A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c7.28

c7.28

The Kaveri, known as the southern Ganges, has a course of 475 miles and is equally famous for its sanctity, its picturesque scenery and its usefulness for irrigation. Tamil literature cherishes many traditions of its origin and is replete with expressions of pious and fervent admiration for the life-giving properties of its water. It rises in the Brahmagiri, near Talakaveri in Coorg, and flows generally south-eastwards across the plateau, making great falls as it descends the Eastern Ghats, and traverses the Carnatic lowland past Trichinopoly and Tanjore to the Bay which it enters by a number of distributaries in the district of Tanjore. After a tortuous course in Coorg over a rocky bed bordered by high banks covered with luxuriant vegetation, it enters Mysore state and passes through a narrow gorge with a fall of 60 to 80 feet in the rapids of Chunchankatte, after which it widens out. The river twice forks into two streams, only to reunite a few miles farther on, thus forming two islands—Seringapatam and Śivasamudram—fifty miles apart. The celebrated falls of Śivasamudram have been harnessed to supply electrical power to the Kolar Gold Fields over a hundred miles distant. The enterprise was the first of its kind in India and, at the time of its inception, involved one of the longest lines of high tension electric transmission in the world. The Kaveri receives a number of tributaries in its course across Mysore, the most important being the Kabbani, the Hemavati and the Arkavati. In the plain, the course of the river is strongly controlled by the structure of the country as is well shown by its straight course and acute bends. After the confluence of the Bhavani, it changes its southern for a south-eastern direction and then takes an east-south-easterly course before forking a third time to form the island of Śrirangam. Immediately below Śrirangam, the river divides into two, the Coleroon and the Kaveri, the latter repeatedly branching and thus ramifying over the entire surface of the Tanjore delta. The waters of the Kaveri are used extensively for irrigation in Mysore state and Coimbatore and Trichinopoly districts, but it is in Tanjore that they are used to the fullest. The problem of utilizing the flood waters of the Kaveri for irrigation was tackled from very early times by successive Chola monarchs though not with the efficiency commanded by modern engineering.