
The Sarasvati River () is a
deified mythological
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in
Vedic
upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''.
The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed ...
and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the
Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
.
As a physical river, in the oldest texts of the Rigveda it is described as a "great and holy river in north-western
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
," but in the middle and late Rigvedic books it is described as a small river ending in "a terminal lake (samudra)." As the goddess
Sarasvati, the other referent for the term "Sarasvati" which developed into an independent identity in post-Vedic times, the river is also described as a powerful river and mighty flood. The Sarasvati is also considered by
Hindus
Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
to exist in a
metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...
form, in which it formed a confluence with the sacred rivers
Ganga and
Yamuna
The Yamuna (; ) is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Low ...
, at the
Triveni Sangam
In Hindu tradition, Triveni Sangam is the confluence (Sanskrit: ''sangama'') of three rivers that is a sacred place, with a bath here said to flush away all of one's sins and free one from the cycle of rebirth.
Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj ...
.
According to
Michael Witzel
Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–100). He ...
, superimposed on the Vedic Sarasvati river is the "heavenly river": the Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life."
Rigvedic and later Vedic texts have been used to propose identification with present-day rivers, or ancient riverbeds. The
Nadistuti Sukta in the
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
(10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the
Yamuna
The Yamuna (; ) is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Low ...
in the east and the
Shutudri(now known as Sutlej) in the west, while
RV 7.95.1-2, describes the Sarasvati as flowing to the
samudra, a word now usually translated as 'ocean', but which could also mean "lake."
Later Vedic texts such as the
Tandya Brahmana and the
Jaiminiya Brahmana, as well as the
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
, mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.
Since the late 19th century CE, numerous scholars have proposed to identify the Sarasvati with the
Ghaggar-Hakra River
The Ghaggar-Hakra River () is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage at , and as Hakra downstream of the barrage in the Thar Desert. In pre-Ha ...
system, which flows through modern-day northwestern-
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
and eastern-
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
, between the Yamuna and the Shutudri, and ends in the Thar desert. Recent geophysical research shows that the supposed downstream Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannel is actually a paleochannel of the Shutudri, which flowed into the
Nara river, a
delta channel of the
Indus River
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...
. 10,000–8,000 years ago this channel was abandoned when the Sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a system of monsoon-fed rivers which did not reach the sea.
The Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago, and
ISRO
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...
has observed that major
Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the Northwestern South Asia, northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 Common Era, BCE to 1300 BCE, and in i ...
sites at
Kalibangan (
Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
),
Banawali and
Rakhigarhi (
Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
),
Dholavira
Dholavira () is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village south of it. This village is from Radhanpur. Also known loc ...
and
Lothal
Lothal () was one of the southernmost sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilization, Indus Valley civilisation, located in the Bhal region of the Indian state of Gujarat. Construction of the city is believed to have begun around 2200 BCE.
Di ...
(
Gujarat
Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...
) lay along this course.
[Mythical Saraswati River]
Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 20 March 2013. When the monsoons that fed the rivers further diminished, the Hakra dried-up some 4,000 years ago, becoming an intermittent river, and the urban Harappan civilisation declined, becoming localized in smaller agricultural communities.
Identification of a mighty ''physical'' Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra system is therefore problematic, since the Ghaggar-Hakra had dried up well before the time of the composition of the Rigveda. In the words of Wilke and Moebus, the Sarasvati had been reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert" by the time that the Vedic people migrated into north-west India. Rigvedic references to a physical river also indicate that the Sarasvati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra) approximately 3000 years ago," "depicting the present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water." Also, Rigvedic descriptions of the Sarasvati do not match the actual course of the Ghaggar-Hakra.
"Sarasvati" has also been identified with the
Helmand in ancient
Arachosia, or , in present day southern
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
,
[ the name of which may have been reused from the more ancient Sanskrit name of the Ghaggar-Hakra river, after the Vedic tribes moved to the ]Punjab
Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...
