Mystic Saraswati River Himalayas
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Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River (Sanskrit : सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī) is one of the chief Rigvedic rivers mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts.
The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the
Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later Vedic texts like Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas as well as the Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.
The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity and gained meaning.
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Triveni Sangamam
Recent Hindu belief is that still
Saraswati river flows underground and meets Yamuna and Ganga at their confluence in Prayag (Allahabad)
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Refer Wikipedia Saraswathi Vedic River >
Sarasvatī is an exact cognate with
Avestan Harax vatī , perhaps
originally referring to Arədvī Sūrā
Anāhitā (modern Ardwisur Anahid ), the Zoroastrian mythological world river, which would point to a common Indo- Iranian myth of a cosmic or mystical Sáras-vat-ī river.
In the younger Avesta, Harax v atī is Arachosia , a region described to be rich in rivers, and its Old Persian cognate Harauvati , which gave its name to the present-day Hārūt River in Afghanistan , may have
referred to the entire Helmand drainage basin (the center of Arachosia).
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Vedic period
The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda .
RV 6 .61, RV 7 .95 and RV 7 .96.
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in Rig Veda V 2 .41.16 she is called
ámbitame nádītame dévitame
sárasvati, “best mother, best river,
best goddess”.
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The Sarasvati is mentioned in 13 hymns of the late books (1 and 10) of the Rigveda.
Only two of these references are unambiguously to the river: 10.64.9, calling for the aid of three “great rivers”, Sindhu, Sarasvati and Sarayu; and 10.75.5, the geographical list of the Nadistuti sukta.
According to the Mahabharata , theSarasvati dried up in a desert (at a place named Vinasana or
Adarsana); after having disappeared in the desert, reappears in some
places; and joins the sea
“impetuously”.
MB.3.81.115 locates
Kurukshetra to the south of the
Sarasvati and north of the Drishadvati.
Dried up seasonal Ghaggar River in
Rajasthan and haryana reflects the
same geographical view as described in Mahabharata .
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A new study titled,‘Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan
civilisation’, has concluded that the
Indus Valley Civilisation died out
because the monsoons which fed therivers that supported the civilisation,bmigrated to the east.
With the rivers drying out as a result, the civilisation collapsed some 4000 years ago. The
study was conducted by a team of
scientists from the US, the UK, India, Pakistan and Romania between 2003 and 2008. While the new finding puts to rest, at least for the moment, other theories of the civilisation’s demise, such as the shifting course of rivers
due to tectonic changes or a fatal
foreign invasion, it serves to strengthen the premise that the civilisation that we refer to as the Indus Valley Civilisation was largely located on the banks of and
in the proximity of the Saraswati river. More than 70 per cent of the sites that have been discovered to contain archaeological material dating to this civilisation’s period are located on the banks of the mythological — and now
dried out — river. As experts have been repeatedly pointing out, nearly 2,000 of the 3,000 sites excavated so far are located outside the Indus belt that
gives the civilisation its name.
According to experts who have studied the map of all relevant undergroundchannels that are intact to date and
connected once upon a time with the river, the Saraswati was probably 1500 km long and 3–15 km wide.
The latest study, whose findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, too is clear on the river’s existence and its
role in sustaining the ancient
civilisation. The report said that the
Saraswati was “not Himalayan-fed by a perennial monsoon-supported water course.” It added that the rivers in the region (including Saraswati) were “indeed sizeable and highly active.”
The Union Water Resources Ministry had then quoted in writing the conclusion of a study jointly conducted by scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur, and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water
Department, published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing.
Besides other things, the authors hadsaid that “clear signals of palaeo-nchannels on the satellite imagery in the form of a strong and powerful continuous drainage system in the North West region and occurrence of archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan age, beyond doubt indicate the existence of
a mighty palaeo-drainage system of Vedic Saraswati river in this region…
The description and magnanimity of these channels also matches with the river Saraswati described in the Vedas .
