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64-581: The Sarasvati River ( IAST : Sárasvatī-nadī́ ) is a mythologized and deified ancient river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Vedic religion , appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda . As a physical river in the oldest texts of the Rigveda, it is described as a "great and holy river in north-western India ," but in

128-568: A macron ). Vocalic (syllabic) consonants, retroflexes and ṣ ( / ʂ ~ ɕ ~ʃ/ ) have an underdot . One letter has an overdot: ṅ ( /ŋ/ ). One has an acute accent : ś ( /ʃ/ ). One letter has a line below: ḻ ( / ɭ / ) (Vedic). Unlike ASCII -only romanisations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto , the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalisation of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially ( Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ Ḹ ) are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which

192-509: A century of scholarly usage in books and journals on classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways (e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below. The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization , intended for

256-592: A confluence with the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna , at the Triveni Sangam . According to Michael Witzel , superimposed on the Vedic Sarasvati river is the "heavenly river": the Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life." Rigvedic and later Vedic texts have been used to propose identification with present-day rivers, or ancient riverbeds. The Nadistuti hymn in

320-632: A desert (at a place named Vinasana or Adarsana) and joins the sea "impetuously". MB.3.81.115 locates the state of Kurupradesh or Kuru Kingdom to the south of the Sarasvati and north of the Drishadvati . The dried-up, seasonal Ghaggar River in Rajasthan and Haryana reflects the same geographical view described in the Mahabharata . According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during

384-625: A desert. Since the late 19th century, numerous scholars have proposed to identify the Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra River system, which flows through modern-day northwestern- India and eastern- Pakistan , between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, and ends in the Thar desert . Recent geophysical research shows that the supposed downstream Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannel is actually a paleochannel of

448-433: A font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs. Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap ( GNOME ) or kcharselect ( KDE ) – exist on most Linux desktop environments. Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have

512-538: A goddess of both knowledge and fertility. Though Sarasvati initially emerged as a river goddess in the Vedic scriptures, in later Hinduism of the Puranas , she was rarely associated with the river. Instead, she emerged as an independent goddess of knowledge, learning, wisdom, music and the arts. The evolution of the river goddess into the goddess of knowledge started with later Brahmanas , which identified her as Vāgdevī ,

576-595: A monsoon-fed seasonal river that was not subject to devastating floods. Khonde et al. (2017) confirm that the Great Rann of Kutch received sediments from a different source than the Indus, but this source stopped supplying sediments after ca. 10,000 years ago. Likewise, Dave et al. (2019) state that "[o]ur results disprove the proposed link between ancient settlements and large rivers from the Himalayas and indicate that

640-708: A mythical river, an allegory not a "thing". The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century, suggesting an earlier dating of the Rigveda, and renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Sarasvati culture", the "Sarasvati Civilization", the "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization" or the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization," suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures can be equated. The Rigveda contains several hymns which give an indication of

704-480: A protective deity in a hymn to the celestial waters. In 10.135.5, as Indra drinks Soma he is described as refreshed by Sarasvati. The invocations in 10.17 address Sarasvati as a goddess of the forefathers as well as of the present generation. In 1.13, 1.89, 10.85, 10.66 and 10.141, she is listed with other gods and goddesses, not with rivers. In 10.65, she is invoked together with "holy thoughts" ( dhī ) and "munificence" ( puraṃdhi ), consistent with her role as

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768-439: A river goddess, she is described as a mighty flood, and is clearly not an earthly river. According to Michael Witzel, superimposed on the Vedic Sarasvati river is the heavenly river Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life." The description of the Sarasvati as the river of heavens, is interpreted to suggest its mythical nature. In 10.30.12, her origin as a river goddess may explain her invocation as

832-455: A river that connected many lakes due to its abundant volumes of water-flow. Sarasvatī is considered to be a cognate of Avestan Haraxatī . In the younger Avesta , Haraxatī is Arachosia , a region described to be rich in rivers, and its Old Persian cognate Harauvati . The Saraswati river was revered and considered important for Hindus because it is said that it was on this river's banks, along with its tributary Drishadwati , in

896-649: Is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan , William Jones , Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress , in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for

960-587: Is actually a paleochannel of the Sutlej, flowing into the Nara river bed, presently a delta channel c.q. paleochannel of the Indus River . At least 10,000 years ago, well before the rise of the Harappan civilization, the sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a monsoon-fed river. Early in the 2nd millennium BCE the monsoons diminished and the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system dried up, which affected

