Odisha
Odisha is one of the 29 states of India. Located in eastern India, it is surrounded by the states of West Bengal to the north-east, Jharkhand to the north, Chhattisgarh to the west and north-west, Andhra Pradesh to the south. Odisha has 485 kilometres of coastline along the Bay of Bengal from Balasore to Ganjam, it is the 9th largest state by area, the 11th largest by population. It is the 3rd most populous state of India in terms of tribal population. Odia is the official and most spoken language, spoken by 36.6 million according to the 2016 Census. The ancient kingdom of Kalinga, invaded by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in 261 BCE resulting in the Kalinga War, coincides with the borders of modern-day Odisha; the modern state of Odisha was established on 1 April 1936, as a province in British India, consisted predominantly of Odia-speaking regions. 1 April is celebrated as Odisha Day. The region is known as Utkala and is mentioned in India's national anthem, "Jana Gana Mana". Cuttack was made the capital of the region by Anantavarman Chodaganga in c.
1135, after which the city was used as the capital by many rulers, through the British era until 1948. Thereafter, Bhubaneswar became the capital of Odisha; the term "Odisha" is derived from the ancient Prakrit word "Odda Visaya" as in the Tirumalai inscription of Rajendra Chola I, dated to 1025. Sarala Das, who translated the Mahabharata into the Odia language in the 15th century, calls the region Odra Rashtra and Odisha; the inscriptions of Kapilendra Deva of the Gajapati Kingdom on the walls of temples in Puri call the region Odisha or Odisha Rajya. The name of the state was changed from Orissa to Odisha, the name of its language from Oriya to Odia, in 2011, by the passage of the Orissa Bill, 2010 and the Constitution Bill, 2010 in the Parliament. After a brief debate, the lower house, Lok Sabha, passed the bill and amendment on 9 November 2010. On 24 March 2011, Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament passed the bill and the amendment. Prehistoric Acheulian tools dating to Lower Paleolithic era have been discovered in various places in the region, implying an early settlement by humans.
Kalinga has been mentioned in ancient texts like Vayu Purana and Mahagovinda Suttanta. The Sabar people of Odisha have been mentioned in the Mahabharata. Baudhayana mentions Kalinga as not yet being influenced by Vedic traditions, implying it followed tribal traditions. Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty conquered Kalinga in the bloody Kalinga War in 261 BCE, the eighth year of his reign. According to his own edicts, in that war about 100,000 people were killed, 150,000 were captured and more were affected; the resulting bloodshed and suffering of the war is said to have affected Ashoka. He converted to Buddhism. By c. 150 BCE, emperor Kharavela, a contemporary of Demetrius I of Bactria, conquered a major part of the Indian sub-continent. Kharavela was a Jain ruler, he built the monastery atop the Udayagiri hill. Subsequently, the region was ruled by monarchs, such as Shashanka, it was a part of Harsha's empire. The kings of the Somavamsi dynasty began to unite the region. By the reign of Yayati II, c. 1025 CE, they had integrated the region into a single kingdom.
Yayati II is supposed to have built the Lingaraj temple at Bhubaneswar. They were replaced by the Eastern Ganga dynasty. Notable rulers of the dynasty were Anantavarman Chodaganga, who began re-construction on the present-day Shri Jagannath Temple in Puri, Narasimhadeva I, who constructed the Konark temple; the Eastern Ganga Dynasty was followed by the Gajapati Kingdom. The region resisted integration into the Mughal empire until 1568, when it was conquered by Sultanate of Bengal. Mukunda Deva, considered the last independent king of Kalinga, was defeated and was killed in battle by a rebel Ramachandra Bhanja. Ramachandra Bhanja himself was killed by Bayazid Khan Karrani. In 1591, Man Singh I governor of Bihar, led an army to take Odisha from the Karranis of Bengal, they agreed to treaty because their leader Qutlu Khan Lohani had died. But, they broke the treaty by attacking the temple town of Puri. Man Singh pacified the region. Orissa was the first subah added to Akbar's fifteen by Shah Jahan, it had Cuttack as seat and bordered Bihar and Golconda subahs as well as the remaining independent and tributary chiefs.