. The ''Sarasvati'' of the Rigveda may also refer to two distinct rivers, with the family books referring to the Helmand River, and the more recent 10th mandala referring to the Ghaggar-Hakra.[
The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century CE,] with some Hindutva
Hindutva (; ) is a Far-right politics, far-right political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Da ...
proponents suggesting an earlier dating of the Rigveda; renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Sarasvati Culture", the "Sarasvati Civilization", the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Culture" or the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization," suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures can be equated; and rejecting the Indo-Aryan migration theory, which postulates an extended period of migrations of Indo-European speaking people into the Indian subcontinent between ca. 1900 BCE and 1400 BCE.
Etymology
' is the feminine nominative singular form of the adjective ' (which occurs in the Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
as the name of the keeper of the celestial waters), derived from 'sáras' + 'vat', meaning 'having sáras-'. Sanskrit ' means 'lake, pond' (cf. the derivative ' 'lake bird = Sarus crane
The sarus crane (''Antigone antigone'') is a large nonmigratory Crane (bird), crane found in parts of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and northern Australia. The tallest of the flying birds, standing at a height of up to , they are a c ...
'). Mayrhofer considers unlikely a connection with the root *' 'run, flow' but does agree that it could have been a river that connected many lakes due to its abundant volumes of water-flow.
' is considered to be a cognate of Avestan
Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...
''Haraxvatī''. In the younger Avesta
The Avesta (, Book Pahlavi: (), Persian language, Persian: ()) is the text corpus of Zoroastrian literature, religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Mod ...
, ''Haraxvatī'' is Arachosia, a region described to be rich in rivers, and its Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...
cognate ''Harauvati''.
Importance in Hinduism
The Sarasvati river was revered and considered important for Hindus because it is said that it was on this river's banks, along with its tributary Drishadvati, in the Vedic state of Brahmavarta, that Vedic Sanskrit had its genesis, and important Vedic scriptures like initial part of Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
and several Upanishads
The Upanishads (; , , ) are late Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts that "document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions" and the emergence of the central religious concepts of Hind ...
were supposed to have been composed by Vedic seers. In the Manusmriti
The ''Manusmṛti'' (), also known as the ''Mānava-Dharmaśāstra'' or the Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitutions among the many ' of Hinduism.
Over fifty manuscripts of the ''Manusmriti'' are now known, but the earli ...
, Brahmavarta is portrayed as the "pure" centre of Vedic culture. Bridget and Raymond Allchin in ''The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan'' took the view that "The earliest Aryan homeland in India–Pakistan (Aryavarta or Brahmavarta) was in the Punjab and in the valleys of the Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers in the time of the Rigveda."
Rigveda
As a river
The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all but the fourth book of the Vedas
FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''.
The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...
. Macdonell and Keith provided a comprehensive survey of Vedic references to the Sarasvati River in their ''Vedic Index''. In the late book 10, only two references are unambiguously to the river: 10.64.9, calling for the aid of three "great rivers", Sindhu, Sarasvati, Sarayu
The Sarju ( Kumaoni: सरज्यू, Hindi: सरयू), also known as Saryu, is a major river draining Central Kumaon region in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Originating from Sarmul, Sarju flows through the cities of Kapkot, Bageshw ...
; and 10.75.5, the geographical list of the Nadistuti Sukta. In this hymn, the Sarasvati River is placed between the Yamuna
The Yamuna (; ) is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Low ...
and the Shutudri.
In the oldest texts of the Rigveda she is described as a "great and holy river in north-western India," but Michael Witzel notes that the Rigveda indicates that the Sarasvati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra) approximately 3000 years ago." The middle books 3 and 7 and the late books 10 "depict the present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water." The Sarasvati acquired an exalted status in the mythology of the Kuru kingdom, where the Rigveda was compiled.
As a goddess
Sarasvati is mentioned some fifty times in the hymns of the Rigveda. It is mentioned in thirteen hymns of the late books (1 and 10) of the Rigveda.
The most important hymns related to Sarasvati goddess are RV 6.61, RV 7.95 and RV 7.96. As a river goddess, she is described as a mighty flood, and is clearly not an earthly river. According to Michael Witzel, superimposed on the Vedic Sarasvati river is the heavenly river Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life."[: "It can easily be understood, as the Sarasvatī, the river on earth and in the nighttime sky, emerges, just as in Germanic myth, from the roots of the world tree. In the Middle Vedic texts, this is acted out in the Yātsattra... along the Rivers Sarasvatī and Dṛṣadvatī (northwest of Delhi)..."][: "The Sarasvatī river, which, according to Witzel,... personifies the Milky Way, falls down to this world at Plakṣa Prāsarvaṇa, "the world tree at the center of heaven and earth," and flows through the land of the Kurus, the center of this world."] The description of the Sarasvati as the river of heavens, is interpreted to suggest its mythical nature.
