Geography

Interactive Atlas

The campaign theatre drawn from real coastlines and river centrelines: the five rivers of the Panjab, the Indus, the Ghaggar-Hakra identified with the Sarasvatī, and the Yamunā–Gaṅgā horizon. Click a river or an engagement for its dossier.

The map shows one continuous landmass. Modern political borders are deliberately not drawn — they did not exist in the Ṛgvedic period and the Codex does not map the past onto present states. Coastlines and river courses are modern physical geography, not a claim about Bronze-Age hydrology.

attested river debated identification attested engagement inferred / reconstructed marker

Engagement dossier

Paruṣṇī

Ravi · 31.50°N 74.20°E

Event: ATTESTEDMarker: INFERRED

What the text says

The confederacy is routed at the Paruṣṇī. The hymn describes the river rising against them and Sudās crossing in the flood; the term bradhna in 7.18.9 is read as an embankment or dam. Six thousand six hundred and sixty-six are said to have fallen (7.18.14).

RV 7.18.5–9RV 7.18.14

Where it is

The hymn names the river, not a grid reference. The marker sits on the Ravi's middle course, in the stretch where the battle is conventionally placed; the exact reach is unknown.

Positions on record

Ravi, middle course between the Chenab and Sutlej
Sāyaṇa (14th c.); mainstream scholarship
The Ravi is the Paruṣṇī of the Nirukta and of the continuous Indian tradition.
A fording point where the confederacy could be caught mid-crossing
Witzel (1995); Stuhrmann (2016)
Explains the flood as decisive: an army caught in the water, not on open ground.

The river identification is ATTESTED; the coordinate is INFERRED. Do not read the marker as an excavated site.

Rivers

River centrelines: Natural Earth 1:10m (public domain) for the Indus, the five Panjab rivers, the Yamunā and the Gaṅgā; the Ghaggar-Hakra from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Simplified to roughly 250 m for the web. The Kubhā (Kabul) and Krumu (Kurram) are named in RV 10.75 but have no sourced centreline in these datasets, so they are not drawn rather than drawn approximately.

Land

Coastline: Natural Earth 1:50m coastline layer, and the land fill from Natural Earth 1:50m (both public domain). The fill is never stroked, so no country edge is drawn; the only lines on the map are coastlines and rivers.

Identifications

River names are tiered individually. Site coordinates are inferred or reconstructed even where the engagement is attested — the hymns name rivers, not grid references.