Jhelum River is a river that flows in India and Pakistan. It is the largest and most western of the five rivers of Punjab, and passes through Jhelum District. It is a tributary of the Chenab River and has a total length of about 505 miles (813 kilometers).
History
The river Jhelum is called Vitast? in the Rigveda and Hydaspes by the ancient Greeks. The Vitasta 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 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 Vitast? is one of the many transcendental rivers flowing through land of Bharata, or ancient India.
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 BC 326 at the Battle of the Hydaspes River where it is believed that 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 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.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.
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 5,900,000 acre feet (7.3 km3)
Rasul Barrage, constructed in 1967, has a maximum flow of 850,000 ft/s (24,000 m/s).
Trimmu Barrage, constructed in 1939 some 90 km from Mari Shah Sakhira town, at the confluence with the Chenab, has maximum discharge capacity of 645,000 ft/s (18,000 m/s).
Haranpur (Victoria Bridge) Constructed in 1933 Approximate 5 km from malakwal near Chak nizam Village. Its length is 1 km mainly used by Pakistan Railways but there is a passage for light vehicle (motor cycle, cycle and by boot at both side).