In 10.30.12, her origin as a river goddess may explain her invocation as a protective deity in a hymn to the celestial waters. In 10.135.5, as Indra drinks Soma, he is described as refreshed by Sarasvati. The invocations in 10.17 address Sarasvati as a goddess of the forefathers as well as of the present generation. In 1.13, 1.89, 10.85, 10.66 and 10.141, she is listed with other gods and goddesses, not with rivers. In 10.65, she is invoked together with "holy thoughts" (') and "munificence" ('), consistent with her role as a goddess of both knowledge and fertility.
Though Sarasvati initially emerged as a river goddess in the Vedic scriptures, in later Hinduism of the , she was rarely associated with the river. Instead, she emerged as an independent goddess of knowledge, learning, wisdom, music and the arts. The evolution of the river goddess into the goddess of knowledge started with later Brahmanas
The Brahmanas (; Sanskrit: , International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''Brāhmaṇam'') are Vedas, Vedic śruti works attached to the Samhitas (hymns and mantras) of the Rigveda, Rig, Samaveda, Sama, Yajurveda, Yajur, and Athar ...
, which identified her as ''Vāgdevī'', the goddess of speech, perhaps due to the centrality of speech in the Vedic cult and the development of the cult on the banks of the river. It is also possible to postulate two originally independent goddesses that were fused into one in later Vedic times. Aurobindo has proposed, on the other hand, that "the symbolism of the Veda betrays itself to the greatest clearness in the figure of the goddess Sarasvati ... She is, plainly and clearly, the goddess of the World, the goddess of a divine inspiration ...".
Other Vedic texts
In post-Rigvedic literature, the disappearance of the Sarasvati is mentioned. Also the origin of the Sarasvati is identified as Plaksa Prasravana (Pippala tree or Ashvaththa tree as known in India and Nepal).
In a supplementary chapter of the Vajasaneyi-Samhita of the Yajurveda
The ''Yajurveda'' (, , from यजुस्, "worship", and वेद, "knowledge") is the Veda primarily of prose mantras for worship rituals.Michael Witzel (2003), "Vedas and Upaniṣads", in ''The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism'' (Edito ...
(34.11), Sarasvati is mentioned in a context apparently meaning the Sindhu: "Five rivers flowing on their way speed onward to Sarasvati, but then become Sarasvati a fivefold river in the land." According to the medieval commentator Uvata, the five tributaries of the Sarasvati were the Punjab rivers Drishadvati, Shutudri (Sutlej
The Sutlej River or the Satluj River is a major river in Asia, flowing through China, India and Pakistan, and is the longest of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It is also known as ''Satadru''; and is the easternmost tributary of t ...
), Asikini ( Chenab), Vipasha ( Beas), Iravati ( Ravi).
The first reference to the disappearance of the lower course of the Sarasvati is from the Brahmana
The Brahmanas (; Sanskrit: , International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''Brāhmaṇam'') are Vedas, Vedic śruti works attached to the Samhitas (hymns and mantras) of the Rigveda, Rig, Samaveda, Sama, Yajurveda, Yajur, and Athar ...
s, texts that are composed in Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit, also simply referred as the Vedic language, is the most ancient known precursor to Sanskrit, a language in the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is atteste ...
, but dating to a later date than the Veda Samhitas. The Jaiminiya Brahmana (2.297) speaks of the 'diving under (upamajjana) of the Sarasvati', and the Tandya Brahmana (or Pancavimsa Br.) calls this the 'disappearance' (vinasana). The same text (25.10.11–16) records that the Sarasvati is 'so to say meandering' (kubjimati) as it could not sustain heaven which it had propped up.
The Plaksa Prasravana (place of source of the river) may refer to a spring in the Sivalik hills
The Sivalik Hills, also known as Churia Hills, are a mountain range of the outer Himalayas.
