Place · Jhelum source spring · India
Verīnāg
Also known as Verīnāg — Jhelum source
The octagonal stone spring at the head of the Jhelum (the Vitasta of the Nilamata Purana) in Anantnag district, Kashmir. Kashmiri tradition treats the Vitasta as a goddess rising from this spring. Jahangir built the Mughal octagonal reservoir in 1620, with inscription that reads 'The spring of Verinag issues from the hills, this is the fountain-head of the Behat (Jhelum)'. Shah Jahan added the Mughal gardens in 1627 along the lines of a chahar-bagh. The spring, 24 feet deep and lined with coursed ashlar masonry, feeds the Jhelum year-round. Verinag is the first stop on the Mughal Road from Jammu to Srinagar via the Pir Panjal.
- Function
- Water & infrastructure
- Tradition
- Nilamata Purana; Kashmiri tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 33.550, 75.250
Connections (2)
- PatronageMughal Gardens of Kashmir
Jahangir walled the Verinag spring in an octagon of stone and laid a garden around it, and the Mughal gardens of Kashmir — Shalimar, Nishat, Achabal, Chashma Shahi — are all built on springs of this kind. Mughal landscape design in the valley is hydraulic before it is horticultural: it takes an existing sacred spring and gives it an architecture.
- Its source is a tirthaVitastā / Jhelum
Verīnāg is the spring the Vitastā rises from, an octagonal tank walled by Jahangir in 1620 around a pool the Nilamata Purana already treated as the river’s birth. It is the one source of the five Punjab rivers that is also a garden and a monument, and it stands at the head of the valley the river then drains for two hundred kilometres before it reaches any plain.
Sources
Verinag Spring; Vitasta tradition
Open Verīnāg in the repository →