From 1717, the Orissa and Bihar governors were reduced to deputies of the Nawab of the pseudo-autonomous Bengal Subah. In 1751, the Nawab of Bengal Alivardi Khan ceded the region to the Maratha Empire; the British had occupied the Northern Circars, comprising the southern coast of Odisha, as a result of the 2nd Carnatic War by 1760, incorporated them into the Madras Presidency gradually. In 1803, the British ousted the Marathas from the Puri-Cuttack region of Odisha during the Second Anglo-Maratha War; the northern and western districts of Odisha were incorporated into the Bengal Presidency. The Orissa famine of 1866 caused an estimated 1 million deaths. Following this, large-scale irrigation projects were undertaken. In 1903, the Utkal Sammilani organisation was founded to demand the unification of Odia-speaking regions into one state. On 1 April 1912, the Orissa Province was formed. On 1 April 1936, Orissa were split into separate provinces; the new province of Orissa came into existence on a linguistic basis during the British rule in India, with Sir John Austen Hubback as
National Library of the Czech Republic
The National Library of the Czech Republic is the central library of the Czech Republic. It is directed by the Ministry of Culture; the library's main building is located in the historical Clementinum building in Prague, where half of its books are kept. The other half of the collection is stored in the district of Hostivař; the National Library is the biggest library in the Czech Republic, in its funds there are around 6 million documents. The library has around 60,000 registered readers; as well as Czech texts, the library stores older material from Turkey and India. The library houses books for Charles University in Prague; the library won international recognition in 2005 as it received the inaugural Jikji Prize from UNESCO via the Memory of the World Programme for its efforts in digitising old texts. The project, which commenced in 1992, involved the digitisation of 1,700 documents in its first 13 years; the most precious medieval manuscripts preserved in the National Library are the Codex Vyssegradensis and the Passional of Abbes Kunigunde.
In 2006 the Czech parliament approved funding for the construction of a new library building on Letna plain, between Hradčanská metro station and Sparta Prague's football ground, Letná stadium. In March 2007, following a request for tender, Czech architect Jan Kaplický was selected by a jury to undertake the project, with a projected completion date of 2011. In 2007 the project was delayed following objections regarding its proposed location from government officials including Prague Mayor Pavel Bém and President Václav Klaus. Plans for the building had still not been decided in February 2008, with the matter being referred to the Office for the Protection of Competition in order to determine if the tender had been won fairly. In 2008, Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička announced the end of the project, following a ruling from the European Commission that the tender process had not been carried out legally; the library was affected by the 2002 European floods, with some documents moved to upper levels to avoid the excess water.
Over 4,000 books were removed from the library in July 2011 following flooding in parts of the main building. There was a fire at the library in December 2012. List of national and state libraries Official website
Prithviraj Kapoor
Prithviraj Kapoor born Prithvinath Kapoor, was a pioneer of Indian theatre and of the Hindi film industry, who started his career as an actor in the silent era of Hindi cinema, associated with IPTA as one of its founding members and who founded the Prithvi Theatres, a travelling theatre company based in Mumbai, in 1944. He was the patriarch of the Kapoor family of Hindi films, four generations of which, beginning with him, have played active roles in the Hindi film industry, with two generations still active in Bollywood. However, his father, Basheshwar Nath Kapoor played a short role in his movie Awaara; the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 1969 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1971 for his contributions towards Indian cinema. Kapoor was born on 3 November 1906 into a Punjabi Hindu family of Samundri, Samundri Tehsil, Lyallpur District, British India, his father, Basheshwarnath Kapoor, served as a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police in the city of Peshawar while his grandfather, Keshavmal Kapoor, was a Tehsildar in Samundri.
Surinder Kapoor, the famous Bollywood producer and father of actor Anil Kapoor was a cousin of Prithviraj Kapoor. Kapoor began his acting career in the theatres of Peshawar. In 1928, he moved to Bombay with a loan from an aunt. There he joined the Imperial Films Company, he acted as an extra in his first film, Do Dhari Talwar, though he went on to earn a lead role for his third film, titled Cinema Girl, in 1929. After featuring in nine silent films, including Do Dhari Talwar, Cinema Girl,Sher-e-Arab and Prince Vijaykumar, Kapoor did a supporting role in India's first film talkie, Alam Ara, his performance in Vidyapati was much appreciated. His best-known performance is as Alexander the Great in Sohrab Modi's Sikandar, he joined the Grant Anderson Theater Company, an English theatrical company that remained in Bombay for a year. Through all these years, Kapoor remained performed on stage regularly, he developed a reputation as a fine and versatile actor on both stage and screen. By 1944, Kapoor had the wherewithal and standing to found his own theatre group, Prithvi Theatres, whose première performance was Kalidasa's Abhijñānaśākuntalam in 1942.
