurel Stein, 'Afghanistan in Avestan Geography', Indian Antiquary, XV (1886), pp.21-23; see p.22 for 'Haraeva' and 'Harahvaiti'. 73. A strong case for this identification is made in Rajesh Kochhar, Vedic People, pp.120-32. 74. Cf. Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, II,p.l39. 75. Kshetresh Chandra Chattopadhyaya, The identification of the Rigvedic River Sarasvati and some connected Problems' in his posthumously published Studies in Vedic and Indo-Iranian Religion and Literature, ed. Vidya Niwas Misra, Varanasi, 1976,1, pp.138. 76. "Yea, she most dear among dear streams, Seven-sistered, graciously inclined, Sarasvati hath earned our praise" (Rig., VT.61.10; Griffith, tr., I, p.632). 77. In Rig., VII, 376, already quoted in the main text, where we read: "Coming together, glorious, loudly roaring - Sarasvati, the seventh, mother of rivers, with copious milk with fair streams, strongly flowing, full swelling of the volume of their water" (Griffith, tr., II, p.41).