Several canals have been constructed on the river Indus near Guddu, Sukkar and Kotri areas.
The Indus River (locally called Sindhu or Darya-e-Sindh) is one of the longest rivers in Asia. Originating in the Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Manasarovar, the river runs a course through the Ladakh region of Kashmir, towards Gilgit-Baltistan and the Hindukush ranges, and then flows in a southerly direction along the entire length of Pakistan to merge into the Arabian Sea near the port city of Karachi in Sindh.[1][2] It is the longest river and national river of Pakistan.[3]
The river has a total drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km2 (450,000 sq mi). Its estimated annual flow stands at around 243 km3 (58 cu mi), twice that of the Nile River and three times that of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers combined, making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow.[4] The Zanskar is its left bank tributary in Ladakh. In the plains, its left bank tributary is the Panjnad which itself has five major tributaries, namely, the Chenab, Jhelum, the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej. Its principal right bank tributaries are the Shyok, the Gilgit, the Kabul, the Gomal, and the Kurram. Beginning in a mountain spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayas, the river supports ecosystems of temperate forests, plains and arid countryside.
The northern part of the Indus Valley, with its tributaries, forms the Punjab region, while the lower course of the Indus is known as Sindh and ends in a large delta. The river has historically been important to many cultures of the region. The 3rd millennium BC saw the rise of a major urban civilization of the Bronze Age. During the 2nd millennium BC, the Punjab region was mentioned in the hymns of the Hindu Rigveda as Sapta Sindhu and the Zoroastrian Avesta as Hapta Hindu (both terms meaning "seven rivers"). Early historical kingdoms that arose in the Indus Valley include Gandhāra, and the Ror dynasty of Sauvīra. The Indus River came into the knowledge of the West early in the Classical Period, when King Darius of Persia sent his Greek subject Scylax of Caryanda to explore the river, ca. 515 BC.
Etymology and names
This river was known to the ancient Indians in Sanskrit as Sindhu and the Persians as Hindu which was regarded by both of them as "the border river".[5][6][7][8][9] The variation between the two names is explained by the Old Iranian sound change *s > h, which occurred between 850–600 BCE according to Asko Parpola.[10][11] From the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the name passed to the Greeks as Indós (Ἰνδός).[12] It was adopted by the Romans as Indus.
The meaning of Sindhu as a "large body of water, sea, or ocean" is a later meaning in Classical Sanskrit.[13] A later Persian name for the river was Darya,[14] which similarly has the connotations of large body of water and sea.[citation needed]
Other variants of the name Sindhu include Assyrian Sinda (as early as the 7th century BC), Persian Ab-e-sind, Pashto Abasind, Arab Al-Sind, Chinese Sintow, and Javanese Santri