A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.8

c9.8

Mention is often made in the *Rigveda* of the *sapta sindhavaḥ*, or "seven rivers," which in one passage at least is synonymous with the country inhabited by the Aryan Indians. It is interesting to note that the same expression *hapta hindu* occurs in the *Avesta*, though it is there restricted to mean only that part of the Indian territory which lay in Eastern Kabulistan. If "seven" is here intended for a definite number, the "seven rivers" must originally have meant the Kabul, the Indus, and the five rivers of the Panjāb, though later the Sarasvatī may have been substituted for the Kabul. For the Sarasvatī is the sacred river of the *Rigveda*, more frequently mentioned, generally as a goddess, and lauded with more fervour than any other stream. The poet's descriptions are often only applicable to a large river. Hence Roth and other distinguished scholars concluded that Sarasvatī is generally used by the poets of the *Rigveda* simply as a sacred designation of the Indus. On the other hand, the name in a few passages undoubtedly means the small river midway between the Sutlej and the Jumna, which at a later period formed, with the Dṛishadvatī, the eastern boundary of the sacred region called Brahmāvarta, lying to the south of Ambāla, and commencing some sixty miles south of Simla.