Jhelum River

The Jhelum River is a river in northern India and eastern Pakistan. It is the

westernmost of the five rivers of the Punjab region, and passes through
the Kashmir Valley. It is a tributary of the Chenab River and has a total length of
about 725 kilometres (450 mi).[
Anjum Sultan Shahbaz recorded some stories of the name Jhelum in his book
Tareekh-e-Jhelum as:
Many writers have different opinions about the name of Jhelum. One suggestion
is that in ancient days Jhelumabad was known as Jalham. The word Jhelum is
reportedly derived from the words Jal (pure water) and Ham (snow). The name
thus refers to the waters of a river (flowing besides the city) which have their
origins in the snow-capped Himalayas.
However, some writers believe that when "Dara-e-Azam" reached a certain place
on the river bank after winning many battles, he fixed his flag at that place and
called it "Ja-e-Alam" which means "Place of the Flag". With the passage of time it
became Jhelum from "Ja-e-Alam".
The Sanskrit name of this river is Vitasta. The river's name is derived from an
apocyryphal legend regarding the origin of the river as explained in Nilamata
Purana. Goddess Parvati was requested by sage Kasyapa to come
to Kashmir for purification of the land from evil practices and impurities
of Pisachas living there. Goddess Parvati then assumed the form of a river in the
Nether World. Then Lord Shiva made a stroke with his spear near the abode of
Nila (Verinag Spring). By that stroke of the spear, Goddess Parvati came out of
the Nether World. Shiva himself named her as Vitasta. He had excavated with
the spear a ditch measuring one Vitasti (a particular measure of length defined
either as a long span between the extended thumb and little finger, or as the
distance between the wrist and the tip of the fingers, and said to be about 9
inches), through which the river – gone to the Nether World – had come out, so
she was given the name Vitasta by him.

The river Jhelum is called Vitastā in the Rigveda and Hydaspes by the ancient

Greeks. The Vitastā is mentioned as one of the major rivers by the holy
scriptures the Rigveda. It has been speculated that the Vitastā 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 Vyeth. According to the
major religious work Srimad Bhagavatam, the Vitastā is one of the many
transcendental rivers flowing through land of Bharata, or ancient India.
Alexander the Great and his army crossed the Jhelum in BC 326 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 Alexander's dead
horse, saying that the name Phalia was a distortion of Bucephala. The waters of
the Jhelum are allocated to Pakistan under the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty.
India is working on a hydropower project on a tributary of Jhelum river to
establish first-use rights on the river water over Pakistan as per the Indus Waters
Treaty.