Yamuna

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

The Yamuna is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about 4,500 m (14,800 ft) on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Lower Himalaya in Uttarakhand, it travels 1,376 kilometres (855 mi) and has a drainage system of 366,223 square kilometres (141,399 sq mi), 40.2% of the entire Ganges Basin.

Quotes

• The mighty ones, the seven times seven, have singly given me hundred gifts. I have obtained on Yamuna famed wealth in kine and wealth in steeds.
  • Rigveda 5.52.17

• Yamuna and the Trtsus aided Indra.
  • Rigveda 7.18.19

• 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.

• Finding some divine liquor in a forest near Vrindavan one day, he (Balarāma) became so inebriated that he was taken over by the fancy to summon the Yamunā to himself so that he could bathe in her. The lady was less than enthusiastic, however, and turned a deaf ear. Furious, Balarāma seized his ploughshare, plunged it into her bank, and dragged her to him: ‘He compelled the dark river to quit its ordinary course,’ says the Vishnu Purāna.
  • A legend from the The Vishnu Purāna,, in Wilson, H.H., The Vishnu Purāna, ch. XXV, p. 572. as quoted from Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Even to this day, the Yamunā is seen to flow through the track (river bed) through which [she] was dragged.
  • The Bhāgavata Purāna, tr. Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare, Motilal Banarsidass, X.65.31, Delhi, 1988, p. 1673. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• To reconstruct the main stages in the [Sarasvati] river’s life—in a manner which, I believe, respects all the strands of our web—I will begin with a useful clue in the Mahābhārata. In two places at least, the epic tells us that the Sarasvatī’s course in the mountain was close to the Yamunā’s. In the more precise passage of the two, Balarāma climbs to a tīrtha on the Sarasvatī called ‘Plakshaprāsravana’ (the name of the river’s source as we saw earlier) and, from there, soon reaches the Yamunā.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The Yamunā was thus a double river—which would conveniently explain the root meaning of the word yamunā: ‘twin’.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.