His eldest son, Raj Kapoor, by 1946, had struck out on his own. Prithviraj invested in Prithvi Theatres; the plays were influential and inspired young people to participate in the Indian independence movement and the Quit India Movement. In over 16 years of existence, the theatre staged some 2,662 performances. Prithviraj starred as the lead actor in every single show. One of his popular plays was called Pathan, performed on stage nearly 600 times in Mumbai, it opened on 13 April 1947, is a story of a Muslim and his Hindu friend. By the late 1950s, it was clear that the era of the travelling theatre had been irreversibly supplanted by the cinema and it was no longer financially feasible for a troupe of up to 80 people to travel the country for four to six months at a time along with their props and equipment and living in hotels and campsites; the financial returns, through ticket sales and the diminishing largesse of patrons from the erstwhile princely class of India, was not enough to support such an effort.
Many of the fine actors and technicians that Prithvi Theatres nurtured had found their way to the movies. Indeed, this was the case with all of Prithviraj's own sons; as Kapoor progressed into his 50s, he ceased theatre activities and accepted occasional offers from film-makers, including his own sons. He appeared with his son Raj in the 1951 film Awara as a stern judge who had thrown his own wife out of his house. Under his son, Shashi Kapoor, his wife Jennifer Kendal, Prithvi Theatre merged with the Indian Shakespeare theatre company, "Shakespeareana", the company got a permanent home, with the inauguration of the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai on 5 November 1978. In 1996, the Golden Jubilee year of the founding of Prithvi Theatre, India Post, issued a special two Rupee commemorative postage stamp, it featured the logo of the theatre, the dates 1945–1995, an image of Kapoor. The first day cover, showed an illustration of a performance of a travelling theatre in progress, on a stage that seems fit for a travelling theatre, as Prithvi theatre was for sixteen years, till 1960.
On the occasion of 100 years of the Indian cinema, another postage stamp, bearing his likeness, was released by India Post on 3 May 2013. His filmography of this period includes Mughal E Azam, where he gave his most memorable performance as the Mughal emperor Akbar, Harishchandra Taramati in which he played the lead role, an unforgettable performance as Porus in Sikandar-e-Azam, the stentorian grandfather in Kal Aaj Aur Kal, in which he appeared with his son Raj Kapoor and grandson Randhir Kapoor. Kapoor starred in the legendary religious Punjabi film Nanak Nam Jahaz Hai, a film so revered in Punjab that there were lines many kilometres long to purchase tickets, he starred in the Punjabi films Nanak Dukhiya Sub Sansar and Mele Mittran De. He acted in the Kannada movie Sakshatkara, directed by Kannada director Puttanna Kanagal, he acted as Rajkumar's father in that movie. In 1954, he was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, in 1969, the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India, he remained Nominated Rajya Sabha Member for eight years.
He was posthumously awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 1971. He was the third recipient of the highest accolade in Indian cinema. 1954: Sangeet Natak Akad
Bengali renaissance
The Bengali Renaissance or Bengal Renaissance, was a cultural, social and artistic movement in Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent during the period of the British Indian Empire, from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century dominated by Bengalis Bengali Hindus. Historian Nitish Sengupta describes the Bengal renaissance as taking place from Raja Ram Mohan Roy through Rabindranath Tagore. Nineteenth-century Bengal was a unique blend of religious and social reformers, literary giants, patriotic orators and scientists, all merging to form the image of a renaissance, marked the transition from the'medieval' to the'modern'. During this period, Bengal witnessed an intellectual awakening, in some way similar to the Renaissance in Europe during the 16th century, although Europeans of that age were not confronted with the challenge and influence of alien colonialism; this movement questioned existing orthodoxies with respect to women, the dowry system, the caste system, religion.