The literal translation of "Sivalik" is 'tresses of Shiva'. The hills are known for their numerous fossils, and are also home to the Soanian Middle Pale ...
. The distance between the source and the Vinasana (place of disappearance of the river) is said to be 44 Ashvinas (between several hundred and 1,600 miles) (Tandya Br. 25.10.16; cf. Av. 6.131.3; Pancavimsa Br.).
In the Latyayana Srautasutra (10.15–19) the Sarasvati seems to be a perennial river up to the Vinasana, which is west of its confluence with the Drshadvati (Chautang). The Drshadvati is described as a seasonal stream (10.17), meaning it was not from Himalayas. Bhargava has identified Drashadwati river as present-day Sahibi river originating from Jaipur hills in Rajasthan. The Asvalayana Srautasutra and Sankhayana Srautasutra contain verses that are similar to the Latyayana Srautasutra.
Post-Vedic texts
Wilke and Moebus note that the "historical river" Sarasvati was a "topographically tangible mythogeme", which was already reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert", by the time of composition of the Hindu epics
Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called ''Kavya'' (or ''Kāvya''; Sanskrit: काव्य, IAST: ''kāvyá''). The ''Ramayana'' and the '' Mahabharata'', which were originally composed i ...
. These post-Vedic texts regularly talk about drying up of the river, and start associating the goddess Sarasvati with language, rather than the river.
Mahabharata
According to the Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
(3rd c. BCE – 3rd c. CE) the Sarasvati River dried up to a desert (at a place named Vinasana or Adarsana) and joins the sea "impetuously". MB.3.81.115 locates the state of Kurupradesh or Kuru Kingdom to the south of the Sarasvati and north of the Drishadvati. The dried-up, seasonal Ghaggar River in Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
and Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
reflects the same geographical view described in the Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
.
According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during the Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of the Saraswati 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 Sarasvati River.
Puranas
Several describe the Sarasvati River, and also record that the river separated into a number of lakes (''saras'').[D.S. Chauhan in Radhakrishna, B.P. and Merh, S.S. (editors): Vedic Saraswati, 1999, p.35–44]
In the Skanda Purana
The ''Skanda Purana'' ( IAST: Skanda Purāṇa) is the largest '' Mukhyapurāṇa'', a genre of eighteen Hindu religious texts. The text contains over 81,000 verses, and is of Shaivite literature, titled after Skanda, a son of Shiva and Parv ...
, the Sarasvati originates from the water pot of Brahma
Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the triple deity, trinity of Para Brahman, supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity, Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 212– ...
and flows from Plaksa spring on the Himalayas. It then turns west at Kedara and also flows underground. Five distributaries of the Sarasvati are mentioned. The texts reveal Sarasvati river's goddess is Sarasvati. According to the Vamana Purana
The ''Vamana Purana'' (, IAST: ), is an ancient Sanskrit text that is at least 1,000 years old and is one of the eighteen major Puranas of Hinduism. The text is named after one of the incarnations of Vishnu and probably was a Vaishnava text ...
32.1–4, the Sarasvati rose from the Plaksa spring.
The ''Padma Purana
The ''Padma Purana'' (, or ) is one of the eighteen Puranas#Mahapuranas, Major Puranas, a genre of texts in Hinduism. It is an encyclopedic text, named after the lotus in which creator god Brahma appeared, and includes large sections dedic ...
'' says:
Smritis
* In the Manu Smriti
The ''Manusmṛti'' (), also known as the ''Mānava-Dharmaśāstra'' or the Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitutions among the many ' of Hinduism.
Over fifty manuscripts of the ''Manusmriti'' are now known, but the earli ...
, the sage Manu, escaping from a flood, founded the Vedic culture between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers. The Sarasvati River was thus the western boundary of Brahmavarta: "the land between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati is created by God; this land is Brahmavarta."
* Similarly, the Vasistha Dharma Sutra I.8–9 and 12–13 locates Aryavarta to the east of the disappearance of the Sarasvati in the desert, to the west of Kalakavana, to the north of the mountains of Pariyatra and Vindhya and to the south of the Himalaya
The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than 100 pea ...
