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 654

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VEDIC HYMNS.
rature the disappearance of the Sarasvati in the desert is a fact familiar to every writer, no mention of it should occur during the whole of the Vedic period, and it is still more curious that in one of the hymns of the Rig-veda we should have a distinct statement that the Sarasvatî fell into the sea :
VII, 95, 1-2. pra kshódaså dhấyasa sasre eshå sárasvati dharúnam āyasi půh, pra-bábadhânâ rathyâ-iva yâti visvah apáh mahinã sindhuh anyáh. ekå aketat sárasvatî nadînâm súkih yatî girl-bhyah ã samudrát, râysh kétanti bhúvanasya bhấreh ghritám páyah duduhe nâhushåya.
1. With her fertilising stream this Sarasvati comes forth(she is to us) a stronghold, an iron gate. Moving along as on a chariot, this river surpasses in greatness all other waters. 2. Alone among all rivers Sarasvatî listened, she who goes pure from the mountains as far as the sea. She who knows of the manifold wealth of the world, has poured out to man her fat milk.
Here we see samudrá used clearly in the sense of sea, the Indian sea, and we have at the same time a new indication of the distance which separates the Vedic age from that of the later Sanskrit literature. Though it may not be possible to determine by geological evidence the time of the changes which modified the southern area of the Penjab and caused the Sarasvati to disappear in the desert, still the fact remains that the loss of the Sarasvati is later than the Vedic age, and that at that time the waters of the Sarasvati reached the sea. Professor Wilson had observed long ago in reference to the rivers of that part of India, that there have been, no doubt, considerable changes here, both in the nomenclature and in the courses of the rivers, and this remark has been fully confirmed by later observations. I believe it can be proved that in the Vedic age the Sarasvati was a river as large as the Sutlej, that it was the last of the rivers of the Penjab, and therefore the iron gate, or the real frontier against the rest of India. At present the Sarasvati is so small a river that the epithets applied to the Sarasvati in the Veda have become quite inapplicable to it. The Vedic Rishis, though acquainted with numerous rivers, including
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