Sutlej

"“Forth from the bosom of the mountains, eager as two swift mares with loosened rein contending, Like two bright mother cows who lick their youngling, Vipāś and Śutudrī speed down their waters.”"

"O Gangā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Shutudrī (Sutlej), Parushnī (Ravi), hear my praise! Hear my call, O Asiknī (Chenab), Marudvridhā (Maruvardhvan), Vitastā (Jhelum) with Ārjīkiyā and Sushomā. First you flow united with Trishtāmā, with Susartu and Rasā, and with Svetyā, O Sindhu (Indus) with Kubhā (Kabul) to Gomati (Gumal or Gomal), with Mehatnū to Krumu (Kurram), with whom you proceed together."

"The Mahābhārata tells us how the great rishi Vasishtha, sorely distressed when he found that all his sons had been killed by his arch rival Vishvāmitra, wished to end his life. He tried various ways, but the elements always refused to cooperate; the sea or rivers into which he repeatedly hurled himself, bound with ropes or weighed with stones, stubbornly cast him back ashore. Thinking he was a ball of fire, the last river he plunged into ‘immediately flew in a hundred different directions, and has been known ever since by the name of the Shatadru, the river of a hundred courses’. Here again, the textual tradition is in accordance with what we find on the ground in the form of the Sutlej’s multiple channels."

"This early confluence of the Sutlej and Beas was by no means the end of the matter. Both rivers have separated and rejoined several times in the last 2000 years."

"the Sutlej ‘flowed southwards from the Himalāya . . . and onwards, through Sind, to the sea’—until, for some reason, a prince-turned-ascetic named Puran, a hero of many Punjabi legends, cursed the river to leave its bed and move westward. ‘The stream, in consequence, changed its course more and more towards the west, until, six hundred and fifty years ago, it entered the Beas valley . . .’, which would take us to the thirteenth century CE; but leaving aside the date, the consequence was ‘a terrible drought and famine in the country on the banks of the Hakra, where [large] numbers of men and cattle perished. The survivors then migrated to the banks of the Indus, and the country has ever since been desert’"