. Patanjali
Patanjali (, , ; also called Gonardiya or Gonikaputra) was the name of one or more author(s), mystic(s) and philosopher(s) in ancient India. His name is recorded as an author and compiler of a number of Sanskrit works. The greatest of these a ...
's Mahābhāṣya
''Mahabhashya'' (, IAST: '','' , "Great Commentary"), attributed to Patañjali, is a commentary on selected rules of Sanskrit grammar from Pāṇini's treatise, the ''Aṣṭādhyāyī'', as well as Kātyāyana's ''Vārttika-sūtra'', an ela ...
defines Aryavarta like the Vasistha Dharma Sutra.
* The Baudhayana
The (Sanskrit: बौधायन सूत्रस् ) are a group of Vedic Sanskrit texts which cover dharma, daily ritual, mathematics and is one of the oldest Dharma-related texts of Hinduism that have survived into the modern age from th ...
''Dharmasutra'' gives similar definitions, declaring that Aryavarta is the land that lies west of Kalakavana, east of Adarsana (where the Sarasvati disappears in the desert), south of the Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...
and north of the Vindhyas.
Contemporary religious significance
Diana Eck notes that the power and significance of the Sarasvati for present-day Indian Subcontinent is in the persistent symbolic presence at the confluence of rivers all over Indian Subcontinent. Although underground , it is the third river, which emerges to join in the meeting of rivers, thus making the waters holy.
After the Vedic Sarasvati dried, new myths about the rivers arose. Sarasvati is described to flow in the underworld
The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
...
and rise to the surface at some places. For centuries, the Sarasvati river existed in a "subtle or mythic" form, since it corresponds with none of the major rivers of present-day South Asia. The confluence
In geography, a confluence (also ''conflux'') occurs where two or more watercourses join to form a single channel (geography), channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main ...
(''sangam'') or joining of the Ganga and Yamuna
The Yamuna (; ) is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Low ...
rivers at Triveni Sangam
In Hindu tradition, Triveni Sangam is the confluence (Sanskrit: ''sangama'') of three rivers that is a sacred place, with a bath here said to flush away all of one's sins and free one from the cycle of rebirth.
Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj ...
, Prayagaraja, is believed to also converge with the unseen Sarasvati river, which is believed to flow underground. This is despite Prayagaraja being at a large distance from the historic route of Sarasvati river as a underground river flowing east.
At the Kumbha Mela
Kumbh Mela (, ; ) is an important Hindu pilgrimage, celebrated approximately every 6 or 12 years, correlated with the partial or full revolution of Jupiter. It is the largest peaceful gathering of people in the world.
A ritual dip in the ...
, a mass bathing festival is held at Triveni Sangam, literally "confluence of the three rivers", every 12 years. The belief of Sarasvati joining at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna originates from the Puranic scriptures and denotes the "powerful legacy" the Vedic river left after her disappearance. The belief is interpreted as "symbolic". The three rivers Sarasvati, Yamuna, Ganga are companions of Brahma
Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the triple deity, trinity of Para Brahman, supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity, Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 212– ...
, Vishnu
Vishnu (; , , ), also known as Narayana and Hari, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Vaishnavism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism, and the god of preservation ( ...
, Shiva
Shiva (; , ), also known as Mahadeva (; , , Help:IPA/Sanskrit, ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐh and Hara, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the God in Hinduism, Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions w ...
respectively.[Eck p. 149]
In lesser known configuration, Sarasvati is said to form the ''Triveni'' confluence with rivers Hiranya and Kapila at Somnath. There are several other ''Triveni''s in India where two physical rivers are joined by the "unseen" Sarasvati, which adds to the sanctity of the confluence.
Romila Thapar notes that "once the river had been mythologized through invoking the memory of the earlier river, its name – Sarasvati – could be applied to many rivers, which is what happened in various parts of the Indian Subcontinent."
