A Rajput baraat, painted by an artist from the court of Ram Singh II (r. 1827-66) and made in Kotah, Rajasthan, India, sometime between 1825 and 1850. It shows a groom and his baraat procession, surrounded by guests and protected by Sepoys, Indian soldiers in the service of the East India Company’s militia. It was in just such a solemn procession, as legend has it, that Johila came to spy on Son — though without the red-coats, presumably.
Part 1 of 2
THE legend is that the Nerbudda* which flows west into the Gulf of Cambay* was wooed in the usual way by the Son river, which rises from the same table-land of Amarkantak, and flows east into the Ganges and Bay of Bengal.
All the previous ceremonies having been performed, the Son came with “due pomp and circumstance” to fetch his bride in the procession called the ‘Baraat’, up to which time the bride and bridegroom are supposed never to have seen each other. Her majesty the Nerbudda became exceedingly impatient to know what sort of a personage her destinies were to be linked to, while his majesty the Son advanced at a slow and stately pace.
At last the Queen sent Johila to take a close view of him,* and to return and make a faithful and particular report of his person. His majesty was captivated with the little Johilla at first sight; and she yielded to his caresses.
Nerbudda is a now uncommon name for the Narmada, used in the British Raj. The Periplus Maris Erythraei, a handbook of trade routes made in Roman Egypt and dating from about AD 80, called it the Nammadus.
That is, into the Arabian Sea on the west of India, passing Bharuch in the State of Gujarat, where it is crossed by the Jubilee Bridge, named in honour of King George V. The Gulf of Cambay is also known as the Gulf of Khambhat.
The Johila is a small river rising in the Amarkantak region. It is a tributary of the Son, as the Son is of the Ganges.
Part Two
The River Narmada slices her way through the marble rocks of Bhedaghat, a few miles southwest of Jabalpur in Gujarat, India. It was evidently near here that Sleeman first heard the story of Narmada and Son, since the Hindu priest who told it speaks of ‘the marble rocks beneath us’. Narmada was so angry at being jilted by Son that she tore though the roughest of terrain on her way to the Arabian Sea, rather than accompany him east to the Bay of Bengal.
HER majesty no sooner heard of the good understanding between them, than she rushed forward, and with one foot sent the Son rolling back to the east whence he came, and with the other kicked little Johilla sprawling after him; for, said the high priest, who told us the story, “You see what a towering passion she was likely to have been in under such indignities from the furious manner in which she cuts her way through the marble rocks beneath us, and casts huge masses right and left as she goes along.”
“And was she,” asked I, “to have flowed eastward with him, or was he to have flowed westward with her?” “She was to have accompanied him eastward,” said the high priest, “but her majesty, after this indignity, declared that she would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches, and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow east;* and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.”
In fact, the Rivers Tapti and Mahi also flow west, but with the Narmada they are the only major rivers of peninsular India that do.
