Names and etymology The Sanskrit word Sindhu means river, stream or ocean, probably from a root sidh meaning "to keep off". Sindhu is still the local appellation for the Indus River. In the Rigveda , "Sindhu" ( Sanskrit : सिन्धु ) is the name of the Indus river. Sindhu is attested 176 times in the Rigveda, 95 times in the plural, more often used in the generic meaning. In the Rigveda, notably in the later hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Indus river in particular, as in the list of rivers of the Nadistuti sukta . This resulted in the anomaly of a river with masculine gender: all other Rigvedic rivers are female. This is not just a grammatical designation: the other rivers were imagined as goddesses and compared to cows and mares yielding milk and butter. The word Sindhu became Hinduš in Old Persian . The Ancient G...
Comments
Post a Comment