Hundreds of millions of people live in two rivers that are vital to the Indian subcontinent. Born not far from each other in the glacier zones of the highest mountain ranges in the world, each flow majestically for more than 2,400 km, mainly through two countries. They flow in two different seas. Each river was the birthplace of an ancient civilization. Everyone saw the birth of an important religion. Everyone is valued by humans for their gifts and one is still revered today. Their names? The Indus and the Ganges, the latter known here in India as the Ganges.
BECAUSE mankind needs water to survive and thrive, the first civilizations developed around rivers. Since rivers have sometimes been personified as gods and goddesses, the earliest records can be shrouded in mythology. This is certainly true of the history of the Indus and Ganges, also known in India as Ganga Ma (Mother Ganga).
For Hindus and Buddhists, Mount Kailash [6,714 m] at 22,027 feet and Lake Mapam Yumco, also known as Manasarovar in Tibet, are the home of the gods. For a long time it was believed that four major rivers flowed from the lake through the animals' mouths. The Lion River was the Indus and the Peacock River was the Ganges.
The Tibetans did not accept foreign explorers. However, in 1811 an English veterinarian from the East India Company toured the country in various guises. He reported that no rivers left Manasarovar, although some mountain streams flowed into it. It was not until the early 20th century that the sources of the Indus and Ganges were located. The Indus originates from Tibet, north of the Himalayas, and the Ganges begins in an ice cave on the slopes of the Himalayas in northern India.
Where ancient civilizations began
The first inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent are said to have traveled east to the Indus Valley. Here archaeologists have found ruins of a very advanced civilization in places like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. In the early decades of the 20th century, these discoveries changed the view that India's first settlers were primitive nomadic tribes. More than 4,000 years ago, the Indus civilization was on the same, if not higher, level than Mesopotamia. Evidence of grid streets, multi-storey houses and apartment buildings, excellent drainage of sewers and septic tanks, huge barns, temples and baths for ritual cleansing indicate an urban civilization. advanced. There is also evidence of trade links with Mesopotamia and the Middle East, with the Indus providing a route to the Arabian Sea that is hundreds of kilometers inland.
Over the centuries, natural disasters, perhaps earthquakes or large river floods, seem to have weakened urban civilization in the Indus Valley. This left little resistance to the penetration of waves from Central Asia's nomadic tribes, commonly known as Aryans. They drove most of the city's residents from the river, and so the ancestral culture that developed around Indus has shifted to southern India, where the Dravidian race remains one of the main ethnic groups to this day. In the.
On the way east through India, some Aryan tribes began to settle on the plains of the Ganges. Thus the Aryan division of the subcontinent developed its unique culture in northern India, which is mainly connected to the Ganges, where it has been preserved to this day.
Two rivers and two religions
Archaeological finds show similarities between the religion practiced in the Indus Valley and that in Mesopotamia. Some relics of Hinduism, long considered the religion of the Aryans, have been found in the ruins of cities in the Indus. With the merging of pre-Aryan and Aryan gods and religious beliefs, the Hindu religion was born. The Aryans considered the Indus sacred at first, but when they moved east and settled on the Ganges, they transferred their worship to this river. Over the centuries, cities such as Haridwar, Allahabad and Varanasi have developed in the Ganges. These focused on the Hindu religion. Today, millions of pilgrims flock to these centers to immerse themselves in the waters of the Ganges, believed to be healing and purifying.
While Hinduism began in the Indus, Buddhism has its roots near the Ganges. Siddhārtha Gautama, called Buddha, preached his first sermon in Sarnath near Varanasi. It is said that at the age of 79 he swam in the great width of the corridor.
How are the rivers today?
River water is more critical today than it was 4,000 years ago when people were drawn to the banks of the Indus and Ganges in search of food. To support the large populations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, rivers must be carefully controlled. (See map on pages 16-17.) International treaties were necessary because rivers flow through more than one country. Among other things, Pakistan built the 3 km long Tarbela Dam and 143 m high for irrigation. It is one of the largest in the world and contains 148,500,000 m3 of landfill. The Farakka Dam in the Ganges guarantees a sufficient and stable water supply for the river to improve navigation near the port of Calcutta.
As with many rivers, pollution in the Ganges is a major problem. In 1984 the Indian government launched the ambitious Ganges action plan. Particular attention was paid to the conversion of wastewater into fertilizer or biogas, the diversion of runoffs to the river and the construction of chemical waste treatment plants.
However, the problem of restoring the earth's rivers to their primitive beauty and cleanliness turned out to be beyond the capacities of human action. But God will fix the situation soon. Under the rule of his kingdom, “the rivers themselves will applaud,” as the whole earth becomes paradise (Psalm 98: 8).
[Box / card on pages 16 and 17]
The mighty Indo
With so many streams merging to form the Indus, there has been some debate about where the actual source of the river is. But it is certain that this great river has its source in the heights of the Himalayas. The river, which flows in a north-westerly direction and connects with other streams on the way, flows 320 km over the Tibetan high plateau, the "roof of the world". As the river approaches India's borders in the Ladakh region, it meanders through the mountains and erodes the base of the cliffs to form a channel between the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges. . Now it drops almost 3,700 m within 560 km on Indian territory. During this dive it moves north and then makes a sharp turn around the western edge of the Himalayas, where it joins Gilgit, a large river that rises from the Hindu Kush. The water then flows south through Pakistan. The Indus pushes through the mountains, twists and turns with violent force, eventually reaching the plains and crossing the Punjab. This name means "five rivers" because five great tributaries, the Beas, Sutlej, Ravi, Jhelum and Chenab, flow like the outstretched fingers of a huge hand to join the Indus and travel with it to the end of their majestic journey of more than 1,800 miles. [2,900 km]
The revered Ganges
About 100 km south of the Indo source in the Himalayas, the Ganges begins its more than 2,500 km long journey to the Bay of Bengal. At a height of more than 3,870 m, the headlands bubble out of a glacier projection that is reminiscent of a cow's mouth, which is called Gaumukh in Hindi and forms a stream called Bhagirathi. About 214 km from the source, it is accompanied by another stream, Alaknanda, in Devaprayag. These two currents with Mandakini, Dhauliganga and Pindar, become the Ganges.
The Ganges runs southeast across the subcontinent and flows into other important rivers such as the Yamuna in Allahabad in India and the mighty Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. The Ganges and its tributaries, which spread out like a fan, irrigate a quarter of the entire area of India, the fertile plains of the Ganges. The river system drains an area of 1,035,000 km² and is home to around a third of the Indian population, now over a billion, in one of the most densely populated regions in the world. In Bangladesh it becomes very wide like an inland sea with river traffic of all kinds. The Ganges then splits into several large rivers and numerous streams to form one of the largest deltas in the world.
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