One of the earliest social movements that emerged during this time was the Young Bengal movement, that espoused rationalism and atheism as the common denominators of civil conduct among upper caste educated Hindus. The parallel socio-religious movement, the Brahmo Samaj, developed during this time period and counted many of the leaders of the Bengal Renaissance among its followers. In the earlier years the Brahmo Samaj, like the rest of society, could not however, conceptualize, in that feudal-colonial era, a free India as it was influenced by the European Enlightenment although it traced its intellectual roots to the Upanishads, their version of Hinduism, or rather Universal Religion, although devoid of practices like sati and polygamy that had crept into the social aspects of Hindu life, was a rigid impersonal monotheistic faith, quite distinct from the pluralistic and multifaceted nature of the way the Hindu religion was practiced. Future leaders like Keshub Chunder Sen were as much devotees of Christ, as they were of Brahma, Krishna or the Buddha.
It has been argued by some scholars that the Brahmo Samaj movement never gained the support of the masses and remained restricted to the elite, although Hindu society has accepted most of the social reform programmes of the Brahmo Samaj. It must be acknowledged that many of the Brahmos were leaders of the freedom movement; the renaissance period after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 saw a magnificent outburst of Bengali literature. While Ram Mohan Roy and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar were the pioneers, others like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee widened it and built upon it; the first significant nationalist detour to the Bengal Renaissance was given by the writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Writers of the period who introduced broad discussion of social problems and more colloquial forms of Bengali into mainstream literature included Saratchandra Chatterjee; the Tagore family, including Rabindranath Tagore, were leaders of this period and had a particular interest in educational reform. Their contribution to the Bengal Renaissance was multi-faceted.
Several members of the family, including Rabindranath, Abanindranath and Jyotirindranath Tagore, Asit Kumar Haldar and Jnanadanandini Devi have been associated with the movement. The word "renaissance" in European history meant "rebirth" and was used in the context of the revival of the Graeco-Roman learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries after the long winter of the dark medieval period, but the modernization and efflorescence of Bengali culture was catalyzed by its contact with Western culture after the establishment of British rule in Bengal in 1857. Bengalis were the first people in Asia to interact with Western culture, in modern period, in a deep and significant enough way to produce results of permanent interest for the world. A serious comparison was started by the dramatis personae of the Bengal renaissance like Keshab Chandra Sen, Bipin Chandra Pal and M. N. Roy. For about a century, Bengal's conscious awareness and the changing modern world was more developed and ahead of the rest of India.
Many of the leading figures in various fields in India and in whole Asia. Reformation of religion and education started with Rammohan Roy in India; the first great moderns in various fields in Asia- Novelist, painter, sculptor,philosopher and scientist were from Bengal. The role played by Bengal in the modern awakening of India is thus comparable to the position occupied by Italy in the European renaissance. There are differences too; the modernity of Bengal Renaissance is post-Enlightenment modernity. Unlike the Italian Renaissance, it intended and managed to impact a large area of society. Though all its leaders and exponents came from the middle class,many of them were in sympathy with socialism. According to Nitish Sengupta, though the Bengal renaissance was the "culmination of the process of emergence of the cultural characteristics of the Bengali people that had started in the age of Hussein Shah, it remained predominantly Hindu and only Muslim." There were examples of Muslim intellectuals such as Syed Ameer Ali, Mosharraf Hussain, Sake Dean Mahomed, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Roquia Sakhawat Hussain.
The Freedom of In
Prakrit
The Prakrits are any of several Middle Indo-Aryan languages used in India. According to the dictionary of Monier Monier-Williams, the most frequent meanings of the term prakṛta, from which the word "prakrit" is derived, are "original, normal" and the term is derived from prakṛti, "making or placing before or at first, the original or natural form or condition of anything, original or primary substance". In linguistic terms, this is used in contrast with saṃskṛta, "refined". Modern scholars have used the term "Prakrit" to refer to two concepts: Prakrit languages: a group of related literary languages the Prakrit language: one of the Prakrit languages, which alone was used as the primary language of entire poemsSome modern scholars include all Middle Indo-Aryan languages under the rubric of'Prakrits', while others emphasize the independent development of these languages separated from the history of Sanskrit by wide divisions of caste and geography; the broadest definition uses the term "Prakrit" to describe any Middle Indo-Aryan language that deviates from Sanskrit in any manner.
