BRAHMAPUTRA, bri'ma-pii'tra, a large river of Asia, whose sources, not yet explored, are situated near Lake Manasarovara, in Tibet, near those of the Indus. In Tibet, where it is called the Sanpo, it flows eastward north of the Himalayas and, after taking a sharp bend and passing through these mountains, it emerges in the northeast of Assam as the Dihong; a little farther on it is joined by the Dibong and the Lohit, when the united stream takes the name of Brahmaputra, literally °the son of Brahma.' After entering Bengal it joins the Ganges at Goalanda and farther on the Meghna, and their united waters flow into the Bay of Bengal. The Brahmaputra is navi gable by steamers for about 800 miles from the sea, its total length being, perhaps, 1,800 miles and its drainage area about 361,200 square miles. Through the last 60 miles of its course it is from four to five miles wide and studded with islands. Its waters are thick and dirty its banks are mostly covered with marshes and jungles and are subject to annual inundations.
During the season of the overflow, from the Middle of June to the middle of September, the level districts of Assam are almost wholly submerged, so that travel is impossible except on causeways 8 or 10 feet high. The vol ume of water discharged by the river at such times is immense. Even in the dry season it is equal to 146,188 cubic feet a second, while in the same time and under the same circum stances the Ganges discharges only about 80, 000. The river ranks next after the Ganges in commercial and agricultural value; large cargo steamers and a daily service of small passenger steamers ply on the Brahmaputra between Goalundo and Dibrugarh. The down ward traffic consists mainly of tea, coal, tim ber, oil seeds, raw cotton, lac and hides from Assam; also jute, rice, tobacco and grain from eastern Bengal.