Several present-day rivers are also named Sarasvati, after the Vedic Sarasvati:
* Sarasvati is the present-day name of a river originating in a submontane region (Ambala
Ambala () is a city and a municipal corporation in Ambala district in the state of Haryana, India, located on the border with the Indian state of Punjab (India), Punjab and in proximity to both states capital Chandigarh. Politically, Ambala ...
district) and joining the Ghaggar near Shatrana in PEPSU. Near Sadulgarh ( Hanumangarh) the Naiwala channel, a dried out channel of the Sutlej
The Sutlej River or the Satluj River is a major river in Asia, flowing through China, India and Pakistan, and is the longest of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It is also known as ''Satadru''; and is the easternmost tributary of t ...
, joins the Ghaggar. Near Suratgarh, the Ghaggar is then joined by the dried up Drishadvati river.
* Sarasvati is the name of a river originating in the Aravalli mountain range in Rajasthan
Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...
, passing through Sidfhpur and Patan before submerging in the Rann of Kutch
The Rann of Kutch is a large area of salt marshes that span the border between India and Pakistan. It is located mostly in the Kutch district of the Indian state of Gujarat, with a minor portion extending into the Sindh province of Pakistan. ...
.
* Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River () is a Apotheosis, deified myth, mythological Rigvedic rivers, river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedas, Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Historical Vedic religion, Vedic religio ...
, a tributary of Alaknanda River, originates near Badrinath.
* Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River () is a Apotheosis, deified myth, mythological Rigvedic rivers, river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedas, Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Historical Vedic religion, Vedic religio ...
in Bengal
Bengal ( ) is a Historical geography, historical geographical, ethnolinguistic and cultural term referring to a region in the Eastern South Asia, eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. The region of Benga ...
, formerly a distributary of the Hooghly River
The Hooghly River (, also spelled ''Hoogli'' or ''Hugli'') is the westernmost distributary of the Ganges, situated in West Bengal, India. It is known in its upper reaches as the Bhagirathi. The Bhagirathi splits off from the main branch of the G ...
, has dried up since the 17th century CE.
Identification theories
Already since the 19th century CE, attempts have been made to identify the mythical Sarasvati of the Vedas with physical rivers. Many think that the Vedic Sarasvati river once flowed east of the Indus
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans- Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northwest through the dis ...
(Sindhu) river.[Eck p. 145] Scientists, geologists as well as scholars have identified the Sarasvati with many present-day or now-defunct rivers.
Two theories are popular in the attempts to identify the Sarasvati. Several scholars have identified the river with the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra River
The Ghaggar-Hakra River () is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage at , and as Hakra downstream of the barrage in the Thar Desert. In pre-Ha ...
or dried up part of it, which is located in Northwestern India and Pakistan. A second popular theory associates the river with the Helmand river
The Helmand river (Pashto/Dari: ; Ancient Greek: Ἐτύμανδρος, ''Etýmandros''; Latin: '), also spelled Helmend, or Helmund, Hirmand, is the longest river in Afghanistan and the primary watershed for the endorheic Sistan Basin. It o ...
or an ancient river in the present Helmand Valley in Afghanistan.[
Others consider Sarasvati a mythical river, an ]allegory
As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...
not a "thing".
The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century CE,[Encyclopædia Britannica]
''Sarasvati''
/ref> suggesting an earlier dating of the Rigveda, and renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Sarasvati culture", the "Sarasvati Civilization", the "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization" or the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization," suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures can be equated.
Rigvedic course
The Rigveda contains several hymns which give an indication of the flow of the geography of the river, and an identification of the Sarasvati as described in the later books of the Rigveda with the Ghaggra-Hakra:
* RV 3.23.4 mentions the Sarasvati River together with the Drishadvati River and the Āpayā River.
* RV 6.52.6 describes the Sarasvati as swollen (pinvamānā) by the rivers (sindhubhih).
* RV 7.36.6, ''"sárasvatī saptáthī síndhumātā"'' can be translated as "Sarasvati the Seventh, Mother of Floods," but also as "whose mother is the Sindhu", which would indicate that the Sarasvati is here a tributary of the Indus.
* RV 7.95.1–2, describes the Sarasvati as flowing to the samudra, a word now usually translated as "ocean," but which could also mean "lake."
