A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c7.24

c7.24

The Godāvari is surpassed in India only by the Ganges and the Indus for its sanctity, the picturesque scenery of its course, and its utility to man. Rising in the hills behind Trimbak in the Nasik district, within fifty miles of the Arabian Sea, it runs a course of 900 miles before reaching the Bay of Bengal and drains an area of 1,12,000 square miles. Above Nasik it flows along a narrow rocky bed, but farther east the banks are lower and more earthy. Below Sironcha it is joined on its left by the Pranhita, carrying the combined waters of the Wardha and the Wainganga which drain the whole of the Satpura and Nagpur plains. A few miles farther down it receives the Indravati which drains the wild and thickly forested areas of the Eastern Ghats in Bastar and its neighbours. Below this confluence the river strikes a predominantly south-easterly course till it joins the sea. Half-way in its course, after it enters Andhra Pradesh, the bed of the river is broad and sandy, from one to two miles in width, and interrupted by rocks in only two places. After running placidly through this flat and monotonous country, it begins to force its way across the Eastern Ghats by a deep and narrow gorge barely 200 yards wide, on either side of which the picturesque wooded slopes of the hills rise almost sheer from the dark waters of the river. Once across the ghats, the river opens out again and forms a series of broad reaches dotted with low alluvial islands—the lankas. Below Rajahmundry it forks into two—the Gautami Godāvari on the east and the Vasistha Godāvari on the west which with their distributaries flow down the fan-shaped delta formed in the course of ages by the silt the river has deposited. Below Rajahmundry the river has been dammed at Dowleśvaram from where high-level channels take the water for irrigating an enormous area of the country. The main canals are also used as lines of communication.