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"Hydaspes" redirects here. For the historic battle, see Battle of the Hydaspes River.

Jhelum River photographed during the summer periods.

Jehlum River or Jhelum River (Punjabi: Shahmukhi: دریاۓ ج�لم, Gurmukhi: ਜੇਹਲਮ) 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 and has a total length of about 480 miles (772 kilometers).

History

A photograph from 1900 shows a passenger traversing the river precariously seated in a small suspended cradle.

The river Jhelum was called Vitast� by the ancient Indians in the Vedic period and Hydaspes by the ancient Greeks. The Vitasta (Sanskrit: वितस�ता, fem., also, Vetast�) is mentioned as one of the major rivers by the holy scriptures of the Indo-Aryans — the Rigveda. It has been speculated that the Vitast� must have been one of the seven rivers (sapta-sindhu) mentioned so many times in the Rigveda. The name survives in the 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 and his army crossed the Jhelum in 326 BC at the Battle of the Hydaspes River where he defeated the Indian king, Porus. 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 Bukephalus or Bucephalus which was buried in Jalalpur Sharif. It is thought that ancient Bukephala was near the site of modern Jhelum City. According to a historian of Gujrat district, Mansoor Behzad Butt, Bukephalus was buried in Jalalpur Sharif, but the people of Mandi Bahauddin, a district close to Jehlum, believed that their tehsil Phalia was named after Bucephalus, Alexander\'s dead horse. They say that the name Phalia was the distortion of the word Bucephala. The waters of the Jhelum are allocated to Pakistan under the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty.

Course

View on the river at Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Jhelum River abt 1900 photo taken by Eugene Whitehead Esq.

Dams and Barrages

Water control structures are being built as a result of the Indus Basin Project, including the following:

• 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).

Canals

• 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.

External links

• First Online Nespaper of Jhelum - Urdu Version
• Livius.org pictures of the Hydaspes
• Official website of Jhelum - Urdu Version
• Official website of Jhelum - English Version

v â€¢ d â€¢ e Punjab Geography

Chenab Â· Ravi Â· Jhelum Â· Beas Â· Satluj Â· Sindh Â· Hakra Â· Sandal Bar Â· Neeli Bar Â· Ganji Bar Â· Kirana Bar Â· Kirana Mountain Range Â· Suleman Mountain Range Â· Shiwalik Mountain Range Â· Thal Â· Cholistan Â· Murree Â· Kallar Kahar Â· Pothohar Plateau Â· Salt Range Â· Margalla Hills Â· Majha Â· Doaba Â· Malwa Â· Powadh Â· Khewra Salt Mines Â· Kachhi Â· Chhachh Â· Trimmu Headworks Â· Soon Sakesar

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia