The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.190

v1.c15.190

Apart from this theory, the conclusions of ethnology are entirely in accord with the historical indications of the literature. The ethnographical limit is also the dividing line between the geography of the Rigveda and the geography of the later Vedic literature. In the Rigveda Āryan communities have scarcely advanced beyond the country of the river Sarasvatī (Sirhind), which for ever afterwards was remembered with especial veneration as Brahmāvarta, 'the Holy Land.' In the Brāhmaṇas the centre of religious activity has been transferred to the adjacent country on the south-east, *i.e.* the upper portion of the doāb between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the Muttra District of the United Provinces. This was Brahmarshideça—'the Country of the Holy Sages.' Here it was that the hymns of the Rigveda, which were composed in the North-West—the country of the 'Seven Rivers' as it is called (*Ṛv.* VIII, 24, 27)—were collected and arranged; and here it was that the religious and social system which we call Brāhmanism assumed its final form—a form which, in its religious aspect, is a compromise between Āryan and more primitive Indian ideas, and, in its social aspect, the result of the contact of different races. After Brāhman culture had thus occupied what has in all ages been the commanding position in India, its trend was still eastwards; and the country of the 'Seven Rivers,' though not altogether forgotten, occupies a place of less importance in the later literature.