Kistna or Krishna River, 1,370 kilometers long, rises in the Western Ghats of India near the town of Mahabaleshwar, only 65 kilometers from the Arabian Sea, at a source that is sacred to Hindus. The river flows eastward across southern Maharashtra, northern Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh states to empty into the Bay of Bengal through two principal mouths, after crossing a broad delta valuable for its rice agriculture. In its lower course, an important irrigation work, the Bezwada Anicut, a dam with two canals, was begun in 1852 by Sir Arthur Cotton, just below a gorge where the Kistna bursts through the Eastern Ghats and the channel is over a kilometer wide.
The river's two great tributaries are the Bhima and the Tungabhadra, and the Kistna is also joined by five other important rivers. The channel is too rocky, and the stream too rapid, to allow any navigation on the Kistna. During the dry season, the depth of water may be no more than two meters. The drainage area of the Kistna covers some 245,000 square kilometers in the central Dekkan plateau.
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