24 KARANJ1A
division of the State, and is connected with Baripadâ, the capital,
by a metalled road.
Karasgaon.-Town in the Ellichpur tdluk of Amraotï District,
Berar, situated in 21° 20′ N. and 77° 39′ E. Population (Igoi),
7,456. A fort of fine sandstone, now in ruins, was built here by
Vithal Bhag Deo, a tdlukddr in the Ellichpur./aâir in 18o6.
Karatoya.-Old river of Eastern Bengal and Assam, which rises
in the Baikuntpur jungle in the extreme north-west of Jalpaigurï
District in 26° 51′ N. and 88° 28′ E., and meanders through Rangpur,
until, after a course of 214 miles, it joins the Halhalia, in the south
of Bogra District, in 24° 38′ N. and 89° 29′ E. The united stream
is known as the PHULJHUR, and it eventually finds its way into the
JAMUNA (3). The Karatoyâ, bore in ancient times, as we learn from
the Puranas, a high character for sanctity; and its mermaid goddess,
whose image has been found among the ruins of MAHASTHAN, was
widely worshipped, and this place is even now a favourite place of
pilgrimage. The river is mentioned in the foâini Tantra as the
western boundary of the ancient kingdom of Kamarûpa, which it
separated from Pundra or Paundravardhana, the country of the Pods,
whose capital was at Mahasthân. It was along its right bank that
Muhammad-i-Bakhtyar Khilji, the Muhammadan conqueror of Bengal,
marched upon his ill-fated invasion of Tibet in 1205 ; and in the
narrative of that expedition the Karatoyâ, is described as being three
times the width of the Ganges. It was no doubt the great river crossed
by Hiuen Tsiang on his way to K-martipa in the seventh century, and
by Ala-ud-din Husain on his invasion of the same country in 1498.
The topography of the river is attended with numerous difficulties ;
changes of name are frequent, and its most recent bed, which ultimately
joins the Atrai some 30 miles east of Pabna, is known indifferently
as the Burhi (`old') Tista and the Karto or Karatoyâ. It appears
that at the end of the eighteenth century, when the GANGES and the
BRAHMAPUTRA were still 150 miles apart, the TÎSTA united with the
other Himalayan streams to form one great river. The elevated tract
of stiff clay known as the BARIND, which spreads over a considerable
part of the modern Districts of Rajshahi, Dinâjpur, Malda, and Bogra,
formed an obstacle which could not be so easily pierced as the more
recent alluvium round it, and the outlet of the Himalayan streams was
thus diverted to one side or the other. Sometimes when the trend
of the rivers was eastwards, they flowed down the channel of the
Karatoya, which is shown in Van Den Broucke's map of Bengal
(circa 166o) as flowing into the Ganges, and was, in fact, before the
destructive floods of 1787, the main stream which brought down to
the Ganges the great volume of Tista water. South of the Padma
there is now no trace of any river bearing this name; and, since the
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