From Yale Books :
Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India's most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent.
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Sen begins his chronicle in prehistoric India, tracing the river's first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world's largest and most densely populated river basins.
3 - shaligrams : "is a fossilized stone or ammonite collected from the riverbed or banks of the Kali Gandaki, a tributary of the Gandaki River in Nepal. It is also considered a form of Vishnu within Hinduism."
5 - ritual ablution
10 - Ganga - Samaresh Basu (1957) : novel
11 - over 1,500 miles
18 - tirtha : Hinduism and Jainism
21 - pilgrim trails
32 - gangajala
40 - Varanasi
45 - Mahabalipuram - relief "Descent of the Ganges"
60 - Bhagiratha
67 - illustration - Ganga in a Bengali almanac (1890s)
72 - Grand Trunk Road
84 - fluvial megafans
101 - 7th millenium BCE - the rise of Oryz Sativa
111 - Janapada - "foothold" or a tribal or clan stronghold
114 - Vrijji kingdom and the city-dwelling warrior clan the Lichchhavis
119 - early kingdoms of the Ganges plains - map
133 - the six cities that received parts of the Buddha's remains
149 - Maurya empire
152 - Jatakas - Buddha's previous lifetimes
156 - yaksa
179 - Therigatha - ( Pali language ) - poems by women followers of Buddha
181 - "middle country" - Madhyadesa
185 - kulas
189 - Gupta empire
229 - Kanauj
242 - war elephants
257 - Dehli Sultans
269 - map of the forest cover in northern India 1600 to 1950 AD
290 - Sher Shah ( Afghan ) - building of the Grand Trunk Road
291 - Akbar - and the Mughal empire
295 - Prayagraj - formerly Allahabad, re-named in 2018
298 - sundarbans - mangrove forests on the Bengal delta
299 - lenticels
299 - pneumatophores - "breathing" roots
302 - zamindars
321 - Mir Jafar - first 'puppet' nawab installed in 1757 by Robert Clive
323 - in 1764 - the English defeat Mir Qasim and allies in battle
325 - famine of 1769-1770
335 - Uvedale Price and William Gilpin - artists
335 - Thomas Daniell - engraver
338 - 1828 - first steamship, the Hooghy, on the Ganges
339 - Ganges canal
347 - Tehri dam
18 - "This chapter explores the ways in which the Ganges has been held sacred through the lens of pilgrimage - especially as embodied in the ancient idea of tirtha: travel as penance and redemption..."
32 - "The ritual purity of Ganges water (gangajala) has persisted as a matter of common faith across the Indian subcontinent, despite its visible contamination through industrial effluence and organic waste."
35 - "Mughal emperor Akbar drank only Ganges water, he did not like the taste of well water."
81 - "The so-called lost-Saraswati controversy has reignited the debate about the end of the Harappan civilization and the beginning of the Vedic civilization of the Ganges."
150 - "At the center of one of these seals is a carefully carved impression of the footprints of the master (buddhapada). Footprints of the Buddha were often carved into stone or wood as objects of devotion in northern India..."
180 - "finding fault when there was none, and finding no fault where there was."
188 - "As noted before, the root of the word Ganges is derived from the verb gam ('to go') denoting motion, flow, direction, and force."
