Jhelum River
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Photo of Jhelum River in Pakistan |
Jehlum River or
Jhelum River (, ) is the largest and most western of the five rivers of
Punjab, and passes through
Jhelum District. It is a tributary of the
Indus River.
The river Jhelum was called
Vitasta by the ancient Indians in Vedic period and
Hydaspes by the
ancient Greeks. The Vitastā (,
fem., also, Vitastastā) is mentioned as one of the major river by the holy scriptures of the Indo-Aryans"the
Rigveda. It has been speculated that the Vitasta must have been one of the seven rivers (sapta-sindhu) mentioned so many times in the Rigveda. The name survives the a Kashmiri name for this river as
Vyath.
The river was regarded as a god by the
ancient Greeks, as were most mountains and streams; the poet
Nonnus in the
Dionysiaca (section 26, line 350) makes the
Hydaspes a
titan-descended god, the son of the sea-god
Thaumas and the cloud-goddess
Elektra. He was the brother of
Iris the goddess of the
rainbow, and half-brother to the
harpies, the
snatching winds. Since the river is in a country foreign to the
ancient Greeks, it is not clear whether they named the river after the god, or whether the god
Hydaspes was named after the river.
Alexander the Great crossed the Jhelum in
326 BC to defeat
Porus at the
Battle of the Hydaspes. According to Arrian (
Anabasis, 29), he built a city "on the spot whence he started to cross the river Hydaspes", which he named
Bukephala (or
Bucephala) to honour his famous horse Bukephalis which was buried there. It is thought that ancient Bukephala was near the site of modern
Jhelum City.
The waters of the Jhelum are allocated to
Pakistan under the terms of the
Indus Waters Treaty.
The river Jhelum rises from north-eastern
Jammu and Kashmir and is fed by
glaciers, and then passes through the
Srinagar district. At the city of Srinagar, the serpentine Jhelum, along with the lake
Dal which lies in its course, presents a very picturesque site. The
Kishenganga(Neelum)River, the largest tributary of the Jhelum, joins it near
Muzaffarabad, as does the next largest, the
Kunhar River of the
Kaghan valley. It is then joined by the Poonch river, and flows into the
Mangla Dam reservoir in the district of
Mirpur.
The Jhelum enters the
Punjab in the
Jhelum District. From there, it flows through the plains of the Punjab, forming the boundary between the
Chaj and
Sindh Sagar Doabs. It ends in a confluence with the
Chenab at
Trimmu in District
Jhang. The Chenab merges with the
Sutlej to form the
Panjnad River which joins the
Indus River at
Mithankot.
*
Mangla Dam, completed in 1967, is one of the largest earthfill dams in the world, with a storage capacity of 5.9 million acre-feet (7.3 km³)
*
Rasul Barrage, constructed in 1967, has a maximum flow of 850,000 ft³/s (24,000 m³/s).
*
Trimmu Barrage, constructed in 1939 at the confluence with the Chenab, has maximum discharge capacity of 645,000 ft³/s (18,000 m³/s).
* The Upper Jhelum Canal runs from Mangla to the
Chenab.
* The Rasul-Qadirabad Link Canal runs from the Rasul barrage to the Chenab.
* The
Chashma-Jhelum Link Canal runs from the
Chashma Barrage on the
Indus River to the Jhelum river downstream of
Rasul Barrage.
*
Livius.org picture of the Hydaspes*
Apnajhelum a Website of Jhelum
