Kaveri

Kaveri is a named river in the poem’s geographical material. Its identification rests chiefly on a translator’s note, which connects the name used in the text with the modern Cauvery and with the ancient form Chaberis found in Ptolemy.

Name and Identification

The note describes Kaveri as well known and says that it has long borne the same appellation. It treats Chaberis, Ptolemy’s name for the river, as an earlier attestation of that continuing name rather than as a separate place.

Geographical Context

Kaveri occurs within a sequence of notes on southern geography. The surrounding annotations discuss the Malaya mountain region, Tamraparni, the Pandya people, Mahendra, and Lanka, placing the river among the landmarks and regions associated with the poem’s southern landscape.

Significance in the Text

The identification links the poem’s named geography to places and names recognizable beyond its mythic world. The note distinguishes Kaveri from explicitly mythical features elsewhere in the same geographical account: it presents the river as identifiable with the modern Cauvery and supports that identification through the historical name Chaberis.