--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...> wrote:
> One of the most interesting aspects of the whole Saraswati issue is
the importance given to certain rivers by the Vedic (and indeed by the
Old Iranian) people.
>
> "Saraswati" is not just a river (or perhaps a type of river?) but
also a River Goddess and also a place where their culture is
flourishing. Do you (or any other IEF participant) have ideas about
the role of rivers in (Proto)/Indo-European thinking? Was this common
also among the other branches of the IE family?
Of course river deities were quite common in IE mythologies, e.g. in
Greece, where actual rivers (e.g. the Achelous) as well as
mythological or half-mythological ones (the Styx) were personified and
appeared as characters in myths. Among the important Iranian deities,
the goddess Anahita was connected with a great river (possibly the
Oxus, or indeed _any_ river of local importance). The identification
of an area with its main river, and the deification of that river as
the protector or (perhaps more often) protectress of the country was
common among the Celts, whose tutelary river goddesses (Matrona,
Sequana, Sabrina, Brigantia, etc.) are many and well known.
I tend to agree with George that at least some aspects of the Rigvedic
Sarasvati (as an actual river) should be identified with the Indus,
which certainly flows all the way from the Himalayas to the ocean, is
a really huge river and can with reason be regarded as the "mother" of
the Saptasindhu, its upper basin being also the cradle of the Aryan
culture as we know it. Such was certainly the opinion of early
Sanskritologists (including Hermann G. Grassmann, for example).
Various other rivers may have been referred to as <sarasvati:> at one
time or another, especially if we regard the word as an epither rather
than a proper name. Ironically, the idea of the Sarasvati as a mighty
river lost in the Indian desert was conceived in the late 19th century
by European scholars (such as C.F. Oldham) and popularised in the
1940's by Sir Aurel Stein.
Piotr