1024-468: Is believed to also converge with the unseen Sarasvati river, which is believed to flow underground. This is despite Allahabad being at a considerable distance from the possible historic routes of an actual Sarasvati river. At the Kumbh Mela , a mass bathing festival is held at Triveni Sangam, literally "confluence of the three rivers", every 12 years. The belief of Sarasvati joining at the confluence of

1088-782: Is by setting up an alternative keyboard layout . This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For example, alt + a = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system. Linux/Unix and BSD desktop environments allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the menu bar. macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy Unicode keyboard layout. Microsoft Windows Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional custom keyboard mappings for IAST. This Pali keyboard installer made by Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to at least version 10, can use Alt button on

1152-442: Is the feminine nominative singular form of the adjective sárasvat (which occurs in the Rigveda as the name of the keeper of the celestial waters ), derived from 'sáras' + 'vat', meaning 'having sáras-'. Sanskrit sáras- means 'lake, pond' (cf. the derivative sārasa- 'lake bird = Sarus crane '). Mayrhofer considers unlikely a connection with the root * sar- 'run, flow' but does agree that it could have been

1216-603: Is what happened in various parts of the [Indian] subcontinent." Several present-day rivers are also named Sarasvati, after the Vedic Sarasvati: Already since the 19th century, attempts have been made to identify the mythical Sarasvati of the Vedas with physical rivers. Many think that the Vedic Sarasvati river once flowed east of the Indus (Sindhu) river. Scientists, geologists as well as scholars have identified

1280-778: The Avestan Haētumant , literally "dammed, having a dam", which referred to the Helmand River and the irrigated areas around it. The word Haetumant is cognate with Sanskrit Setumatī meaning "one which has a dam." The Helmand stretches for 1,150 km (710 mi). It rises in the northeastern part of Maidan Wardak Province in the Hindu Kush mountains, about 40 km west of Kabul ( 34°34′N 68°33′E  /  34.567°N 68.550°E  / 34.567; 68.550 ), flowing southwestward through Daykundi Province and Uruzgan Province . After passing through

1344-755: The Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority , is used extensively for irrigation, although a buildup of mineral salts has decreased its usefulness in watering crops. For much of its length, the Helmand is free of salt. Its waters are essential for farmers in Afghanistan, but it feeds into the Hamun Lake and is also important to farmers in Iran's southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province . A number of hydroelectric dams have created artificial reservoirs on some of

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1408-640: The Rigveda (10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, while RV 7 .95.1-2, describes the Sarasvati as flowing to the samudra , a word now usually translated as 'ocean', but which could also mean "lake." Later Vedic texts such as the Tandya Brahmana and the Jaiminiya Brahmana , as well as the Mahabharata , mention that the Sarasvati dried up in

1472-561: The Rigveda is the late Harappan (1900-1300 BCE) population shift eastwards to Haryana . The present Ghaggar-Hakra River is a seasonal river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season, but satellite images in possession of the ISRO and ONGC have confirmed that the major course of a river ran through the present-day Ghaggar River. The supposed paleochannel of the Hakra

1536-506: The Triveni confluence with rivers Hiranya and Kapila at Somnath . There are several other Triveni s in India where two physical rivers are joined by the "unseen" Sarasvati, which adds to the sanctity of the confluence. Romila Thapar notes that "once the river had been mythologized through invoking the memory of the earlier river, its name - Sarasvati - could be applied to many rivers, which

1600-647: The Afghanistan's rivers including the Kajaki Dam on the Helmand River. The chief tributary of the Helmand river, the Arghandab River (confluence at 31°27′N 64°23′E  /  31.450°N 64.383°E  / 31.450; 64.383 ), also has a major dam , north of Kandahar . The Helmand valley region is mentioned by name in the Avesta ( Fargard 1:13) as the Aryan land of Haetumant , one of

1664-600: The Drshadvati (Chautang). The Drshadvati is described as a seasonal stream (10.17), meaning it was not from Himalayas. Bhargava has identified Drashadwati river as present-day Sahibi river originating from Jaipur hills in Rajasthan. The Asvalayana Srautasutra and Sankhayana Srautasutra contain verses that are similar to the Latyayana Srautasutra. Wilke and Moebus note that the "historical river" Sarasvati

