Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s18.635

v1.c3.s18.635

Deśa, ‘land,’ is a word that does not come into use till the time of the Upaniṣads and Sūtras,¹ excepting one occurrence in the latest period of the Brāhmaṇa² literature, and one in a much-discussed passage of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā,³ where the Sarasvatī is mentioned as having five tributaries. This passage militates against the view that Sarasvatī was a name of the Indus, because the use of Deśa here seems to indicate⁴ that the seer of the verse placed the Sarasvatī in the Madhya-deśa or ‘Middle Country,’ to which all the geographical data of the Yajurvedas point.⁵