The Imperial Gazetteer of India

"No very strict line can be drawn between Animists and low-class Hindus."

"...the wild jungle tribes in Central India, though the persons who profess the latter stoutly advance a claim to be considered Hindus."

"'It would be a mistake to suppose that Buddhism and Jainism were directed from the outset consciously in opposition to the caste system. Caste, in fact, at the time of the rise of Buddhism was only beginning to develop; and in later days, when Buddhism commenced its missionary careers, it took caste with it into regions where upto that time the institution had not penetrated.'"

"At one corner of a vast mound known as Ramkot, or the fort of Rama, is the holy spot where the hero was born. Most of the enclosure is occupied by a mosque built by Babar from the remains of an old temple, and in the outer portion a small platform and shrine mark the birth place."

"If Ajodhya was then little other than a wilderness, it must at least have possessed a fine temple in the Janamasthan; for many of its columns are still in existence and in good preservation, having been used by the Musalmans in the construction of the Babari Mosque. These are of strong, close- grained, darkcolored or black stone called by the natives kasauti and carved with different devices"

"Firoz Tughlak, foiled in his attempt to seize' Khargu, who fled to Kumaun, appointed an Afghan governor at Sambhal with orders to invade the country of Katehar every year, to commit every kind of ravage and devastation, and not to allow it to be inhabited until tire murderer was given up."

"‘In ancient times the lower portion of the river seems to have borne the name of its confluent the Saraswati or Sarsuti, which joins the main stream in Patiala territory. It then possessed the dimensions of an important channel . . . At present, however, every village through which the stream passes has diverted a portion of its waters for irrigation, no less than 10,000 acres being supplied from this source in Ambala District alone . . . During the lower portion of its course, in Sirsa District, the bed of the Ghaggar is dry from November to June, affording a cultivable surface for rich crops of rice and wheat.’"

"... the entry ‘Saraswati (Sarsuti)’, defined as a ‘sacred river of the Punjab, famous in the early Brahmanical annals’. We learn that the river rises ‘in the low hills of Sirmur State, emerges upon the plain at Zadh Budri [Ad Badri], a place esteemed sacred by all Hindus’, and, before joining the Ghaggar, ‘passes by the holy town of Thanesar and the numerous shrines of the Kuruksetra, a tract celebrated as a centre of pilgrimages, and as the scene of the battle-fields of the Mahabharatha’. The Gazetteer repeats, ‘In ancient times, the united stream below the point of junction appears to have borne the name of Sarsuti, and, undiminished by irrigation near the hills, to have flowed across the Rajputana plains . . .’ ‘Some of the earliest Aryan settlements in India were on the banks of the Saraswati, and the surrounding country has from almost Vedic times been held in high veneration. The Hindus identify the river with Saraswati, the Sanskrit Goddess of Speech and Learning.’"

"‘In the year A.D. 1000 it [the Sutlej] was a tributary of the Hakra, and flowed in the Eastern Nara . . . Thus the Sutlej or the Hakra—for both streams flowed in the same bed—is probably the lost river of the Indian desert, whose waters made the sands of Bikaner and Sind a smiling garden.’"