Pir Ghaib Waterfalls are

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...

s situated in the Bolan Valley, from

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, in

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Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. Here a waterfall cascades down rocky mountain side making its way through many streams and ponds among the shady palm trees.

History

Legend relates that Pir Ghaib and his sister, the venerable Bibi Nani, arrived here to convert the locals in the early days of Islam. But the fire worshippers sent an army after the pious pair. In the gorge of the Bolan, the siblings split; Bibi Nani went down the gorge (her purported tomb is under a bridge about 15 km downstream) while her brother fled into this arid landscape with the army in hot pursuit. At the head of the gorge, seeing that he was blocked by the rock wall, the saint prayed to almighty to be rescued. He cleaved the rock to receive the holy man. So, he was known as ''Pir Ghaib – The Invisible Saint''. Local Hindus worship Pir Ghaib as Mahadev. But, long before the Bolan gorge had rung with

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...

hymns or invocations of the Pir Ghaib, travellers and traders from the Indus Valley would have stopped at this spring sacred to their own gods on the first leg of their long journey to Mesopotamian marts. As the Vedic God ''Shivaderives'' from an earlier Indus Valley deity, and as the 5000 year old goddess Nania evolves into Bibi Nani or Durga, so too did the Pir Ghaib develop from an early Indus Valley god. But until the Indus script is understood we will not know which from this pantheon was celebrated for walking into rock walls.

References

{{commons category, Pir Ghaib Waterfall Waterfalls of Pakistan Landforms of Balochistan (Pakistan) Tourist attractions in Balochistan, Pakistan

History

See also

References