Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 652

58
VEDIC HYMNS.
watery sea. Wilson remarks that the influence of the winds upon the sea, alluded to in this and the following verse, indicates more familiarity with the ocean than we should have expected from the traditional inland position of the early Hindus, and it has therefore been supposed by others that, even in passages like our own, samudra was meant for the sky, the waters above the firmament. But although there are passages in the Rig-veda where samudrá must be taken to mean the welkin (RV. I, 95, 3. samudrá ékam divi ékam ap-sú), this word shows in by far the larger number of passages the clear meaning of ocean. There is one famous passage, VII, 95, 2, which proves that the Vedic poets, who were supposed to have known the upper courses only of the rivers of the Penjab, had followed the greatest and most sacred of their rivers, the Sarasvatî, as far as the Indian ocean. It is well known that, as early as the composition of the laws of the Manavas, and possibly as early as the composition of the Satras on which these metrical laws are based, the river Sarasvati had changed its course, and that the place where that river disappeared under ground was called Vinasana", the loss. This Vinasana forms, according to the laws of the Mânavas, the western frontier of Madhyadesa, the eastern frontier being formed by the confluence of the Gangå and Yamuna. Madhyadesa is a section of Åryâvarta, the abode of the Âryas in the widest sense. Åryavarta shares with Madhyadesa the same frontiers in the north and the south, viz. the Himalaya and Vindhya mountains, but it extends beyond Madhyadesa to the west and east as far as the western and eastern seas. A section of Madhyadesa, again, is the country described as that of the Brahmarshis, which comprises only Kurukshetra, the countries of the Matsyas, Pañkalas (Kanyakubga, according to Kullûka), and Sūrasenas (Mathura, according to Kullaka). The most sacred spot of all, however, is that section of the Brahmarshi country which lies between the rivers Drishadvatî and Sarasvati, and which in the laws of
a Mentioned in Lâty. Srauta Satras, X, 15, 1; Pañkavimsa Brâhm. XXV, 10, 1; see Hist. A. S.L., p. 13.
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