Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

The gods obtained the mind and the Asuras the speech; further the gods got the heaven and the Asuras the earth. [...] The names of the Kubha (Kabul river) the Kramu (Kuram river) the Gomati (gomal river) and the Sarasvati or the Haraqaiti or Helmund repeatedly occur in Rg-vedic hymns.s The famous battle of Divod5sa with the Panis Brsayas and Paravatas took place on the bank of the Helmund as Hillebrandt has ably painted out.3 Like the rivers many of the Himalayan passes such as the Gomal pass 4 Nawak pass [...] As Max Miller has written : In the Veda the stage on which the life of the ancient kings and poets is acted is the valley of the Indus and the Punjab as it is now called the Saptasindhvab of the Vedic poets. [...] There is a sect of the Yezidis among the Kurds of Assyria who worship the devil in the form of a serpent and dedicate temples to him.1 An indication of the similarity of serpent-symbols among the peoples of India and the Middle-East is provided by the fact that the word Sraja which is a snake name in the fifth book of the Atharvveda occurs in the inscriptions of the Achaemenian emperors as ( [...] He was also as the same Brahmana informs us at another place the receptacle of the knowledge (Veda) of the rks yajus and sdmans.2 His popularity and respect among the people is hinted at by the statement of the Brahmana that in the forenoon the gods offered him food at midday the men and in the afternoon the fathers.