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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s4: § 4. The Rivers

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s4

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§ 4. The Rivers

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It is perhaps doubtful whether the rivers can claim to be regarded as among the great gods of the Rigveda, but their importance in the mind of the Vedic Indians was perhaps sufficient to justify their treatment in this place. One whole long hymn³ is accorded to the Sarasvatī, and in two verses of it are enumerated her tributaries and other affluents, while the Vipāç and Çutudrī claim another hymn⁴ of some poetical beauty. By far the greatest of rivers is the Sarasvatī, which has in all three hymns devoted to it: she flows from the mountains, tearing them down; she has seven sisters and is mother of streams: she is daughter of the lightning (*pāvīravī*) and has a spouse, who later is called Sarasvant. She is divine, she comes with the Fathers to the sacrifice, and is stated to be descended from the sky, an early anticipation of the common Indian belief of the divine birth of the Ganges. She has other and more intimate connexions with human life: she bestows progeny, wealth, and immortality, she gave Vadhryaçva a son; she is terrible and a Vṛtra-slayer, but to her worshippers a protector.

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³ RV. x. 75 ; cf. Stein, *Bhandarkar Comm. Vol.*, pp. 21 ff.

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⁴ RV. iii. 33.

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Sarasvatī is connected with Indra and with Pūṣan, but in the main with the Açvins: she takes part in the rite by which they heal Indra, and she is spoken of in the Yajurveda¹ as the wife of the Açvins. She forms also one of the triad of goddesses Bhāratī, Iḍā, and Sarasvatī, or Mahī, Hotrā, and Sarasvatī, who are invoked in the Āprī hymns of the animal sacrifice: Iḍā is a mere abstraction of the idea of the sacrificial offering, and Mahī and Hotrā are clearly deities of the same kind: Bhāratī, however, must refer to the lady of the Bharatas, and the identification is of first-rate importance as it enables us to decide which Sarasvatī is meant in these cases. The Bharatas, we know, dwelt on the Sarasvatī and the Dṛṣadvatī, and sacrifices on the Sarasvatī are prescribed in the Brāhmaṇas and the Sūtras: the combination of the goddesses must have grown up when Sarasvatī meant the stream which is connected with the Dṛṣadvatī.² Nor is it at all improbable that the same river is meant in every or nearly every case: the older view³ that Sarasvatī meant the Indus, or the view⁴ that in any case it refers still as originally to the Harahvaitī cannot be supported by any conclusive proof: it is true that the present river Sarasvatī is small, and loses itself in the sand, but it may well have been more important than this in the time of the Rigveda, and in any case there is no doubt of its holiness in the Brāhmaṇa period, a fact which really disposes of the argument against it, based on its size.

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¹ VS. xix. 12, 94.

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² Max Müller, SBE, xxxii. 60 ff.

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³ Zimmer, *Altind. Leben*, p. 10.

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⁴ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 99; iii. 374 ff. He takes the celestial Sarasvatī as the milky way (i. 382, 383). Carnoy (*Les Indo-Européens*, p. 199) compares Anāhita in Iran and suggests borrowing from the Babylonian Nin Ella, mother of waters.

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In the Rigveda in Sarasvatī we need not see anything more than a river goddess somewhat strongly anthropomorphized in certain details who inspires prayers of devotion. But in the Brāhmaṇas she is connected with speech, perhaps because Vedic culture and poetry flourished specially there, and in the post-Vedic literature she is the goddess of eloquence and the wife of Brahman. The nearest approach to this is the statement of the Yajurveda⁵ that, when Indra was ill, Sarasvatī by speech communicated vigour to him, where speech is merely her instrument, not her nature, and her healing power must rather be deemed to be due to her nature as the purifying water.

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⁵ ÇB. iii. 9. 1. 7; AB. iii. 1. 10; TS. vii. 2. 7. 4; MS. iii. 6. 4; TB. i. 8. 1; 4. 2; AV. v. 7. 4; 10. 8; PB. vi. 7. 7. That Sarasvatī in RV. x. 17 is the river severing quick and dead, the later Vaitaraṇī, is most implausible.

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Beside Sarasvatī in one hymn¹ we have an invocation of Sarasvant to give offspring, protection, and plenty: his fertilizing waters and breast are referred to. Agni as Sarasvant once appears as a giver of rain. It is hardly necessary to see in him more than a male counterpart of Sarasvatī: there is nothing to support the more important character of guardian of the celestial waters which is accorded to him by Roth or the identification with Apāṁ Napāt proposed by Hillebrandt² and Hardy.³

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¹ RV. vii. 96.

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² *Op. cit.* i. 380-2.

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³ *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, pp. 42, 43. Usener (*Götternamen*, p. 31) wrongly suggests that he is prior to Sarasvatī.

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Other streams are addressed as great, such as Sarayū and Sindhu, and the conception of seven streams is particularly often found, doubtless because of the Vedic predilection for the number seven. It is probably needless to press the number for an exact identification, especially as it is quite probable the idea came with the Indians from Iran.⁴

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⁴ See Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 242. Cf. Tilak, *Arctic Home*, pp. 288 ff.; N. G. Sardesai, *Bhandarkar Comm. Vol.*, pp. 93 ff. (Russian Turkestan).

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