HYPHASIS
HYPHASIS (
Ὕφασις,, Arrian,
Anab. 6.8,
Ind. 100.2, 3, 4), the most eastern and the most important of the five rivers which water the
Panjáb. Rising in the western
Himáleh, it flows in two principal branches in a course nearly SW. (under the names respectively of
Vipása and
Sátadru), till, at their junction, it takes the one name of
Sátadru, which it retains till it falls into the Indus at
Mittwnkote. It is best known, however, by its modern name of
Sutledge, which is perhaps a corruption of the Sanscrit Sátadru.
It bore in ancient as in modern times various appellations, probably according to the different parts of its course to which the writers referred. Thus in Arrian (
l.c.) and Diodorus (
17.93) it appears under the form of Hyphasis; in Pliny (
7.17,
21) and Curtius (
9.1) under that of Hypasis; while Ptolemy calls it Bibasis (
βιβάσις, 7.1. § § 26, 27); all these being evidently derived from the native name of the western of its two principal arms, the
Vipása. On the other hand, in Strabo (xv. pp. 686, 691, 701), in Diodorus (
2.37), in Solinus (
100.52), and in Dion. Perieg. (5.1145), it bears the title of Hypanis.
There can be no doubt that all these writers refer to one and the same river: for Strabo (
xv. p.700) and Arrian
(Ind. 100.2) both speak of it as the last of the rivers, that is, in reference to the advance of Alexander the Great into the East; while Pliny directly states that the Hypasis was the limit of Alexander's march (vi 17. s. 21). The Sanscrit name for the main stream after the junction of the two principal feeders, namely, the
Sátadru, seems, not to have been wholly unknown to the ancients; for Ptolemy makes the Zaradrus one of the tributaries of the Hyphasis (
l.c.), and Pliny notes a river which he calls the Sydrus or Hesidrus, which it probably the same (
l.c.).
A little way before the
Sutledge falls into the Indus it receives the
Chenáb, and with it the waters of all the other rivers of the,
Panjáb. [
V]
