In Greek mythology, Hydaspes (Ὑδάσπης), was a Pentapotamia river god with an extraordinary swift stream that flows into the Saronitic Syrtis. It is the modern day Jhelum River ("Vitasta" in Sanskrit).

The goddess Aphrodite was offended by Chrysippe and consequently made the princess fall in love with her own father. The girl was unable to curb her preternatural desires and, with the help of her nurse, went in the dead of the night to the king's bed and lay with him. When Hydaspes realized what had happened, he ordered the nurse buried alive for her betrayal and his daughter crucified. Soon after, overcome with grief for the loss of Chrysippe, he threw himself into the river Indus (evidently not the Indian river of the same name), which was said to have been renamed Hydaspes after him.^[2]

Plutarch describes the river in the following excerpts:

Moreover in this river there grows a stone, which is called lychnis, which resembles the color of oil, and is very bright in appearance. And when they are searching after it, which they do when the moon increases, the pipers play all the while. Nor is it to be worn by any but the richer sort. Also near that part of the river which is called Pylae, there grows an herb which is very like a heliotrope, with the juice of which the people anoint their skins to prevent sunburning, and to secure them against the scorching of the excessive heat.

The natives whenever they take their virgins tardy, nail them to a wooden cross, and fling them into this river, singing at the same time in their own language a hymn to Venus [i.e Aphrodite]. Every year also they bury a condemned old woman near the top of the hill called Therogonos; at which time an infinite multitude of creeping creatures come down from the top of the hill, and devour the insects that hover about the buried carcass...