During the Vedic age, the tallest peak of the Himalayan range—what the modern world calls Mount Everest—was known as Naubandhana, “the binding of the ship.” In the ancient imagination, this was not merely a mountain but the anchor point of survival itself, for it was here, according to tradition, that the boat carrying the great sages and the seeds of all earthly life was secured during the mahapralaya—the great deluge that swept away the old world.
The tale of Naubandhana lives on in the Mahabharata and in several Puranas. In the Atharva Veda, the towering mountain of Navaprabhramsana is believed to correspond to the Naubandhana of later epics. The most vivid account comes in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, within the Markandeya-Samasya Parva, when the sage Markandeya visits the Pandavas during their exile in the Kamyaka forest. As was their custom with all illumined visitors, the Pandavas asked him about the distant past, about dharma and the origins of humankind.
In answer, Markandeya spoke of Vaivasvata Manu, progenitor of the human race in the current kalpa—and of the time when life on earth was nearly extinguished.
One day, as Manu performed austerities on the banks of the River Virini, a tiny fish approached him, pleading for protection:
“O illustrious one, I am small and weak. The larger fish will devour me. Such is the law of the waters. But you, knower of dharma, can save me.”
Moved by compassion, Manu lifted the fish into a water pot and cared for it as one might a child. But the fish grew, outgrowing the pot, then a pond, and finally even the mighty Ganga. Each time, Manu relocated it, and each time the fish swelled to a size that defied its new home. Eventually, Manu carried it to the ocean—astonished that despite its vastness, he could still bear it with ease, for he was aided by divine strength.
In the ocean, the fish spoke again:
“O sage, you have guarded me faithfully. Now hear this: the time of the earth’s destruction is near. Build a sturdy boat. When the waters rise, board it with the sapta-rishis and take with you the seeds of all life. I will come for you, and you will know me by the horn upon my head.”
Manu now understood: this was no ordinary fish, but an incarnation of Prajapati Brahma—or, as some Puranas tell it, Lord Vishnu himself. He pledged to obey.
In time, Manu’s great boat was ready, filled with the sages and the seed of every living thing. Then came the deluge. Waters swallowed the land; waves rose like mountains; the sky itself seemed to collapse into the sea. Amid the chaos appeared the horned fish, immense beyond measure. Manu fastened the boat’s rope to its horn, and the fish towed them through the storm, shielding them from destruction.
At last, they came to where the Himalayas once rose in full majesty. All lay submerged save for one peak—the tallest, still piercing the floodwaters. The fish commanded Manu to bind the boat to it, and thus secured, the vessel and its sacred cargo endured until the waters receded.
From that day, the peak bore the name Naubandhana—the place where the boat was bound.
Today, the world knows this peak as Mount Everest, a name imposed in 1865 to honor Sir George Everest, a British Surveyor General who never even set eyes on it. This is the language of colonial cartography: erasing native names to overwrite history. But mountains are more than coordinates; they are repositories of memory, culture, and myth.
India’s tallest peak should not bear the burden of imperial nomenclature. It should reclaim the name that springs from the deepest strata of our civilization’s storytelling. To call it Naubandhana is not nostalgia—it is historical and cultural restitution. In that name lives the memory of survival, of divine intervention, and of the binding of life itself to the last refuge above the waters.
Let the summit once again be known for what it was in the beginning: not the Everest of colonial surveys, but Naubandhana—the eternal anchor.
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