_Sindhu_ probably meant originally the divider, keeper, and defender, from sidh, to keep off. It was a masculine, before it became a feminine. No more telling name could have been given to a broad river, which guarded peaceful settlers both against the inroads of hostile tribes and the attacks of wild animals. A common name for the ancient settlements of the Aryans in India was "the Seven Rivers," "Sapta Sindhava_h_." But though sindhu was used as an appellative noun for river in general (cf. Rig-Veda VI. 19, 5, samudré ná síndhava_h_ yâdamânâ_h_, "like rivers longing for the sea"), it remained throughout the whole history of India the name of its powerful guardian river, the Indus. In some passages of the Rig-Veda it has been pointed out that sindhu might better be translated by "sea," a change of meaning, if so it can be called, fully explained by the geographical conditions of the country. There are places where people could swim across the Indus, there are others where no eye could tell whether the boundless expanse of water should be called river or sea. The two run into each other, as every sailor knows, and naturally the meaning of sindhu, river, runs into the meaning of sindhu, sea. But besides the two great rivers, the Indus and the Ganges--in Sanskrit the Gangâ, literally the Go-go--we have the smaller rivers, and many of their names also agree with the names preserved to us by the companions of Alexander.[214] The Yamunâ, the Jumna, was known to Ptolemy as Διἁμουνα,[215] to Pliny as Jomanes, to Arrian, somewhat corrupted, as Jôbares.[216] The _S_utudrî, or, as it was afterward called, _S_atadru, meaning "running in a hundred streams," was known to Ptolemy as Ζαδἁρδης or Ζἁραδος; Pliny called it Sydrus; and Megasthenes, too, was probably acquainted with it as Ζαδἁρδης. In the Veda[217] it formed with the Vipa_s_ the frontier of the Punjâb, and we hear of fierce battles fought at that time, it may be on the same spot where in 1846 the battle of the Sutledge was fought by Sir Hugh Gough and Sir Henry Hardinge. It was probably on the Vipâ_s_ (later Vipâ_s_â), a north-western tributary of the Sutledge, that Alexander's army turned back. The river was then called Hyphasis; Pliny calls it Hypasis,[218] a very fair approximation to the Vedic Vipâ_s_, which means "unfettered." Its modern name is Bias or Bejah. The next river on the west is the Vedic Parush_n_î, better known as Irâvatî,[219] which Strabo calls Hyarotis, while Arrian gives it a more Greek appearance by calling it Hydraotes. It is the modern Rawi. It was this river which the Ten Kings when attacking the T_ri_tsus under Sudâs tried to cross from the west by cutting off its water. But their stratagem failed, and they perished in the river (Rig-Veda VII. 18, 8-9).