Sutlej

The Satluj River is the longest of the five rivers that flow through the historic crossroads region of Punjab in northern India and Pakistan. The Sutlej River is also known as Satadru. It is the easternmost tributary of the Indus River. The Bhakra Dam is built around the river Sutlej to provide irrigation and other facilities to the states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana.

O Gangā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Shutudrī, Parushnī, hear my praise! ~ Rigveda

Quotes

• Favour ye this my laud, O Gangā, Yamunā, O Sutudri, Paruṣṇī and Sarasvatī: With Asikni, Vitasta, O Marudvrdha, O Ārjīkīya with Susoma hear my call. First with Trstama thou art eager to flow forth, with Rasā, and Susartu, and with Svetya here, With Kubha; and with these, Sindhu and Mehatnu, thou seekest in thy course Krumu and Gomati.
  • Rigveda 10.75.5-6

• O Gangā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Shutudrī (Sutlej), Parushnī (Ravi), hear my praise! Hear my call, O Asiknī (Chenab), Marudvridhā (Maruvardhvan), Vitastā (Jhelum) with Ārjīkiyā and Sushomā.
  First you flow united with Trishtāmā, with Susartu and Rasā, and with Svetyā, O Sindhu (Indus) with Kubhā (Kabul) to Gomati (Gumal or Gomal), with Mehatnū to Krumu (Kurram), with whom you proceed together.
  • Rigveda 10.75.5-6
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• A ‘stream that emptied into Satladar [Sutlej] : it bore the name of Sarsuti.’
  • Tarikh-i-Mubarak Shahi, Quoted by Raychaudhuri, H.C., ‘The Sarasvati’, Raychaudhuri, H.C., ‘The Sarasvati’, Science and Culture, vol. VIII, no. 12, June 1943, p. 473. . in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Geologists have long identified ‘a wide dry channel coming south from the spot near Ropar where the Satluj abruptly swings westward’; that palaeochannel meets the Ghaggar near Shatrana, some 60 km south of Patiala, close to the point where the Sarsuti also joins the Ghaggar. It roughly follows the bed of the seasonal Patialewali. Remarkably, notes Valdiya, ‘at the point of confluence, the Ghaggar channel suddenly becomes 6-8 km wide—and remains unusually wide until it loses itself in the sand dunes of the Thar desert, west of Anupgarh’. This sudden broadening of the Ghaggar is the unmistakable sign that it once received some of the Sutlej’s waters at this point.
  • Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 24. as quoted from Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Clearly, then, the Sutlej has had a turbulent history. Something of its evolution is reflected in the ancient literature: named ‘Shutudrī’ or ‘swift-flowing’ in the Rig Veda, it became ‘Shatadru’ in post-Vedic literature, which means ‘of a hundred channels’, one more sign that ancient Indians were keenly observant and knew their geography; but rather than record it in scholarly accounts in the manner of ancient Greeks, they preferred the medium of ‘legends’.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The Mahābhārata tells us how the great rishi Vasishtha, sorely distressed when he found that all his sons had been killed by his arch rival Vishvāmitra, wished to end his life. He tried various ways, but the elements always refused to cooperate; the sea or rivers into which he repeatedly hurled himself, bound with ropes or weighed with stones, stubbornly cast him back ashore. Thinking he was a ball of fire, the last river he plunged into ‘immediately flew in a hundred different directions, and has been known ever since by the name of the Shatadru, the river of a hundred courses’. Here again, the textual tradition is in accordance with what we find on the ground in the form of the Sutlej’s multiple channels.
  • A legend from the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, vol. I, Adi Parva, I.178, pp. 359-60. as quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The ancient bed of the Ghaggar has a constant width of about 6 to 8 km from Shatrana in Punjab to Marot in Pakistan. The bed stands out very clearly . . . The vast expanse of the Ghaggar bed can be explained only by assuming that some major tributaries were flowing into it in the past . . . Our studies thus show that the Satluj was the main tributary of the Ghaggar and that subsequently the tectonic movements may have forced the Satluj westward and the Ghaggar dried . . . The other major river system contributing waters to the Ghaggar may have been some prior channel of the Yamuna. [These two] main feeders were weaned away by the Indus and the Ganga, respectively.
  • Pal, Yash, Baldev Sahai, R.K. Sood & D.P. Agrawal, ‘Remote Sensing of the Sarasvatī River’, in Lal, B.B. & S.P. Gupta, (eds), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The Sutlej was not always a tributary of the Indus . . . It was a late interloper into the Indus system... The Sutlej was the most westerly and the Jumna the most easterly tributary of the Ghaggar and their present courses are of comparatively late acquisition.
  • Siddiqi, Shamsul Islam, ‘River Changes in the Ghaggar Plain’, The Indian Geographical Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 1944, pp. 139-46. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘levels between the sand ridges of the Cholistan which unmistakably represent an ancient winding bed of the Sutlej, that once joined the Hakra between Walar and Binjor’.
  • Stein, Sir Aurel, quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• (the Sutlej) ‘has changed its course more than once in historical times’... By 1245 the Sutlej had taken a more northerly course, the Hakra had dried up . . . Then [after the sixteenth century] the Sutlej once more returned to its old course and rejoined the Ghaggar. It was only in 1796 that the Sutlej again left the Ghaggar and finally joined the Beas.
  • Imperial Gazetteer, new edn, 1908, vol. 23, p. 179. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘This early confluence of the Sutlej and Beas was by no means the end of the matter. Both rivers have separated and rejoined several times in the last 2000 years.’
  • Wilhelmy, Herbert, ‘The Shifting River: Studies in the History of the Indus Valley’, Universitas, vol. 10, 1967, no. 1, p. 60.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• After it leaves the hills theriver is never called Sutlej by the people and it has changed its course morethan once in historical times. The history of those changes can be traced withconsiderable probability and detail. In the time of Arrian, the Sutlej found anindependent outlet into the Rann of Kutch. In the year A.D. 1000 it was atributary of the Hakra, and flowed in the Eastern Nara. Thence the former bedcan be traced back through Bahawalpur and Bikaner into the Sirsa tahsil ofHissar, until it is lost near Tohana. From Tohana to Rupar this old bed cannotbe traced; but it is known that the Sutlej took a southerly course at Rupar,instead of turning west, as now, to join the Beas. Thus the Sutlej or the Hakra– for both streams flowed in the same bed - is probably the lost river of the Indian desert, whose waters made thesands of Bikaner and Sind a smiling garden. By 1245 the Sutlej had taken a morenortherly course, the Hakra had dried up and a great migration took place ofthe people of the desert - as it thusbecame – to the Indus valley. The course then taken by the Sutlej wasapparently a continuation of the present course of the Ghaggar. About 1593 theSutlej left the Ghaggar and went north once more. The Beas came south to meetit, and the two flowed in the same channel under various names – Macchuwah,Hariani, Dand, Nurni, Nili and Gharah. Then the Sutlej once more returned toits old course and rejoined the Ghaggar. It was only in 1796 that the Sutlej again left the Ghaggar and finally joined the Beas.
  • Reference: The Imperial Gazetteer of India(New Edition). 1908. Volume XXIII; Clarendon Press: Oxford [page 179]