1728-572: The Ganges and Yamuna originates from the Puranic scriptures and denotes the "powerful legacy" the Vedic river left after her disappearance. The belief is interpreted as "symbolic". The three rivers Sarasvati, Yamuna, Ganga are considered consorts of the Hindu Trinity ( Trimurti ) Brahma , Vishnu (as Krishna ) and Shiva respectively. In lesser known configuration, Sarasvati is said to form

1792-457: The Gangā, Yamunā and Sarasvati join enjoys liberation . Of this there is no doubt." Diana Eck notes that the power and significance of the Sarasvati for present-day India is in the persistent symbolic presence at the confluence of rivers all over India. Although "materially missing", she is the third river, which emerges to join in the meeting of rivers, thereby making the waters thrice holy. After

1856-478: The Ghaggar-Hakra river, after the Vedic tribes moved to the Punjab . The Sarasvati of the Rigveda may also refer to two distinct rivers, with the family books referring to the Helmand River, and the more recent 10th mandala referring to the Ghaggar-Hakra. The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century, with some Hindutva proponents suggesting an earlier dating of

1920-475: The Ghaggar-Hakra well before the beginnings of Indus civilisation. Ajit Singh et al. (2017) show that the paleochannel of the Ghaggar-Hakra is a former course of the Sutlej, which diverted to its present course between 15,000 and 8,000 years ago, well before the development of the Harappan Civilisation. Ajit Singh et al. conclude that the urban populations settled not along a perennial river, but

1984-605: The Harappan civilisation. While there is general agreement that the river courses in the Indus Basin have frequently changed course, the exact sequence of these changes and their dating have been problematic. Older publications have suggested that the Sutlej and the Yamuna drained into the Hakra well into Mature Harappan times, providing ample volume to the supply provided by the monsoon-fed Ghaggar. The Sutlej and Yamuna then changed course between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE, due to either tectonic events or "slightly altered gradients on

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2048-712: The Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of the Saraswati from Dwarka to Mathura. There were ancient kingdoms too (the era of the Mahajanapads) that lay in parts of north Rajasthan and that were named on the Sarasvati River. Several Puranas describe the Sarasvati River, and also record that the river separated into a number of lakes ( saras ). In the Skanda Purana , the Sarasvati originates from

2112-578: The Rigveda; renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Sarasvati culture", the "Sarasvati Civilization", the "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization" or the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization," suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures can be equated; and rejecting the Indo-Aryan migrations theory , which postulates an extended period of migrations of Indo-European speaking people into the Indian subcontinent between ca. 1900 BCE and 1400 BCE. Sárasvatī

2176-700: The Sarasvati is from the Brahmanas , texts that are composed in Vedic Sanskrit , but dating to a later date than the Veda Samhitas. The Jaiminiya Brahmana (2.297) speaks of the 'diving under (upamajjana) of the Sarasvati', and the Tandya Brahmana (or Pancavimsa Br.) calls this the 'disappearance' (vinasana). The same text (25.10.11-16) records that the Sarasvati is 'so to say meandering' (kubjimati) as it could not sustain heaven which it had propped up. The Plaksa Prasravana (place of appearance/source of

2240-524: The Sarasvati with many present-day or now-defunct rivers. Two theories are popular in the attempts to identify the Sarasvati. Several scholars have identified the river with the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra River or dried up part of it, which is located in Northwestern India and Pakistan. A second popular theory associates the river with the Helmand river or an ancient river in the present Helmand Valley in Afghanistan. Others consider Sarasvati

2304-567: The Sindhu: "Five rivers flowing on their way speed onward to Sarasvati, but then become Sarasvati a fivefold river in the land." According to the medieval commentator Uvata, the five tributaries of the Sarasvati were the Punjab rivers Drishadvati , Satudri ( Sutlej ), Chandrabhaga ( Chenab ), Vipasa ( Beas ) and the Iravati ( Ravi ). The first reference to the disappearance of the lower course of

2368-592: The Sutlej, which flowed into the Nara river , a delta channel of the Indus River . Around 10,000-8,000 years ago, this channel was abandoned when the Sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a system of monsoon-fed rivers which did not reach the sea. The Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago. and ISRO has observed that major Indus Valley civilization sites at Kalibangan ( Rajasthan ), Banawali and Rakhigarhi ( Haryana ), Dholavira and Lothal ( Gujarat ) lay along this course. When

