There are many opinions about whether or not the ancient civilisations of Europe ever spoke a language close to Proto Indo European or Sanskrit, but there is no debating the fact that Sanskrit is a language, which has the in-built intelligence to decode the ancient names of present-day rivers and mountains anywhere in the world.
Irrespective of one's opinion about whether Sanskrit was a universal language of an all-pervading Vedic world, Sanskrit remains one of the biggest tools that can remove the many layers under which the truths of human history are hidden. Here is a look at the names of the Rivers of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Take the example of one of the most prominent rivers of Bosnia Herzegovina - the Tara River. It is only 82 miles long, but at its deepest it is 1300 metres. Its canyon, the Tara River Canyon, is the second deepest in the world - after the Grand Canyon. The words 'tAr', 'tAra 'and 'tarA' (तर) have many meanings in Sanskrit, most of which are used in the context of 'going across a river', whether it is to the other side of a river, or to a faraway land beyond a major river. Here are the most relevant meanings of the Sanskrit tara:
-'tAr' (तार) means 'high', 'clear', 'excellent', protector, good, clean, 'descent to a river'.
-'tara' (तर) means surpassing, crossing, carrying across, and 'passage', akin to English trans- with the same meaning.
The Tara River emerges from the confluence of the Opasnica and Verusa Rivers. Opasnica may be a distortion of the Sanskrit upasana (उपासन), which means 'prayer', 'worship' or 'respect'. This is not conjecture. In Bosnian, the word for 'worship' is 'obož,' which is a cognate of the prefix in Sanskrit upasana.
'Verusa' derive from Sanskrit VArisha (वारीश) which means 'Lord of the Waters' or 'Ocean', or Verusa may be derived from varisha (वरिषा) which means 'rain'. These etymological traces suggest more than coincidence—they gesture toward the Vedic worldview in which rivers are not merely geographic features but sacred embodiments of divine presence.
The Tara converges with the Piva to form the Drina River. Piva (पीवा) in Sanskrit means 'water'. Together, the two rivers form the third river Drina. The Drina means 'river' in Serbian and obviously derives its name from a word similar to the Sanskrit root word drava, (द्रव), meaning fluid, liquid, melt, flow, run.
The River Drina is also known as 'Trini' and appears to be a variation of 'drina', for /t/ and /d/ are interchangeable sounds according to the Grimm's Law of Linguistics. As Sanskrit 'Trini' (त्रीणि), it means 'three', and takes on the meaning of a 'confluence of the rivers'. The name 'Trini' is akin to 'Triveni', the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna at Prayag in India. In Serbian too 'tri' means 'three', and most likely refers to the confluence of Tara, Piva and Drina, Rivers making a triveni, and establishing an Indic connection.
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| The Drina Confluence The name Drina may be a distortion of the Sanskrit 'Trini' meaning 'three-fold'. |
The Drina is a branch of the Danube watershed. For a note on the Sanskrit connection to the name Danube click here.
The Tara River is also known as Tapa in Serbian Cyrillic. Tapa (तप) means 'warmth' or 'sun' in Sanskrit.
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