Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c16.53

c16.53

Further, women had the same names as rivers, and this fact is proved by the injunction that a brahman should not marry a maiden having such a name.⁹ Thus the queen of king Purukutsa, son of Māndhātṛ, of Ayodhyā was named Narmadā;¹⁰ Yauvanaśva's (Māndhātṛ's) granddaughter Kāverī was wife of Jahnu, king of Kānyakubja;¹¹ Sarasvatī was queen of the Paurava king Matināra or Rantināra;¹² and Kālindī (= Yamunā) was the name of the wife of Asita (= Bāhu) king of Ayodhyā,¹³ and also of a wife of Kṛṣṇa.¹⁴ There were three queens named Dṛṣadvatī, (1) wife of a king of Ayodhyā,¹ (2) Viśvāmitra's queen,² and (3) wife of Divodāsa, king of Kāśī.³ Urvaśī was wife of Purūravas,⁴ and Urvaśī was also the original name of the Ganges.⁵ This sameness of name led to the identification of these women with the rivers, with sometimes a story to explain it—all obviously fanciful interpolations due to the desire to explain names (p. 75). So Narmadā is identified with the river (p. 69); and Kāverī because of Yuvanāśva's curse was turned into the river, which may mean either the large river in the south or the southern tributary of the Narbadā.⁶ The former is improbable because it is more than a thousand miles distant; and the latter is no doubt meant, because the princess Kāverī was daughter or niece of queen Narmadā. Similarly, the remark that Yuvanāśva cursed his wife Gaurī and she became the river Bāhudā⁷ is probably to be explained in a like way, though the connexion is wanting in the names as they stand.