Rivers and Regional Consciousness

Abstract

In the course of their forest exile, the Pāṇḍava brothers, the heroes of the Mahābhārata epic, decided to perform a sacrifice at a place called Pāṇḍeśvar that is now located on the Karhā river. At that time the river did not exist, and there was no water at Pāṇḍeśvar. Searching for the water that they needed for the sacrifice, two of the Pāṇdava brothers, Arjun and Nakul, found an ascetic Brāhmaṇ sage meditating on a nearby mountaintop. The brothers knocked over the ascetic’s water pot (his karhā), and the water from the pot flowed down the mountainside and across the plateau toward Pāṇḍeśvar. With the furious ascetic hot on their heels, the two brothers ran downstream along the route that the water was taking. Each time the ascetic came too close, they would toss a grain of rice behind them. The grain of rice would turn into a Śivaliṅga, and the ascetic would stop to worship it. Thus were founded the Śiva temples of the many villages along the upper reaches of the Karhā river.¹