In the lists of divine witnesses to Hittite treaties the Rivers and Springs, like
the Winds, appear repeatedly. In Suppiluliuma’s treaty with Mitanni the
Tigris and Euphrates are named specifically.^129
Four hymns of the Rigveda are devoted to the Waters, and there are many
references to them in other hymns. Several more are addressed to particular
rivers, sometimes invoked as mothers (RV 2. 41. 16; 10. 64. 9). The Vipas
̇
and
S ́utudrı ̄ are said to speed their waters down ‘like two bright mother cows who
lick their calves’ (3. 33. 1), and at the end of the same hymn they are called
bulls.^130
In the Avesta water is frequently mentioned as a holy element, and the
Waters are sometimes paid homage in direct addresses and prayers, as for
example in Y. 38. 3–5 (from the Ga ̄tha ̄ of the Seven Chapters), 65, 68. 6–12. In
mythical cosmology they are all held to derive from the celestial river Ardvı ̄,
which flows down into the lake Vourukasˇa. The fifth Yasˇt is a lengthy hymn
to this river, pictured in the form of a beautiful maiden. She is a source of
human fertility, perfecting men’s seed and helping women to give birth (2, 5).
Herodotus in the passage cited earlier (1. 131. 2) correctly includes the
Waters among the divinities that the Persians worship. He has to use the word
δατα, as Greek had lost the word corresponding to a ̄ ́pah
̇
/a ̄po ̄ (*a ̄pes).^131 But
Durante has well noted that in Homer δωρ is still essentially a passive
element and does not normally occur as the subject of active verbs. Instead
it is words like ποταμο ́ ‘river’,mο ́ ο ‘stream’, κρ νη ‘spring’, that have
intrinsic energy and send out their δωρ.^132 These are the live forces that are
capable of personification and may have divine status. Hesiod’s divine
genealogies include a section devoted to the Rivers, who are collectively the
sons of Oceanus and Tethys (Th. 337–45). This leads on to the same couple’s
daughters, the Oceanid nymphs, who are associated especially with springs.
At the beginning of Iliad 20 Zeus summons all the gods to assembly, ‘and
none of the Rivers was absent apart from Oceanus, nor of the Nymphs who
inhabit the fair woods and the sources of rivers and the grassy meads’ (7–9).
Agamemnon includes the Rivers in the divine witnesses to his treaty with
Priam (Il. 3. 278), as in the Hittite treaties, and ‘Springs and Rivers’ or ‘Rivers,
Daimones(?), and Waters’ recur in a similar role in certain Hellenistic oaths
and treaties.^133
(^129) Gurney (1977), 5 f.; Beckman (1999), 40, 47, 53, 58, etc.
(^130) On the Waters and rivers cf. Macdonell (1898), 85–8; Oldenberg (1917), 246–8.
(^131) It may be seen in A ̄pia ̄, an old poetic name for well-watered Argos, and the Thessalian
river name A ̄pidanos.
(^132) Durante (1976), 142 f.
(^133) Like other features of Greek treaties, however, this probably reflects oriental cultural
influence, not Indo-European inheritance; see West (1997), 19–23.
- Storm and Stream 275