North India · Punjab: Beas and SutlejAll traditions
A dialogue hymn. The two rivers come racing from the mountains. A singer who has come far with car and wagon asks them to linger; they answer that their flood is not to be stayed, praise Indra who freed them, and ask the singer to remember them kindly. He asks them to bow below his axles; they consent, bending like a nursing mother. The Bharatas cross, and he bids the rivers run full again, with a prayer for the harness and the oxen.
Yaska explains the hymn by a legend: Vishvamitra was house priest of Sudas son of Pijavana; having gathered his wealth he came to the confluence of the two rivers, others followed him, and he begged the rivers to become fordable. The Brihaddevata says the seer was going with Sudas as his priest and assigns verses 4, 6, 8 and 10 to the rivers.
What is different here:
Names the singer Vishvamitra and the king Sudas, and gives a motive (travelling with wealth earned as priest).
After Kalmashapada, possessed by a Rakshasa, has devoured all his sons, Vasishtha tries to die and cannot: a mountain, fire and the sea all spare him. He binds himself with cords and leaps into a flooded river; it cuts the cords and casts him ashore, so he names it Vipasa. A second river takes him for fire and flees in a hundred directions: Satadru. Turning home he hears the Veda recited by his unborn grandson and gives up the wish to die.
What is different here:
A different sage and a different event at the same two rivers; the rivers act but do not speak; the tale explains their later names. Vishvamitra is here Vasishtha's enemy.
Sources: Hymns of the Rigveda, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896), hymns read for the Vedic layer; The Nighantu and the Nirukta, ed. and tr. Lakshman Sarup (1920-27); The Brhad-devata attributed to Saunaka, ed. and tr. A. A. Macdonell (Harvard Oriental Series 6); The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer