The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.132

v1.c24.132

The name for India in the Avesta is Hindu, which, like the Old Persian Hi(n)du, is derived from the river Indus, Sanskrit Sindhu,—the designation of the stream being transferred to the territory adjacent to it and to its tributaries. The first chapter of the Avestan Vendīdād (whatever may be the age of the chapter) contains an allusion to a portion of Northern India in a list which it gives of sixteen lands or regions, created by Ahura Mazda and apparently regarded as under Irānian sway¹. The fifteenth of these domains, according to Vd. I, 18, was Hapta Hindu, ‘Seven Rivers,’ a region of ‘abnormal heat,’ probably identical with the territory of Sapta Sindhavas, ‘Seven Rivers,’ in the Veda (see especially Rv. VIII, 24, 27)². The district in question, which was more comprehensive than the modern Punjab, or ‘Five Rivers,’ must have included the lands watered in the north and north-west of Hindustān by the river Indus and its affluents—answering, apparently, to the Vedic Vitastā (now Jhelum), Asiknī (Chenāb), Parushṇī (later named Irāvatī, whence its present designation Rāvi), Vipāç (Beās), and Çutudrī (Sutlej), the latter being the easternmost stream³.