Vedic Mythology c5.s3.9

c5.s3.9

There has been much controversy as to the identity of the stream of which the goddess Sarasvatī is a personification. The name is identical with that of the Avestan river Haraqaiti in Afghanistan⁹, and it may have been the latter river which was first lauded as the Sarasvatī¹⁰. But Roth (PW.), Grassmann (GW.), Ludwig¹¹, and Zimmer (AIL. 10) are of opinion, that in the RV. Sarasvatī usually and originally meant a mighty stream, probably the Indus (Sarasvatī being the sacred and Sindhu the secular name), but that it occasionally designates the small stream in Madhyadeśa, to which both its name and its sacred character were in later times transferred. Max Müller¹² believes it to be identical with this small river Sarasvatī, which with the Dṛṣadvatī formed the boundaries of the sacred region Brahmāvarta and which loses itself in the sands of the desert, but in Vedic times reached the sea. According to Oldham¹³ a survey of ancient river-beds affords evidence that the Sarasvatī was originally a tributary of the Śutudrī (the modern Sutlej)¹⁴, and that when the latter left its old bed and joined the Vipāś, the Sarasvatī continued to flow in the old bed of the Śutudrī.