2432-463: The Vedic Sarasvati dried, new myths about the rivers arose. Sarasvati is described to flow in the underworld and rise to the surface at some places. For centuries, the Sarasvati river existed in a "subtle or mythic" form, since it corresponds with none of the major rivers of present-day South Asia. The confluence ( sangam ) or joining of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers at Triveni Sangam , Allahabad ,

2496-644: The Vedic state of Brahmavarta , that Vedic Sanskrit had its genesis, and important Vedic scriptures like initial part of Rigveda and several Upanishads were supposed to have been composed by Vedic seers. In the Manusmriti , Brahmavarta is portrayed as the "pure" centre of Vedic culture. Bridget and Raymond Allchin in The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan took the view that "The earliest Aryan homeland in India-Pakistan (Aryavarta or Brahmavarta)

2560-548: The area of Sanskrit studies make use of free OpenType fonts such as FreeSerif or Gentium , both of which have complete support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License , respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of its associated fonts. Helmand River The name comes from

2624-655: The city of Lashkargah in Helmand Province , it enters the desert of Dasht-e Margo , and then flows to the Sistan marshes and the Hamun-i-Helmand lake region around Zabol at the Afghan-Iranian border ( 31°9′N 61°33′E  /  31.150°N 61.550°E  / 31.150; 61.550 ). A few smaller rivers such as Tarnak and Arghandab flow into Helmand. This river, managed by

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2688-418: The composition of the Rigveda. In the words of Wilke and Moebus, the Sarasvati had been reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert" by the time that the Vedic people migrated into north-west India. Rigvedic references to a physical river also indicate that the Sarasvati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra) approximately 3000 years ago," "depicting

2752-536: The consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable freeware example is BabelMap ). macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in

2816-631: The convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters. For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges the retroflex (underdotted) liquids with the vocalic ones ( ringed below ) and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts , as used for languages other than Sanskrit. The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit

2880-632: The extremely flat plains," resulting in the drying-up of the Hakra in the Thar Desert . More recent publications have shown that the Sutlej and the Yamuna shifted course well before Harappan times, leaving the monsoon-fed Ghaggar-Hakra which dried-up during late Harappan times. Clift et al. (2012), using dating of zircon sand grains, have shown that subsurface river channels near the Indus Valley civilisation sites in Cholistan immediately below

2944-553: The flow of the geography of the river, and an identification of the Sarasvati as described in the later books of the Rigveda with the Ghaggra-Hakra: Yet, the Rigveda also contains clues for an identification with the Helmand river in Afghanistan: The Rigveda was composed during the latter part of the late Harappan period, and according to Shaffer, the reason for the predominance of the Sarasvati in

3008-585: The geographical list of the Nadistuti Sukta . In this hymn, the Sarasvati River is placed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej . In the oldest texts of the Rigveda she is described as a "great and holy river in north-western India," but Michael Witzel notes that the Rigveda indicates that the Sarswati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra) approximately 3000 years ago." The middle books 3 and 7 and

3072-497: The goddess of speech, perhaps due to the centrality of speech in the Vedic cult and the development of the cult on the banks of the river. It is also possible to postulate two originally independent goddesses that were fused into one in later Vedic times. Aurobindo has proposed, on the other hand, that "the symbolism of the Veda betrays itself to the greatest clearness in the figure of the goddess Sarasvati ... She is, plainly and clearly,

3136-423: The goddess of the World, the goddess of a divine inspiration ...". In post-Rigvedic literature, the disappearance of the Sarasvati is mentioned. Also the origin of the Sarasvati is identified as Plaksa Prasravana (Peepal tree or Ashwattha tree as known in India and Nepal). In a supplementary chapter of the Vajasaneyi-Samhita of the Yajurveda (34.11), Sarasvati is mentioned in a context apparently meaning

3200-464: The late books 10 "depict the present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water." The Sarasvati acquired an extalted status in the mythology of the Kuru Kingdom , where the Rigveda was compiled. Sarasvati is mentioned some fifty times in the hymns of the Rigveda. It is mentioned in thirteen hymns of the late books (1 and 10) of the Rigveda. The most important hymns related to Sarasvati goddess are RV 6 .61, RV 7 .95 and RV 7.96. As

