"On my return to India . . . a survey of any remains of ancient occupations along the dry river-bed of the Ghaggar or Hakra, which passes from the easternmost Panjab through the States of Bikaner and Bahawalpur down to Sind, seemed attractive. Traditional Indian belief recognizes in this well-marked bed the course of the sacred Sarasvatī, once carrying its abundant waters down to the ocean and since antiquity ‘lost’ in desert sands... the Ghaggar was ‘still known as the Sarsuti (the Hindi derivative of Sarasvatī) [which] passes the sacred sites of Kurukshetra near Thanesar, a place of Hindu pilgrimage’... ‘the width of its dry bed within Bikaner territory [that is, downstream of Hanumangarh]; over more than 100 miles [160 km], it is nowhere less than 2 miles [3.2 km] and in places 4 miles [6.4 km] or more’... ‘The large number of these ancient sites contrasts strikingly with the very few small villages still on the same ground.’..."