The Chenab is formed at Tandi in Lahaul from the Chandra and the Bhaga, runs through the Jammu region and into Pakistani Punjab, and joins the Sutlej at Trimmu. It is the largest of the five by volume.
In Punjabi poetry it is the river of drowning. Sohni crosses it on an unbaked pot and dies in it. The word Chenab appears in the love poetry more often than any other river's name.
Its name is generally derived from Chandrabhaga, the two headwaters, and the Greek accounts call it the Acesines.
The Chenab colony, the largest of the canal colonies, was cut from its water in the 1890s and created Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, which is one of the largest cities in Pakistan.
Under the Indus Waters Treaty the Chenab is one of the three western rivers allocated to Pakistan, with limited Indian use permitted upstream. Indian hydroelectric projects on it have been the subject of repeated arbitration.
It runs through Kishtwar, Doda, Ramban and Reasi in a gorge for most of that distance, and the railway to Kashmir crosses it near Reasi on an arch that stands higher above the water than any other rail bridge in the world.
Marala headworks near Sialkot is where it is taken for the canals, and the Marala Ravi Link carries its water east into the Ravi, which is how Pakistan made up what it lost when the eastern rivers were allotted to India.
Salal, Baglihar, Dul Hasti, Pakal Dul and Ratle are the Indian works on it and its feeders, and each has been argued clause by clause: how low the gates may be set, how much water may be held behind them, how the silt may be flushed and when. The treaty permits run of the river works and every dispute has been about where that phrase stops.