"In Tod’s description, the ‘Marusthali’, as it was then called, consists of ‘expansive belts of sand, elevated upon a plain only less sandy, and over whose surface numerous thinly peopled towns and hamlets are scattered’. He also records ‘the tradition of the absorption of the Caggar river, as one of the causes of the comparative depopulation of the northern desert’. This tradition was transmitted in the form of a ‘couplet still sung among Rajputs, which dates the ruin of this part of the country back to the drying up of the Hakra.’ Although Tod could not recall the exact text of the said song, he acknowledged ‘the utility of these ancient traditional couplets’. ‘Folk history’, as we would call it today... Yet, James Tod finds worthy of mention a tradition alive in the 1810s that blames the region’s ‘depopulation’ on the Ghaggar’s ‘absorption’ or disappearance; he even notes how ‘the vestiges of large towns, now buried in the sands, confirm the truth of this tradition, and several of them claim a high antiquity."