परुष्णी

यन्त्रोपारोपितकोशांशः

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects

पृष्ठभागोऽयं यन्त्रेण केनचित् काले काले मार्जयित्वा यथास्रोतः परिवर्तयिष्यते। तेन मा भूदत्र शोधनसम्भ्रमः। सज्जनैः मूलमेव शोध्यताम्।

Paruṣṇī is the name of a river which is mentioned in the Nadī-stuti (‘Praise of Rivers’), and in the song of Sudās’ victory over the ten kings, which seems to have been made decisive by the rise of the river drowning the fugitives. In these passages and one of the eighth book of the Rigveda, where it is called a ‘great stream’ (mahenadi), the name is certainly that of the river later called Ravi (Irāvatī), as recognized by Yāska. Pischel sees a reference to it in two other passages of the Rigveda, where ‘wool’ (ūṛṇā) is connected with the word paruṣṇī, and the allusion to the river is accepted by Max Müller and Oldenberg, though they are not fully agreed as to the exact sense of the passages in question. Pischel suggests that the name is derived from the ‘flocks’ (parus) of wool, not from the bends of the river, as understood by the Nirukta, or from its reeds, as Roth suggests.

The mention of the Paruṣṇī and the Yamunā in the hymn celebrating the victory of Sudās has given rise to the conjectures of Hopkins, that the Yamunā in that hymn is merely another name for the Paruṣṇī, and of Geldner, that the Paruṣṇī there is merely a tributary of the Yamunā (Jumna). But neither interpretation is either essential or even probable. The hymn is a condensed one, and may well be taken as celebrating two great victories of Sudās. There is a doubtful reference to the Paruṣṇī in the Atharvaveda.