* RV 10.75.5, the late Rigvedic Nadistuti Sukta, enumerates all important rivers from the Ganges in the east up to the Indus in the west in a clear geographical order. The sequence "Ganges, Yamuna
The Yamuna (; ) is the second-largest tributary river of the Ganges by discharge and the longest tributary in India. Originating from the Yamunotri Glacier at a height of about on the southwestern slopes of Bandarpunch peaks of the Low ...
, Sarasvati, Shutudri" places the Sarasvati between the Yamuna and the Sutlej
The Sutlej River or the Satluj River is a major river in Asia, flowing through China, India and Pakistan, and is the longest of the five major rivers of the Punjab region. It is also known as ''Satadru''; and is the easternmost tributary of t ...
, which is consistent with the Ghaggar identification.
Yet, the Rigveda also contains clues for an identification with the Helmand river in Afghanistan:
* The Sarasvati River is perceived to be a great river with perennial water, which does not apply to the Hakra and Ghaggar.
* The Rigveda seems to contain descriptions of several Sarasvatis. The earliest Sararvati is said to be similar to the Helmand in Afghanistan which is called the Harakhwati in the Āvestā.[S. Kalyanaraman (ed.), ''Vedic River Sarasvati and Hindu Civilization'', PP.96]
* Verses in RV 6.61 indicate that the Sarasvati river originated in the hills or mountains (giri), where she "burst with her strong waves the ridges of the hills (giri)". It is a matter of interpretation whether this refers only to the Himalayan foothills
Foothills or piedmont are geography, geographically defined as gradual increases in elevation at the base of a mountain range, higher hill range or an highland, upland area. They are a transition zone between plains and low terrain, relief hill ...
, where the present-day Sarasvati (Sarsuti) river flows, or to higher mountains.
The Rigveda was composed during the latter part of the late Harappan period, and according to Shaffer, the reason for the predominance of the Sarasvati in the Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
is the late Harappan (1900-1300 BCE) population shift eastwards to Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
.[J. Shaffer, in: J. Bronkhorst & M. Deshpande (eds.), Aryans and Non-Non-Aryans, Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Cambridge ( Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 3) 1999]
Ghaggar-Hakra River
The present Ghaggar-Hakra River is a seasonal river in India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
and Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
that flows only during the monsoon
A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...
season, but satellite images in possession of the ISRO
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...
and ONGC have confirmed that the major course of a river ran through the present-day Ghaggar River. The supposed paleochannel of the Hakra is actually a paleochannel of the Sutlej, flowing into the Nara river bed, presently a delta channel c.q. paleochannel of the Indus River
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...
. At least 10,000 years ago, well before the rise of the Harappan civilization, the sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a monsoon-fed river. Early in the 2nd millennium BCE the monsoons diminished and the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system dried up, which affected the Harappan civilisation.
Paleochannels and ancient course
While there is general agreement that the river courses in the Indus Basin have frequently changed course, the exact sequence of these changes and their dating have been problematic.
=Pre-Holocene diversion of the Sutlej and Yamuna
=
Older publications have suggested that the Sutlej and the Yamuna drained into the Hakra well into Mature Harappan times, providing ample volume to the supply provided by the monsoon-fed Ghaggar. The Sutlej and Yamuna then changed course between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE, due to either tectonic events or "slightly altered gradients on the extremely flat plains," resulting in the drying-up of the Hakra in the Thar Desert
The Thar Desert (), also known as the Great Indian Desert, is an arid region in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent that covers an area of in India and Pakistan. It is the world's 18th-largest desert, and the world's 9th-large ...
. More recent publications have shown that the Sutlej and the Yamuna shifted course well before Harappan times, leaving the monsoon-fed Ghaggar-Hakra which dried-up during late Harappan times.
Clift et al. (2012), using dating of zircon sand grains, have shown that subsurface river channels near the Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the Northwestern South Asia, northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 Common Era, BCE to 1300 BCE, and in i ...
sites in Cholistan
The Cholistan Desert (; ; Saraiki: ), also locally known as Rohi (), is a desert in the southern part of Punjab, Pakistan, Pakistani Punjab that forms part of the Greater Thar Desert, which extends to Sindh province and the Indian state of Rajast ...
immediately below the presumed Ghaggar-Hakra channel show sediment affinity not with the Ghagger-Hakra, but instead with the Beas River in the western sites and the Sutlej and the Yamuna in the eastern ones. This suggests that the Yamuna itself, or a channel of the Yamuna, along with a channel of the Sutlej may have flowed west some time between 47,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE. The drainage from the Yamuna may have been lost from the Ghaggar-Hakra well before the beginnings of Indus civilisation.