• The chain of tectonic events... diverted the Satluj westward [into the Indus] and the Palaeo Yamuna eastward [into the Ganga]... This explains the ’death’ of such a mighty river [ i.e, Sarasvati] ... because its main feeders, the Satluj and Palaeo Yamuna were weaned away from it by the Indus and the Ganga respectively.
  • (Rao 1991: 77-9; 1991, Dawn and Devolution of the Indus Civilization , Delhi. quoted in THE ṚGVEDA AND INDO-EUROPEANS Author(s): Nicholas Kazanas Source: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 80, No. 1/4 (1999), pp. 15-42

• In fact, in later literature, Rgvedic Sutudri is called Shatudri – meaning a river with 100 flows. This indicates that as the river emerged from the Himalayas, its course split up into numerous channels. Even down to historical times, Satlaj has flowed in several parallel channels simultaneously... Moreover, no amount of linguistic exercise can show how the name ‘Shutudri’ (=‘swiftly flowing’) in the Rigveda changed to ‘Shatadru’ and ‘Shatadhara’ (both meaning ‘a hundred flows/channels’ – a meaning also attested texts like the Mahabharata) in later times, unless we assume that before the Satlaj first took a right turn at Rupar, it split into numerous channels some of which still drained into the Sarasvati at various locations, one by one.
  • quoted in A Reply to Michael Witzel’s ‘Ein Fremdling im Rgveda’ (Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 31, No.1-2: pp.107-185, 2003) by Vishal Agarwal 11 August 2003