Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/28

 20 NIG is I understand derived from a Sanskrit word meaning cleanliness, purity. The Hindus even now believe that its waters possess peculiar efficacy both for ordinary cleansing purposes and for ceremonial ablutions. Some go so far as to maintain that its waters yield not even to those of mother Ganga: Chauka therefore means the pure river, Mabáráni Chauka, the Queen of purity. On the south of the central plateau is a low plain forming the tarki of the river Chauka, and generally resembling the low plain already described in pargana Bhúr. It is completely inundated for several months of every year. The floods reach it by simply overflowing the river bank, and not as in Bhúr and Srinagar by first flowing up backwaters communicating with the stream, and generally joining it at almost a right angle. In Nigh- san the bank of the Clauka is seldom more than 5 feet in height, but the northern bank of the river Ghaghi, which is now to be described, is on an average quite 20 feet in height during the eastern part of its course. There are hardly any backwaters or sotas running out of the Chauka. Their place is taken by a branch of the Chauka called the Ghághi. The Ghághi leaves the Chauka between the Gháts of Marauncha and Patwara in pargana Palia, and flows in a direction nearly parallel to that of the Chauka to a spot some three miles north of Pachperi Ghát only 22 miles to the south-east. The Ghághi draws the high country in the centre of the pargana, and a great number of jhíls and streams run into it. The course of the river has so many windings that it is some 32 miles in length. Its average distance from the Chauka is from one to four miles, and it may be considered as the boundary between the central plain and the Chauka tarai, The Ghágbi joins the Chauka at Chhedoipatia for about a quarter of a mile and then again leaves it. From this spot it has increased in volume of water greatly within the last few years, and it now flows with a deep and rapid current between high and steep banks, but in a very narrow bed, about 15 yards in width. Year by year the volume of its waters is increasing, and there appears a probability that the Chauka may soon altogether leave its present bed and pass off into that of the Ghághi. This will be a mere repetition of the process that we have seen has been at work in pargana Bhúr for many ages, where apparently every change of the river's course brought it further to the north. If this happens, as the present bed of the Gbághi will be far too small to contain the whole stream of the Chauka, the waters will sweep over the country bordering on the Ghaghi, and spread ruin far and wide over some of the finest villages in this pargana. The change of the Chauka's course opposite Bhúrguda has been men- tioned in my Bhúr report. Abandoning its old bed it has cut through Maurias Loki and Munria Mahadeo, leaving Dhundhila and the jungle grant No. 12 on its south; and joining the Ghághi it re-enters its old bed three miles above Pachperi ghát in company with that stream. From the spot where the Ghághi rejoins the Chauka, the latter has a high bauk