Jehlum River or
Jhelum River (
Punjabi Shahmukhi ????? ????,
Gurmukhi ?????) 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).
The river Jhelum was called Vitasta by the ancient Indians in the Vedic period and Hydaspes by the ancient Greeks. The Vitasta (Sanskrit ???????, fem., also, Vetasta) is mentioned as one of the major rivers 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 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.
The river Jhelum rises from a spring at Verinag situated at the foot of the Pir Panjal in the south-eastern part of the valley of Kashmir. It flows through Srinagar and the Wular lake before entering Pakistan through a deep narrow gorge. 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 also connects with Pakistan and Pakistan-held Kashmir on Kohala Bridge east of Circle Bakote. 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 Pakistan's 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.
