Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/154

 lying to the south of Ambāla, and commencing some sixty miles south of Simla.

This small river now loses itself in the sands of the desert, but the evidence of ancient river-beds appears to favour the conclusion that it was originally a tributary of the Çutudrī (Sutlej). It is therefore not improbable that in Vedic times it reached the sea, and was considerably larger than it is now. Considering, too, the special sanctity which it had already acquired, the laudations supposed to be compatible only with the magnitude of the Indus may not have seemed too exaggerated when applied to the lesser stream. It is to be noted that the Dṛishadvatī, the "stony" (now Ghogra or Ghugger), in the only passage in which the name occurs in the Rigveda, is associated with the Sarasvatī, Agni being invoked to flame on the banks of these rivers. This is perhaps an indication that even in the age of the Rigveda the most easterly limit of the Indus river system had already acquired a certain sanctity as the region in which the sacrificial ritual and the art of sacred poetry were practised in the greatest perfection. There are indications showing that by the end at least of the Rigvedic period some of the Aryan invaders had passed beyond this region and had reached the western limit of the Gangetic river system. For the Yamunā (now Jumna), the most westerly tributary of the Ganges in the north, is mentioned in three passages, two of which prove that the Aryan settlements already extended to its banks. The Ganges itself is already known, for its name is mentioned directly in one passage of the Rigveda and indirectly in another. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that the name of the Ganges is not to be found in any of the other Vedas.