A male-named Himalayan river was mapped as Tibet’s Tsangpo late
The Brahmaputra runs about 3,000 kilometres from Tibet’s Manasarovar–Kailash region through China, India, and Bangladesh, changing names from Yarlung Tsangpo to Siang/Dihang and finally Jamuna. Average depth near 30 metres can hit 135 metres at Sadiya, and spring melt plus monsoon rains drive catastrophic floods.
The river's Tibetan headwaters, the Yarlung Tsangpo, rise on the Angsi Glacier near Mount Kailash in Burang County; the source was once placed on the Chemayungdung glacier, about 97 kilometres south-east of Lake Manasarovar. It crosses southern Tibet, smashes through the Himalayas in deep gorges including the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, and enters India near Gelling in Arunachal Pradesh. It then runs south-west through the Assam Valley and south into Bangladesh as the Jamuna, not to be confused with India's Yamuna, before joining the Ganges, or Padma, in the delta, becoming the Meghna and reaching the Bay of Bengal.
Its basin drains the Himalayas east of the Nepal border, much of southern Tibet, the Patkai hills, the northern slopes of Meghalaya, the Assam plains and northern Bangladesh, and heavy rainfall soaks the southern parts. Kangchenjunga, 8,586 metres, is the basin's only peak over 8,000 metres. Europeans long did not know where the upper river went; only exploration in 1884 to 1886 proved that the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra were one, hence the combined name Tsangpo-Brahmaputra.
By discharge it ranks ninth among the world's rivers and by length fifteenth. Average flow is about 22,000 cubic metres per second, rising to around 103,000 in flood, and spring snowmelt can bring disaster. It is a textbook braided river, prone to shifting channels and sudden avulsions, and one of the few rivers with a tidal bore. Most of it can be navigated, and it serves irrigation and transport across the region.
The name is unusual. Most rivers of the subcontinent carry female names, but Brahmaputra is masculine, meaning son of Brahma in Sanskrit, and the Tibetan name is masculine too. Hindus regard its lower reaches as sacred. Bodo-Garo speakers call it Ti-Lao or Di-Lao, and the whole river is sometimes called the red river of India.
Source: Brahmaputra River
