MULTI-PURPOSE PLAN FOR DEVELOPMENT OF ORISSA’S RIVERS 311
The Viceroy said :
“I am very glad to be able to open the 16th Meeting of this Central Board of Irrigation. Your branch of engineering is an ancient, important, and very honourable one. Irrigation engineers are the oldest experts in the world. The 2nd Chapter of Genesis tells us that ‘A river went out of Eden to water the garden’ obviously the first recorded example of irrigation. The two ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were of course built entirely on irrigation ; and the forerunners in your craft were presumably a much honoured guild or fraternity in those countries.
“Amongst the most eminent of the early irrigation experts must be numbered Moses, of whose achievements, in the art of irrigation we know at least two ; when he smote the rock at Horeb, bidding drink and live the crowd beneath him ; and when he sweetened the bitter water at Marah, presumably by building a dam to keep out some brackish clement.
India’s Achievements
“Other engineers may give us speed in travel or comfort in our dwellings ; your gift is that of life itself. If you want a text for your labours you will find it in a verse of Isaiah ; ‘I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people’.
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