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.

• Khan and Sinha noted, “A dense concentration of Harappan sites has been documented in the Jind and Hisar districts of Haryana and further west in the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan, and this can only be explained if the Yamuna once flowed through these southwesterly flowing palaeochannels. ... The palaeo-Yamuna does represent the courses of a major feeder to the Ghaggar–Hakra system (Sarasvati) as suggested by thick sand bodies.”
  • Khan, I. and Sinha, R. 2019. Discovering ‘buried’ channels of the palaeo-Yamuna River in NW India using geophysical evidence: Implications for major drainage reorganization and linkage to the Harappan Civilization. Journal of Applied Geophysics 167:128-139.
  • quoted in Chapter 8. The Sarasvati River: Issues and Debates Michel Danino in SARASWATI : THE RIVER PAR EXCELLENCE Edited by S. K. Acharyya, K. Ghosh and Amal Kar 2020

• Thus, the terraces studied in Sudanwala, Bata, Garibnath and Markanda provide an irrefutable geological evidence to suggest a course of a river that was flowing in almost west-northwesterly direction in the past. Its dimension was very large as it contained a very high discharge that tra- versed in its upper reaches a terrain of quartzite and metamorphic rocks. Such a region does exist in central and upper reaches of Yamunå fourth order basin where Central Crystallines and Jutogh group of rocks are located towards north, north-east and eastern side of above-mentioned four terraces. Moreover, in the Paonta valley, there is a clear evidence that prior to the present Yamunå river, there existed a major river channel at a much higher elevation that followed a westerly and southwesterly course through a route now almost completely obliterated on Siwalik platform due to erosion but its terraces are still observed along Adh Badri- Markanda link in the plains immediately to the south of Siwalik belt.
  • V. M. K. Puri and B. C. Verma, “Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas”, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1998, pp. 7-36. (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)

• In this context attention must be drawn to some very telling evidence from the Ghaggar-Sarasvati bed itself, at Kalibangan. When the excavations over here were in progress, we were naturally keen on verifying locally the facts about the drying up of the river, since it was obvious to us that the massive settlement at Kalibangan could not have flourished without the adjacent river having been alive and active. With this end in view, a project, combining the efforts of the Archaeological Survey of India, Geological Survey of India (repre- sented by Shri R. K. Karanth) and an Italian firm named Raikes and Partners (headed by Mr. R. L. Raikes), was set in motion. Four bore- holes were dug, one of which lay in between the two mounds compris- ing the site and three in the river-bed itself, located at a distance of 300 metres from one another towards the centre of the bed. All things apart, the most revealing fact was that the greyish sand encountered in these bore-holes, at a depth of about 11 m below the present flood- plain, was ‘very similar in mineral content to that found in the bed of the present-day Yamuna’. This confirms the findings of Puri and Verma that the source of the Ghaggar (Sarasvatœ) lay high up in the Himalayas from where the Yamunå also originated, thus making the sand similar in both the cases.
  • (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)