This paper presents a full philological reassessment of the Vedic lexeme samudrá, integrating accentual, contextual, Indo‑Iranian, and semantic evidence. Modern scholarship has expanded the term’s meanings far beyond its Rigvedic usage, proposing interpretations such as “lake,” “closed inland basin,” “large pool,” “confluence,” or “aggregate of waters.” These expansions, however, rest on accent‑blind reading, conflation of metaphor with literal usage, and retrospective projection of post‑Rigvedic ritual semantics. Comprehensive analysis demonstrates that the Rigveda attests exactly two literal senses of samudrá: (1) Ocean/Sea (primary), and (2) a ritual collecting vessel (sámudra) in Soma‑pressing (secondary). All remaining uses are metaphorical and never yield additional hydrological meanings. The decisive criterion is Vedic pitch accent: samudrá (udātta on drá) always denotes the Ocean/Sea; sámudra (udātta on sá) always denotes the Soma vessel. The critical Sarasvatī verse, RV 7.95.2, uses samudrá, which is lexically restricted to the Ocean/Sea. Accent‑sensitive philology resolves long‑standing ambiguities and aligns textual data with mid‑Holocene geomorphological evidence indicating that the Ghaggar–Hakra–Nara system discharged into a marine embayment. This paper therefore establishes the linguistic foundation required for any historically grounded understanding of the river Sarasvatī.
Saagnick Chakraborty (Mon,) studied this question.