The main water sources for India is from Himalayan range with its Karakoram branch in the north, Vindhyas and Satpura ranges in Central India and Sahyadri or western ghats on the west coast. They act as a watershed for the south Indian states. 

The main rivers of the Himalayan group are the Indus, which the Aryans called the Sindhu and which has lent its name to India; the Ganga, famous alike in legend and history as the most sacred river of the Hindus which saw the flourishing of Aryan culture in India with its tributaries like Jammu, Gomati, Chambal, Son, Gandak etc and the Brahmaputra which rising in the western Tibet  turns to southwest to join the eastern most branch of Ganga to merge in to the Bay of Bengal.   

The major Deccan rivers are the Godavari, the Krishna, the Cauvery, the Pennar, the Bharatapuzha, the Periyar, the Narmada etc.