CHAPTER X 



AN BXPLOEATION IN THE FAB EAST 



The Highlands of Central India may perhaps properly 

 be said to terminate where the steep southern face of 

 the M^kal range, trending away to the north-east, culmin- 

 ates in the high blufE promontory of Amarkantak. Standing 

 here on this prominent point, the very focus and navel of 

 India, the eye ranges over a panorama perhaps inferior 

 in extent to no outlook in the whole peninsula. The rain 

 that clothes this httle plateau of a few square miles with 

 the greenest of verdure, having the pecuharity 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 M^kal Mountain, from whose brow she 

 springs. Resistless in her divine might, at her first birth 

 she overflowed 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, 



''■ Thence the name Sat-pnrA, applied to these highlands, Sat pwa 

 meaning literally the " Seven Sons." 



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