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The Sarasvati River of late Vedic and post-Vedic times is generally identified with the Ghaggar River. But the implication of a river of substantially greater volume makes the same identification of the early Vedic references problematic: either the Ghaggar was a more powerful river in earlier times, or the early VedicSarasvati was located elsewhere.
According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during the Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of theSaraswati from Dwarka to Mathura.
There were ancient kingdoms too (the era of the Mahajanapads) that lay in parts of north Rajasthan and that were named on the Saraswati River. This gives some logic to the theory of Ghaggar-Hakkar being the ancient Saraswati.
During the Pleistocene period the
Himalayan mountains were under glacial cover and climate was fluctuating between glacial and interglacial phases.
Around 40,000 yrs BC, the present Thar Desert enjoyed wet climate and greenery. Mythological River Saraswati/ Vedic Saraswati (also known as Saraswati Nadi, Saraswati Nala, Sarsuti
and Chautang in certain places,
variously spelt as Sarasvati) is believed to have flowed during 6000–3000 BC
from the melting glaciers of Garhwal Himalaya to Arabian Sea through the Thar Desert1,2. Several researchers agree about the existence of palaeochannels2. According to the Ground Water Cell of Haryana, a large number of water wells fall on these
palaeochannels and their lithology is coarse sand/gravel of riverine nature.
Now palaeochannels exhibit
discontinuous drainage.
Geomorphological and tectonic studyof drainage of northern Haryana wasdiscussed by Thussu3 and Virdi et al.4.
A good compilation of researches
covering various aspects of Saraswati isavailable in Valdiya5 and also posted by him at http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/
The_Saraswati_was_a_Major_River.pdf
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References
Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for
the Origins of Vedic Culture . Oxford
University Press.
ISBN 0-19-513777-9 .
Gupta, S.P. (ed.). 1995. The lost
Saraswati and the Indus Civilization.
Kusumanjali Prakashan, Jodhpur.
Hock, Hans (1999) Through a Glass
Darkly: Modern “Racial”
Interpretations vs. Textual and General
Prehistoric Evidence on Arya and
Dasa/Dasyu in Vedic Indo-Aryan
Society.” in Aryan and Non-Aryan in
South Asia, ed. Bronkhorst &
Deshpande, Ann Arbor.
Keith and Macdonell. 1912. Vedic
Index of Names and Subjects.
Kochhar, Rajesh, ‘On the identity
and chronology of the Ṛgvedic river
Sarasvatī’ in Archaeology and
Language III; Artefacts, languages
and texts, Routledge (1999), ISBN
0-415-10054-2 .
Lal, B.B. 2002. The Saraswati Flows
on: the Continuity of Indian Culture.
New Delhi: Aryan Books International
Oldham, R.D. 1893. The Sarsawati
and the Lost River of the Indian
Desert. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society. 1893. 49-76.
Puri, VKM, and Verma, BC,
Glaciological and Geological Source
of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas,
New Delhi, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV,
No.2, 1998 [1]
Radhakrishna, B.P. and Merh, S.S.
(editors): Vedic Saraswati:
Evolutionary History of a Lost River of
Northwestern India (1999) Geological
Society of India (Memoir 42),
Bangalore. Review (on page 3)
Review
Shaffer, Jim G. (1995). Cultural
tradition and Palaeoethnicity in
South Asian Archaeology . In: Indo-
Aryans of Ancient South Asia. Ed.
George Erdosy.. ISBN 3-11-014447-6 .
S. G. Talageri, The RigVeda – A
Historical Analysis chapter 4
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There is a book available that goes
further into the details of the Saravati river research, ‘New Discoveries About Vedic
Sarasvati’ written by Dr Ravi Prakash Arya.
He is the Chief Editor of Vedic Sciencejournal.Stephen Knap>>
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The Miracle River is [was] broadcast at 3.30pm on Saturday 29 June, 2002 on BBC
Radio 4
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/
south_asia/newsid_2073000/2073159.stm
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