The Sindhu River is one that gave its name to a whole civilization, a country, it’s people and one of the oldest belief systems in the world – Hinduism. Definitely we would like to know more about her.
Confluence of Indus and Zanskar rivers. The Indus is at the left of the picture, flowing left-to-right; the Zanskar, carrying more water, comes in from the top of the picture ; Image Source: Bernard Gagnon
DESCRIPTION
The Sindhu is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan River of South and Central Asia. Sindhu is an antecedent river, meaning that it existed before the Himalayas and entrenched itself while they were rising. Which means that the Sindhu is older than the Himalayas.
LOCATION
The river rises from the Lake ‘Man Sarovar’ in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, bends sharply to the left after the Nanga Parbat, and flows south-by-southwest through Pakistan and completes its 3,180 km journey before emptying into the Arabian Sea near the port city of Karachi.
SINDHU IN THE HISTORY AND VEDIC YORE
The Rig Ved describes several rivers, including one named ‘Sindhu’. The Rig Vedic ‘Sindhu’ is thought to be the present-day Sindh River. It is attested 176 times in its text, 94 times in the plural, and most often used in the generic sense of ‘river’. In the Rig Ved, notably in the later hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Sindh River in particular, e.g., in the list of rivers mentioned in the hymn of ‘Nadi-stuti sukta’. The Rig Vedic hymns apply a feminine gender to all the rivers mentioned therein, except for the Brahmaputra. During the 2nd millennium BC, the Punjab region was mentioned in the Rig Ved hymns as ‘Sapta Sindhu’ and in the Avesta religious texts as ‘Hapta Hindu’ (both terms meaning ‘seven rivers’).
The river was known to the ancient Indians in Sanskrit as ‘Sindhu’ and the Persians as ‘Hindu’. Variation between the two names is explained by the Old Iranian sound change *s > h, which occurred between 850 and 600 BCE according to Asko Parpola. From the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the name passed to the Greeks as Indós. It was adopted by the Romans as Indus. The name India is derived from Indus. The modern name in Urdu and Hindi is Sindh, a semi-learned borrowing from Sanskrit.
The Sindhu River has historically been important to many cultures of the region. The 3rd millennium BC saw the rise of Sindhu Valley civilisation, a major urban civilization of the Bronze Age. The Sindhu River came into the knowledge of the Western world early in the classical period, when King Darius of Persia sent his Greek subject Scylax of Caryanda to explore the river, circa. 515 BC.
THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE
River Sindhu is one of the seven sacred rivers also known as Goddess Sindhu along with Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Narmada, Kaveri, and Godavari in the ‘Nadi-stuti sukta’. Sindhu Darshan Festival is held on every Guru Purnima on the banks of Sindhu. The people who lived on the banks of Sindhu and Sindh region are known as Sindhi community, for them River Sindhu is highly sacred. Lord Jhulelal or Dariyalal or Varuna appeared in Sindh region as the main deity and protector for this community.
THE LATEST DEVELOPMENT
In November 2011, satellite images showed that the Sindhu River had re-entered India, feeding the Great Rann of Kutch, Little Rann of Kutch and a lake near Ahmedabad known as ‘Nal Sarovar’. Heavy rains had left the river basin along with the Lake Manchar, Lake Hemal and Kalri Lake inundated. This happened two centuries after the Sindhu River shifted its course westwards following the 1819 Rann of Kutch earthquake.
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