Holy Rivers of India

Many might have raised eyebrows reading the title of the blog post, finding this irrelevant to hobby of coin collection but i will not disappoint you, please read on.

i decided to write this blog post when i learnt about a biggest ever community project to clean one of the mightiests and holiest river of India - river Yamuna.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamuna

This river passes thru the capital of India New Delhi. When the river enters the city the water of the river is still bathable if not potable. But passing thru' the city it collects on daily basis 3 billion tonnes of untreated waste crossing all the acceptable limits for a river to flow. this river becomes one of the filthiest rivers of the world. This criminal activity is going on for years now and government agencies are not in any position to take up this challenge to protect the river. Government of India spent till date INR 900 crore to treat the waste water before they enter yamuna but without public support it was almost looked impossible.

As the case with river thames and river rhines which were once upon a time most polluted rivers of the world, with efforts put together by people of the cities and government brought the water quality level to acceptable limits, efforts are underway in india.

One spiritual guru (master) Sri Sri Ravishankar had taken up this challenge and launched the biggest ever community run project called meri dilli meri yamuna (my Delhi, my Yamuna)

http://meridillimeriyamuna.org/

Now the question is what is the relevence here with numismatics.

Friends, in India the rivers are treated as holy. River Ganga and River Yamuna are two of the many rivers of india which are known as holy rivers. To take a dip in such rivers is supposed to be auspicious. These rivers are breadwinners of millions of people.

Out of reverence for these holy rivers people of india are offering money in form of coins for thousands of years. The dried and semi dried up rivers are the most promising source of finding such coins which have been offered even a couple of milenniums ago.

offering coins in the rivers is not just indian. searching on net you will find that offering money to rivers was also in practice in erstwhile roman and greek empire. to ascertain the fact i tried this search -coins found river- and here is what i have found

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=coins+found+river&aq=f...=

So keeping rivers clean is a profitable and numismatically rewarding effort...

Help keep the indian rivers clean, join the campaigns or start one with your local river. Old wells, kunds (pools) and dried up river beds by your village or town may be hiding many of the numismatic secrets still to be discovered.

http://www.medvarsity.com/vmu1.2/dmr/dmrdata/currenttopics/coins/so...