The next thing that strikes one in that hymn--if hymn we must call it--is the fact that all these rivers, large and small, have their own proper names. That shows a considerable advance in civilized life, and it proves no small degree of coherence, or what the French call _solidarity_, between the tribes who had taken possession of Northern India. Most settlers call the river on whose banks they settle "_the river_." Of course there are many names for river. It may be called the runner,[210] the fertilizer, the roarer--or, with a little poetical metaphor, the arrow, the horse, the cow, the father, the mother, the watchman, the child of the mountains. Many rivers had many names in different parts of their course, and it was only when communication between different settlements became more frequent, and a fixed terminology was felt to be a matter of necessity, that the rivers of a country were properly baptized and registered. All this had been gone through in India before our hymn became possible. And now we have to consider another, to my mind most startling fact. We here have a number of names of the rivers of India, as they were known to one single poet, say about 1000 B.C. We then hear nothing of India till we come to the days of Alexander, and when we look at the names of the Indian rivers, represented as well as they could be by Alexander's companions, mere strangers in India, and by means of a strange language and a strange alphabet, we recognize, without much difficulty, nearly all of the old Vedic names. In this respect the names of rivers have a great advantage over the names of towns in India. What we now call _Dilli_ or _Delhi_[211] was in ancient times called Indraprastha, in later times _Shahjahânabâd_. _Oude_ is Ayodhyâ, but the old name of Saketa is forgotten. The town of Pa_t_aliputra, known to the Greeks as _Palimbothra_, is now called _Patna_.[212] Now I can assure you this persistency of the Vedic river-names was to my mind something so startling that I often said to myself, This cannot be--there must be something wrong here. I do not wonder so much at the names of the _Indus_ and the _Ganges_ being the same. The Indus was known to early traders, whether by sea or by land. Skylax sailed from the country of the Paktys, _i.e._ the Pushtus, as the Afghans still call themselves, down to the mouth of the Indus. That was under Darius Hystaspes (521-486). Even before that time India and the Indians were known by their name, which was derived from _Sindhu_, the name of their frontier river. The neighboring tribes who spoke Iranic languages all pronounced, like the Persian, the _s_ as an _h_.[213] Thus Sindhu became Hindhu (Hidhu), and, as h's were dropped even at that early time, Hindhu became Indu. Thus the river was called _Indos_, the people _Indoi_ by the Greeks, who first heard of India from the Persians.