THE RIVER OF SORROW

The name Tons is a rather insulting and inadequate anglicisation of the name of a great and very beautiful river. As this tributary generates more water than the Yamuna at its confluence at Kalsi, near Ashoka's stone inscription, it surely deserves to be the mother of the Yamuna.

According to the local inhabitants who I met on a recent trek to Har Ki Dun, the river unfortunately rose in the land of the Kauravas and after their defeat by the Pandavas was given the humiliating name of Tamsa, after Tamas or sorrow. The elders assert that the authors of the Mahabharata has been unjust to them for they had won the game of dice fair and square and it had been the failure of the Pandavas to honour their commitments that had caused the tortuous trail of epic tragedy.

Their land was also one of remote and densely forested hills bordering Himachal and Tibet that had been virtually inaccessible till fairly recent times. The source of the Tons was in glaciers above the Har Ki Dun, or the valley of the Gods, overlooked by the still unclimbed snowy peaks of Swargarohini, meaning the road to heaven. Unclimbed, except in legend, for Yudishtara and his dog had ascended it on their way to heaven. The other Pandavas had not been worthy. The mountain is series of five steep ice encrusted peaks rising in giant steps to 21,300 feet. The waters of the Tons have a translucent greenish blue quality unlike the dull gray waters of the Yamuna tributary.

Elaborately carved wooden Duryodana temples command the wood and stone villages for he is still revered here as the ruling deity. Their pantheon of four deities include a small image of Buddha. Many small shrines of the Bhumi deotas, or the deities of the land, attract offerings of flowers, scraps of coloured cloth and a little food. There are also blood sacrifices and shamanistic dances at times of hardship. The villagers lead hard and fragile lives and the intervention of the gods are constantly invoked for blessings or the averting of drought, cold or sickness. Today priests from the lowlands are trying to establish new temples of Shiva. Tribals welcome all gods as they dare not provoke the anger of any but the half hearted response at these new Hindu temples indicate that these new deities have yet to prove that they have power equal to that of the venerated old ones. 

The victorious Pandavas, who allegedly ruled in the upper Ganges and the eastern Yamuna area, chose to name the more approachable lesser tributary the Yamuna after Yamani the sister of Yama, the ruler of the dead. They made it a sacred river and its source at Yamnotri that is now a place of pilgrimage.

The Tons, however, had a greater history before the period of the Mahabharata. It had probably been the source of the legendary Saraswati, the sacred river of the Rigveda. This, the earliest account of a tribe who called themselves Arya, speaks of a great snow fed river that rose in the mountains and thundered south west through Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat to empty into the Arabian Sea.

Today the Yamuna gushes out of the hills near Yamunanagar and turns eastwards towards Delhi. The level of its bed is just a few feet below the surrounding plains. It is postulated that this is a recent course and that the earlier course had flowed past Kurukshetra, Sirsa and Ratangarh to empty into the bed of the river Luni flowing south of Jodhpur into the western Sea. Earth quakes, seismic movement or siltation may have caused a slight rise in the plain to make the river change its course.

Satellite mapping shows that the old river's underground aquifiers still flow to the sea under the dry to desert surface. The ruins of numerous ancient habitations also show that there must have once been the abundant waters of a perennial river to sustain so large a population. It is also evident that there had been no great perennial river near Delhi in ancient times because it was only in the 10^th century AD that the Tomar Rajputs had erected the first big settlement at Kila Rai Pitora near the Qutab Minar. The Indraprastra, or Indrapat, of ancient times, like Tilpat, Panipat and Bagpat had just been small pre urban settlements.

As the site of Delhi with the Aravali hills to the south and the Yamuna to the north made it the only easily defensible location on the northern plains it should have certainly been the site of a great urban habitation very much earlier. Provided there had been enough clean water around the year to sustain it.      

Today the murky almost black waters checked by the Okhla barrage near Delhi, carry the excrement, fertilisers, chemicals and filth of the northern plains along with rotting carcasses, garbage, misshapen plastic bags and the nearly rigid blocks of detergent foam. These have made it an ugly, toxic and lifeless river. Perhaps the Tons has had its revenge for now the Yamuna that has truly become the river of sorrow.