Piyshon in Yehudit = "to flow".
Genesis 2:11 names it as one of the four rivers of Eden, surrounding the land of Chaviylah (חוילה). Most scholars treat Chaviylah as India, and argue as to whether the river was the Ganges or the Indus, favouring the Indus only because it lies west of the Ganges, and therefore closer to Kena'an (though Josephus believed it was the Ganges). Some scholars treat Chaviylah as Colchis, mostly because they read Piyshon as the River Phasis which runs through Colchis. To the Beney Yisra-El the Colchians were the Kasluchim (כסלחים) - see Genesis 10:14-16 and 1 Chronicles 1:12 - who they identify as the immediate ancestors of the Pelishtim, or Philistines, which we know makes them exiles from Knossos in Crete, which is west, not east of Eden. A third group of scholars, following the Samaritan Targum, treat Piyshon as the Nile itself, and therefore Chaviylah as either Egypt or Ethiopia.
And then there is the fourth group of scholars, led by Franz Delitzsch, who "identifies Piyshon with the Pallakopas, a canal on the W. bank of the Euphrates, flowing into the Persian Gulf, and Gihon with the modern Shaṭṭ-en-Nil, a canal from the E. bank of the Euphrates, near Babylon, and returning to the Euphrates over against Ur. Hiddekel and Euphrates will then be the lower portions of the Tigris and the Euphrates; Havilah part of the desert W. of the Euphrates; Kush the name for that region in Babylonia, which gave its name to the Kassite dynasty." (Cambridge Bible Commentaries).
The Yehudit Sheen (ש) interchanges with Tav (ת) in the Aramaic alphabet , which may allow Piyshon to be read as Piyton = python, snake; a commonplace figure of speech for any river. A Piton (פיתון) does indeed appear, in 1 Chronicles 8:35 and 9:41, as a son of Michah of the Beney Levi.
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