The Rigveda, Mahabharata and other ancient Indian texts contain mentions of a territory that is the centre of the Earth and the cosmos, the home of the gods. This paper represents an attempt to select geographical objects that accord with the descriptions of Meru, Mandara, the Navel of the Earth, the Heavenly Ganga and the Shveta-dvipa. Accompanying research takes the form of discussion of the meaning of the words yojana and dvipa.
The Rigveda and later ancient Indian texts mention distant lands where Indra performed great deeds, where gods, bards and demons lived, where the Sun, waters and cows were set free. This paper analyses the correspondence between places proposed as the location for the events described and the characteristics given in the Rigveda, using linguistic, geographical, climatic and astronomical data, examining alternative territories meeting the criteria defined in the paper where the people may have lived whose impressions developed into the legends that became the basis of the hymns in the Rigveda and other texts of the ancient Indian epos.
The purpose of the study is to attempt to clarify the context of difficult-to-understand passages in the Rigveda by etymological research of the difficult-to-translate words in order to determine the original meaning of a word which is represented as a verbal noun.
