ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that an unexplored cultural realm, exists in central India with the Narmada River as its defining element, and that a fuller understanding of this region's cultural roots and gifts must preempt its being threatened by the disturbance of an interdependent human and cultural ecology. Literary and descriptive references to the Narmada first appear in about 1700 b.p. in Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa in which he calls it Reva, meaning 'swift flowing and meandering river'. The Narmada River is prominent in cultural history from the tiny hamlet of Amarkantak in the Maikal hills to the sprawling port of Broach on the Arabian Sea. In December 1982, the Geological Survey of India found a nearly complete skull of Homo erectus on the south bank of the central Narmada at the village of Hathnora. The social world of rural India is largely comprised of signs and symbols taken from material culture and enfolded into myth, legend, and tradition.