American scholar Andrew Ollett points out that this unsatisfactory definition makes "Prakrit" a cover term for languages that were not called Prakrit in ancient India, such as: the language of Ashoka's inscriptions the language of inscriptions of India, labeled "Monumental Prakrit", "Lena Prakrit", or "Stupa dialect" the language of inscriptions of Sri Lanka, labeled "Sinhalese Prakrit" Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist canon the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Gandhari, the language of birch-bark scrolls discovered in the region stretching from northwestern India to western ChinaAccording to some scholars, such as German Indologists Richard Pischel and Oskar von Hinüber, the term "Prakrit" refers to a smaller set of languages that were used in literature: Scenic Prakrits These languages are used in plays, as secondary languages Their names indicate regional association, although these associations are notional Primary Prakrits These languages are used as primary languages of literary classics such as Gaha Sattasai This includes the Maharashtri Prakrit or "Prakrit par excellence", which according to Dandin's Kavya-darsha, was prevalent in the Maharashtra region, in which poems such as Ravana-vaho were composed.
According to Sanskrit scholar A. C. Woolner, the Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, used extensively to write the scriptures of Jainism, is considered to be the definitive form of Prakrit, while others are considered variants of it. Prakrit grammarians would give the full grammar of Ardhamagadhi first, define the other grammars with relation to it. For this reason, courses teaching'Prakrit' are regarded as teaching Ardhamagadhi. Medieval grammarians such as Markandeya describe a systematized Prakrit grammar, but the surviving Prakrit texts do not adhere to this grammar. For example, according to Vishvanatha, in a Sanskrit drama, the characters should speak Maharashtri Prakrit in verse and Shauraseni Prakrit in prose, but the 10th century Sanskrit dramatist Rajashekhara doesn't abide by this rule. Markandeya, as well as scholars such as Sten Konow find faults with the Prakrit portions of Rajashekhara's writings, but it is not clear if the rule enunciated by Vishvanatha existed during Rajashekhara's time. Rajashekhara's himself imagines Prakrit as a single language or a single kind of language, alongside Sanskrit and Paishachi.
German Indologist Theodor Bloch dismissed the medieval Prakrit grammarians as unreliable, arguing that they were not qualified to describe the language of the texts composed centuries before them. Other scholars such as Sten Konow, Richard Pischel and Alfred Hillebrandt, disagree with Bloch, it is possible that the grammarians sought to codify only the language of the earliest classics of the Prakrit literature, such as the Gaha Sattasai. Another explanation is. Most of the surviving Prakrit manuscripts were produced in a variety of reigonal scripts, during 1300-1800 CE, it appears that the scribes who made these copies from the earlier manuscripts did not have a good command of the original language of the texts, as several of the extant Prakrit texts contain inaccuracies or are incomprehensible. Prakrit literature was produced across a wide area of South Asia, from Kashmir in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, from Sindh in the west to Bengal in the east. Outside India, the language was known in Cambodia and Java.
Prakrit is wrongly assumed to have been a language spoken by the common people, because it is different from Sanskrit, the predominant language of the ancient Indian literature. Several modern scholars, such as George Abraham Grierson and Richard Pischel, have asserted that the literary Prakrit does not represent the actual languages spoken by the common people of ancient India; this theory is corroborated by a market scene in Uddyotana's Kuvalaya-mala, in which the narrator speaks a few words in 18 different languages: some of these languages sound similar to the languages spoken in modern India. Literary Prakrit was among the main languages of the classical Indian culture. Dandin's Kavya-darsha mentions four kinds of literary languages: Sanskrit, Prakrit and mixed. Bhoja's Sarasvati-Kanthabharana lists Prakrit among the few languages suitable for composition of literature
Godavari River
The Godavari is India's second longest river after the Ganga. Its source is in Maharashtra, it flows east for 1,465 kilometres draining the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka emptying into Bay of Bengal through its extensive network of tributaries. Measuring up to 312,812 km2, it forms one of the largest river basins in the Indian subcontinent, with only the Ganges and Indus rivers having a larger drainage basin. In terms of length, catchment area and discharge, the Godavari river is the largest in peninsular India, had been dubbed as the Vridha Ganga – Ganges; the river has been revered in Hindu scriptures for many millennia and continues to harbour and nourish a rich cultural heritage. In the past few decades, the river has been barricaded by a number of barrages and dams, restricting its flow; the river delta supports 729 persons/km2 – nearly twice the density average for the nation, has been categorized as having substantial to greater risk of flooding with rising sea levels.
