APakistani author Anjum Sultan Shahbaz recorded some stories of the name Jhelum in his book Tareekh-e-Jhelum as:[8]
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 beside the city) which have their origins in the snow-capped Himalayas.
The Sanskrit name for the river is Vitástā, derived from an apocryphal[citation needed] legend regarding the origin of the river in the Nilamata Purana. The name survives in the Kashmiri name for this river, Vyath and in Punjabi (and more commonly in Saraiki[9]) as Vehat.[10]
A passenger traversing the river precariously seated in a small suspended cradle Circa 1900
The river Jhelum was originally recognized by the name Vitasta. The river was called Hydaspes (Greek: Ὑδάσπης) by the ancient Greeks.
Alexander III of Macedon and his army crossed the Jhelum in BCE 326 at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, where he defeated an 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 (orBucephala) to honour his famous horse Bucephalus, buried in present-day Jalalpur Sharif. It is thought that ancient Bukephala was near the site of modern Jhelum.[citation needed] According to Gujrat district historian Mansoor Behzad Butt, Bukephalus was buried in Jalalpur Sharif, but the people of Mandi Bahauddin, a district close to Jehlum, believed that their tehsilPhalia 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.[11]
The creation of the Jhelum river according to Hindu theology
According to Hindu puranas, the goddess Parvati was requested by the sage Kashyapa to come to Kashmir to purify the land from the evil practices and impurities of the pishachas living there. Parvati assumed the form of a river in the netherworld. Her consort Shiva struck with his spear near the abode of Nila, (Verinag spring). With this stroke of the spear, Parvati emerged from the netherworld. He excavated a ditch measuring one vitasti using the spear,[12] through which the river, originating from the netherworld, came out, and so he gave her the name Vitástā.[13]
The ancient Greeks also regarded the river as a god, as they did most mountains and streams. The poet Nonnus in the Dionysiaca[14] calls the Hydaspesatitan-descended god, the son of the sea-god Thaumas and the cloud-goddess Elektra, the brother of Iris, goddess of the rainbow, and half-brother to the harpies, the snatching winds. Since the river is in a foreign country, 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 Verinag spring at the foot of the Pir Panjal in the southeastern Kashmir Valley administered by India. It is joined by its tributaries
The river has rich power generation potential in India. 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 earth-fill dams in the world, with a storage capacity of 5,900,000 acre-feet (7.3 km3)
Karot Hydropower Project is an under-construction[when?] concrete-core rockfill gravity large dam in Pakistan, with a planned installed capacity of 720 MW.
Rasul Barrage, constructed in 1967, has a maximum flow of 850,000 ft³/s (24,000 m³/s).
Trimmu Barrage, constructed in 1939 some 20 km from Jhang Sadar at the confluence with the Chenab, has maximum discharge capacity of 645,000 ft³/s (18,000 m³/s).
Victoria Bridge, Haranpur, constructed in 1973, 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 vehicles, motorcycles, cycles and pedestrians on one side.
Uri Dam with 480 MW Hydroelectric station is located in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir.[16]
Uri Dam II with 240 MW Hydroelectric station is also located in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir.[17]
^(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
