Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/153

 which first came into contact with them in that quarter a name for the whole peninsula. Adopted in the form of Indos, the word gave rise to the Greek appellation India as the country of the Indus. It was borrowed by the ancient Persians as Hindu, which is used in the Avesta as a name of the country itself. More accurate is the modern Persian designation Hindustan, "land of the Indus," a name properly applying only to that part of the peninsula which lies between the Himālaya and Vindhya ranges.

Mention is often made in the Rigveda of the sapta sindhavaḥ or "seven rivers," which in one passage at least is synonymous with the country inhabited by the Aryan Indians. It is interesting to note that the same expression hapta hindu occurs in the Avesta, though it is there restricted to mean only that part of the Indian territory which lay in Eastern Kabulistan. If "seven" is here intended for a definite number, the "seven rivers" must originally have meant the Kabul, the Indus, and the five rivers of the Panjāb, though later the Sarasvatī may have been substituted for the Kabul. For the Sarasvatī is the sacred river of the Rigveda, more frequently mentioned, generally as a goddess, and lauded with more fervour than any other stream. The poet's descriptions are often only applicable to a large river. Hence Roth and other distinguished scholars concluded that Sarasvatī is generally used by the poets of the Rigveda simply as a sacred designation of the Indus. On the other hand, the name in a few passages undoubtedly means the small river midway between the Sutlej and the Jumna, which at a later period formed, with the Dṛishadvatī, the eastern boundary of the sacred region called Brahmāvarta,