The Nadistuti Sukta: Which Rivers the Rigveda Names—and Which It Leaves Out

Open almost any popular article on the "lost Sarasvati" and you will find the same verse cited as proof: the Nadistuti Sukta (नदीस्तुतिसूक्त, "hymn in praise of rivers"), which is hymn 75 of the tenth book (maṇḍala, मण्डल, "book" or "circle") of the Rigveda. It is treated like a satellite photograph in verse—a list that supposedly pins the Sarasvatī between two named rivers and settles, once and for all, where a vanished waterway used to flow.

The hymn is real. The list is real. What is not real, or at least not settled, is the confidence with which that list gets used. A close reading of the Sanskrit text against its most authoritative translations shows how much of the "lost Sarasvati" narrative depends on translation choices rather than the physical geography of the text itself.

The Litany of the Twenty-One Rivers

The Nadistuti Sukta consists of nine verses. While tradition holds that the hymn celebrates twenty-one rivers, verses 5 and 6 contain the actual geographic roll call.

In their 2014 translation, The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India, scholars Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton translate verse 5 as:

"O Gaṅgā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Śutudrī, and Paruṣṇī, share in my praise! O Asiknī, with the Marudvṛdhā, and Vitastā, O Ārjīkīyā, with the Suṣomā, listen to my call!"

In the original Sanskrit, the verse reads:

इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या | असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ||

imaṁ me gaṅge yamune sarasvati śutudri stomaṁ sacatā paruṣṇyā | asiknyā marudvṛdhe vitastayārjīkīye śṛṇuhyā suṣomayā ||

Verse 6 continues the westward expansion, naming the Sindhu (सिन्धु, the Indus) as the chief river, joined by its western tributaries: the Tṛṣṭāmā, Susartu, Rasā, Śvetyā, Kubhā (the Kabul river), Mehatnu, Krumu (the Kurram), and Gomatī (the Gomal), along with the Sarayu.

Counting the individual rivers named across the entire hymn, we find:

1. Gaṅgā (Ganges)
2. Yamunā
3. Sarasvatī
4. Śutudrī (Sutlej)
5. Paruṣṇī (Ravi)
6. Asiknī (Chenab)
7. Marudvṛdhā
8. Vitastā (Jhelum)
9. Ārjīkīyā (Harisoma)
10. Suṣomā (Sohan)
11. Sindhu (Indus)
12. Tṛṣṭāmā
13. Susartu
14. Rasā
15. Śvetyā
16. Kubhā (Kabul)
17. Mehatnu
18. Krumu (Kurram)
19. Gomatī (Gomal)
20. Sarayu
21. Susartu (often counted alongside secondary streams like the Śiphā and Añjasī named elsewhere to reach the traditional number of 21).

Conspicuously absent from this late Rigvedic hymn are major peninsular rivers like the Narmada, Godavari, and Kaveri. The world of this poet remains firmly rooted in the northwest of the subcontinent, stretching from the western limits of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab (the tongue of land between the two rivers) to the highlands of Afghanistan.

The Grammatical Puzzle of the Sarasvatī

The Sarasvatī is mentioned directly in verse 5 in a single compound sequence: gaṅge yamune sarasvati śutudri stomaṁ sacatā paruṣṇyā.

The critical verb here is sacatā, a second-person plural imperative meaning "accompany" or "associate yourselves with." The poet calls upon these rivers in the vocative case: gaṅge (O Ganga), yamune (O Yamuna), sarasvati (O Sarasvati), śutudri (O Sutlej), and paruṣṇyā (instrumental, "along with the Parushni").

In Ralph T. H. Griffith’s 1896 translation, this sequence is rendered as a simple, sequential geographic list. Because the list begins with the easternmost rivers (Ganga and Yamuna) and moves toward the Indus in the west, many commentators assume the list is a strict west-to-east or east-to-west map.

If we accept this assumption, the Sarasvatī’s position between the Yamunā and the Śutudrī looks like a precise coordinate. It places the river in the plains between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, exactly where dry paleochannels (ancient, inactive riverbeds) have been mapped by remote sensing and identified by geologists with the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river system.

However, philologists urge caution. The compound ordering in Vedic Sanskrit is often determined by chandas (छन्दस्, meter) and ritual hierarchy rather than cartography. If the list is a formulaic invocation—rivers named by poetic convention or metrical convenience—the sequence does not prove a contiguous physical location.

Furthermore, the Sarasvatī is given no grand descriptive epithets in this particular hymn. While earlier layers of the text—such as RV 7.95—praise the Sarasvatī as giri-bhya ā samudrāt ("from the mountains to the sea"), the Nadistuti Sukta treats her as one of many streams tributary to the mighty Sindhu, which is the true focus of the poet's praise in RV 10.75.

Text, Tradition, and Geology: Drawing the Lines

To understand the "missing river," we must distinguish between three distinct registers of knowledge:

First, the text shows that by the time of the tenth maṇḍala—generally considered by linguists to be the youngest stratum of the Rigveda—the Sarasvatī was still invoked as a major river, but its placement is part of a ritualized list. The text does not provide a physical map; it provides a poetic liturgy.

Second, tradition holds that the Sarasvatī was a massive, perennial river that disappeared into the desert sands at a place called Vinasana. This tradition is preserved in later Brahmana texts and the Mahabharata, reflecting a memory of a river that was drying up or changing course.

Third, geology shows that a major paleochannel system, the Ghaggar-Hakra, once carried significant water in the northwestern plains of India. However, geological studies, including recent sediment dating, show that the diversion of its glacial feeds (the Sutlej and Yamuna) occurred thousands of years before the generally accepted period of the composition of the Rigveda.

When modern writers use Griffith’s 19th-century translation to claim that the Rigveda provides "geographical proof" of a flowing glacial Sarasvati during the late Vedic period, they are conflating a poetic list with geological history. The Nadistuti Sukta is a hymn of gratitude to the waters that sustained a culture; whether it is also a map depends on the rigor of the reader.