Drishadvati River

The Drsadvati , Drishadwati or Drishadvati River (dṛṣad-vatī, or river meaning "she with many stones") is the most imagined, assumed, deemed, and hypothesized river by indologists to identify the route of revered Vedic river Saraswati and the state of Brahmavarta. It was on the confluence of the revered rivers Saraswati and Drishadwati during the Vedic period that the state of Brahmavarta was located, where the Rishis composed the Vedas and other Sanskrit Granths, which are the basis of Vedic Sanatana Dharma, presently called Hinduism. Though the Drishadvati river has several mentions in the Sanskrit Granths, a clear source of Drishadwati is not mentioned any where. This generates lot of speculation on source and route of Drishadwati river. But the new researches backed by various scientific techniques are becoming useful to locate the route of Drishadwati river. Latyayana Srautasutra (10.17) has described it as a seasonal river, while Saraswati as a perennial river up to Vinasana (10.15-19). This shows that Drishadwati river did not have its source in Himalayas.

Origin of Drishadwati

The Drsadvati River has been identified by Oldham with the Chautang River. Talageri (2000) identifies it with the Hariyupiya river and the Yavyavati river. Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1871 identified Rakshi River as old Drishadwati river and showed its flow from Chunar near Varanasi.

References

• Amal Kar, Bimal Ghose: Drishadvati River System of India: An assessment and new findings. The Geographical Journal, Vol 150, No 2, 1984.
• Shrikant G. Talageri, The Rigveda, a historical analysis, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi (2000), chapter 4