3264-439: The major palaeo-fluvial system traversing through this region ceased long before the establishment of the Harappan civilisation." According to Chaudhri et al. (2021) "the Saraswati River used to flow from the glaciated peaks of the Himalaya to the Arabian sea," and an "enormous amount of water was flowing through this channel network until BC 11,147." IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration ( IAST )

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3328-412: The middle and late Rigvedic books, it is described as a small river ending in "a terminal lake ( samudra )." As the goddess Sarasvati , the other referent for the term "Sarasvati" which developed into an independent identity in post-Vedic times. The river is also described as a powerful river and mighty flood. The Sarasvati is also considered by Hindus to exist in a metaphysical form, in which it formed

3392-403: The monsoons that fed the rivers further diminished, the Hakra dried-up some 4,000 years ago, becoming an intermittent river, and the urban Harappan civilisation declined, becoming localized in smaller agricultural communities. Identification of a mighty physical Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra system is therefore problematic, since the Gagghar-Hakra had dried up well before the time of

3456-438: The opportunity to install and use the sa-itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library. Or user can use some Unicode characters in Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended Additional and Combining Diarcritical Marks block to write IAST. Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for

3520-428: The present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water." Also, Rigvedic descriptions of the Sarasvati do not fit the actual course of the Gagghar-Hakra. "Sarasvati" has also been identified with the Helmand in ancient Arachosia , or Harauvatiš ( Old Persian : 𐏃𐎼𐎢𐎺𐎫𐎡𐏁 ), in present day southern Afghanistan , the name of which may have been reused from the more ancient Sanskrit name of

3584-411: The presumed Ghaggar-Hakra channel show sediment affinity not with the Ghagger-Hakra, but instead with the Beas River in the western sites and the Sutlej and the Yamuna in the eastern ones. This suggests that the Yamuna itself, or a channel of the Yamuna, along with a channel of the Sutlej may have flowed west some time between 47,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE. The drainage from the Yamuna may have been lost from

3648-491: The reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars. Scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi and other classical Indian languages. IAST is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT, Muktabodha, GRETIL, and sanskritdocuments.org. The IAST scheme represents more than

3712-408: The right side of the keyboard instead of Ctrl+Alt combination). Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a screen-selection entry method . Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting ⊞ Win + R then type charmap then hit ↵ Enter ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in

3776-422: The river) may refer to a spring in the Sivalik hills . The distance between the source and the Vinasana (place of disappearance of the river) is said to be 44  Ashwin (between several hundred and 1,600 miles) (Tandya Br. 25.10.16; cf. Av. 6.131.3; Pancavimsa Br.). In the Latyayana Srautasutra (10.15-19) the Sarasvati seems to be a perennial river up to the Vinasana, which is west of its confluence with

3840-438: The romanisation of all Indic scripts , is an extension of IAST. The IAST letters are listed with their Devanagari equivalents and phonetic values in IPA , valid for Sanskrit , Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological changes have occurred: * H is actually glottal , not velar . Some letters are modified with diacritics : Long vowels are marked with an overline (often called

3904-436: The transliteration of Indic scripts according to the IAST and ISO 15919 standards. For example, the Arial , Tahoma and Times New Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support precomposed Unicode characters like ī . Many other text fonts commonly used for book production may be lacking in support for one or more characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in

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3968-414: The water pot of Brahma and flows from Plaksa on the Himalayas. It then turns west at Kedara and also flows underground. Five distributaries of the Sarasvati are mentioned. The text regards Sarasvati as a form of Brahma's consort Brahmi . According to the Vamana Purana 32.1-4, the Sarasvati rose from the Plaksa tree ( Pipal tree ). The Padma Purana proclaims: One who bathes and drinks there where

4032-401: Was a "topographically tangible mythogeme", which was already reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert", by the time of composition of the Hindu epics . These post-Vedic texts regularly talk about drying up of the river, and start associating the goddess Sarasvati with language, rather than the river. According to the Mahabharata (3rd c. BCE - 3rd c. CE) the Sarasvati River dried up to

4096-476: Was in the Punjab and in the valleys of the Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers in the time of the Rigveda." The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all but the fourth book of the Vedas . Macdonell and Keith provided a comprehensive survey of Vedic references to the Sarasvati River in their Vedic Index . In the late book 10, only two references are unambiguously to the river: 10.64.9, calling for the aid of three "great rivers", Sindhu, Sarasvati and Sarayu ; and 10.75.5,

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