The Godavari originates in the Western Ghats of central India near Nashik in Maharashtra, 80 km from the Arabian Sea. It flows for 1,465 km, first eastwards across the Deccan Plateau turns southeast, entering the West Godavari district and East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, until it splits into two distributaries that widen into a large river delta and flow into the Bay of Bengal; the Godavari River has a coverage area of 312,812 km2, nearly one-tenth of the area of India and is greater than the areas of England and Ireland put together. The river basin is considered to be divided into 3 sections: Upper and Lower; these put together account for 24.2% of the total basin area. The rivers annual average water inflows are nearly 110 billion cubic metres. Nearly 50% of the water availability is being harnessed; the water allocation from the river among the riparian states are governed by the Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal. The river has highest flood flows in India and experienced recorded flood of 3.6 million cusecs in the year 1986 and annual flood of 1.0 million cusecs is normal.
In Maharashtra state where it takes origin, the river has an extensive course, the upper basin of which lies within the state, cumulatively draining an area as large as 152,199 km2 – about half the area of Maharashtra. Within Nashik District the river assumes a north-easterly course till it flows into the Gangapur Reservoir created by a dam of the same name; the reservoir along with the Kashypi Dam provides potable water to Nashik, one of the largest cities located on its banks. The river as it emerges through the dam, some 8 km upstream from Nashik, flows on a rocky bed undulated by a series of chasms and rocky ledges, resulting in the formation of two significant waterfalls – the Gangapur waterfalls and the Someshwar Waterfalls, the latter, located at Someshwar and more popularly known as the Dudhsagar Waterfall About 10 km east of Gangapur the river passes the town of Nashik where it collects its effluents in the form of the river Nasardi on its right bank. About 0.5 km south direction from Nashik, the river bends to the east, washing the base of a high cliff the site of a Mughal fort, but, now being eaten away by the action of floods.
About 25 km below Nashik is the confluence of the Godavari and one of its tributaries, the Darna river. The stream occupies, for nine months in the year, a small space in a wide and gravelly bed, the greyish banks being 4 to 6 m high, topped with a deep layer of black soil. A few kilometres after its meeting with the Darna, the Godavari swerves to the north-east, till the Banganga, from the north-west, meets it on the left; the course of the main stream tends more decidedly south. At Nandur-Madhmeshwar, the Kadva, a second large affluent, brings considerable increase to the waters of the Godavari; the river begins its southeasterly course characteristic of rivers of the Deccan Plateau. The river beyond exits the Niphad Taluka of Nashik and enter the Kopargaon taluka, Ahmednagar District. Within Ahmednagar the river completes its short course, flowing alongside the town of Kopargaon and reaching Puntamba. Beyond this the river has been deployed as a natural boundary between the following districts: Ahmednagar and Aurangabad: Along the boundary here, it receives its first major tributary Pravara River, draining the former district, the confluence located at Pravarasangam.
By virtue of a sub-tributary of Pravara – Mandohol, which originates in Pune District – the basin impinges the Pune District. The river at Paithan has been impounded by the Jayakwadi Dam forming the NathSagar Reservoir. Kalsubai located in Godavari basin, is the highest peak in Maharashtra. Beed and Jalna Beed and Parbhani: Located along here is its merger with Sindphana, an important tributary which drains a large area within Beed; the sub-tributary river Bindusara forms a landmark at Beed. The river beyond, near the village Sonpeth, flows into Parbhani. In Parbhani District, River Godavari flows through Gangakhed taluka; as mentioned above Godavari is called Dakshinganga so the city is called as Gangakhed. As per Hindu rituals this place is considered quite important for after death peace to flow ashes into the river it, its course is non-significant except for receiving two smaller streams – Indrayani and Masuli – merging at its left and right banks respectively. Within the l
