396 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTRAL INDIA. 



ranges over a panorama perhaps inferior in extent to no out- 

 look in the whole peninsula. The rain that clothes this little 

 plateau of a few square miles with the greenest of verdure, 

 having the peculiarity of seldom ceasing for more than a few 

 days at any part of the year, forms the first beginnings of 

 three great rivers, whose waters flow in opposite directions to 

 the seas on either side of India. The infant Narbada bubbles 

 forth at the feet of the observer, enclosed by religious care in 

 a wall of masonry, and surrounded by Hindu temples, and 

 thence meanders on for some miles through a narrow glade, 

 carpeted with beautiful grass, and fringed by forests of sal ; 

 at first a tiny burn, but growing rapidly by union with others, 

 till, some three miles from the fountain, it leaps over the edge 

 of the plateau in a clear shoot of about thirty feet. Seven 

 hundred and fifty miles further on it rolls, a mighty river, 

 into the waters of the Arabian Gulf. In the local Sivite 

 Mythology the Narbada is the maiden Mykal-Kanya, daughter 

 of the Mykal Mountain, from whose brow she springs. 

 Eesistless in her divine might, at her first birth she over- 

 flowed the earth in a destructive flood, till, in answer to the 

 prayers and sacrifices of men, the Great God sent the Vindhya" 

 Mountain and his seven stalwart sons * to restrain her, when 

 she shrank into her present channel, leaving behind her the 

 Ganges and other rivers, as pools are left by the receding tide. 

 Hence the sanctity of the Narbada" is superior to that of all 

 other rivers, though the gods gave the preference for the first five 

 thousand years of the Kali-Yug to the Ganges. Twenty-eight 

 years only of this period now remain unexpired, when the 

 local Brahmans fully expect the Narbada" to surpass as a place 

 of pilgrimage all other rivers of India. As it is, the parent 



Thence the name Sat-pura, applied to these highlands, Sat putrd meaning 

 literally the " Seven Sons." 