Ajit Singh et al. (2017) show that the paleochannel of the Ghaggar-Hakra is a former course of the Sutlej, which diverted to its present course between 15,000 and 8,000 years ago, well before the development of the Harappan Civilisation. Ajit Singh et al. conclude that the urban populations settled not along a perennial river, but a monsoon-fed seasonal river that was not subject to devastating floods.[Malavika Vyawahare (29 November 2017),]
New study challenges existence of Saraswati river, says it was Sutlej's old course
, Hindustan Times.
Khonde et al. (2017) confirm that the Great Rann of Kutch received sediments from a different source than the Indus, but this source stopped supplying sediments after ca. 10,000 years ago. Likewise, Dave et al. (2019) state that " r results disprove the proposed link between ancient settlements and large rivers from the Himalayas and indicate that the major palaeo-fluvial system traversing through this region ceased long before the establishment of the Harappan civilisation."
According to Chaudhri et al. (2021) "the Sarasvati River used to flow from the glaciated peaks of the Himalaya to the Arabian sea," and an "enormous amount of water was flowing through this channel network until BCE 11,147." This study suggests that the Saraswati was initially glacier-fed, weakened as glaciers shrank after 4000 BCE, relied mostly on rain until around 2000 years ago, and fully dried up by 1402 CE.
=IVC and diminishing of the monsoons
=
Many Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the Northwestern South Asia, northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 Common Era, BCE to 1300 BCE, and in i ...
(Harrapan Civilisation) sites are found on the banks of and in the proximity of the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system, due to the "high monsoon rainfall" which fed the Ghaggar-Hakra in Mature Harappan Times.
Giosan et al., in their study ''Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilisation'', make clear that the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system was not a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, but a monsoonal-fed river. They concluded that the Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago. When the monsoons, which fed the rivers that supported the civilisation, further diminished and the rivers dried out as a result, the IVC declined some 4000 years ago. This in particular effected the Ghaggar-Hakra system, which became an intermittent river
Intermittent, temporary or seasonal rivers or streams cease to flow every year or at least twice every five years. Such rivers drain large arid and semi-arid areas, covering approximately a third of the Earth's surface. The extent of tempora ...
and was largely abandoned. Localized Late IVC-settlements are found eastwards, toward the more humid regions of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, where the decentralised late Harappan phase took place.
The same widespread aridification in the third millennium BCE also led to water shortages and ecological changes in the Eurasian steppes,[Rajesh Kochhar (2017)]
"The Aryan chromosome"
''The Indian Express'' leading to a change of vegetation, triggering "higher mobility and transition to nomadic cattle breeding," These migrations eventually resulted in the Indo-Aryan migrations into South Asia.
Identification with the Sarasvati
A number of archaeologists and geologists have identified the Sarasvati river with the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra River, or the dried up part of it, despite the fact that it had already dried-up and become a small seasonal river before Vedic times.
In the late 19th century CE and early 20th century CE, a number of scholars, archaeologists and geologists have identified the Vedic Sarasvati River with the Ghaggar-Hakra River
The Ghaggar-Hakra River () is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage at , and as Hakra downstream of the barrage in the Thar Desert. In pre-Ha ...
, such as Christian Lassen (1800-1876), Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born British comparative philologist and oriental studies, Orientalist. He was one of the founders of the Western academic disciplines of Indology and religious s ...
(1823-1900), Marc Aurel Stein
Sir Marc Aurel Stein,
(; 26 November 1862 – 26 October 1943) was a Hungarian-born British archaeologist, primarily known for his explorations and archaeological discoveries in Central Asia. He was also a professor at Indian universities.
...
(1862–1943), C.F. Oldham and Jane Macintosh. Danino notes that "the 1500 km-long bed of the Sarasvati" was "rediscovered" in the 19th century. According to Danino, "most Indologists" were convinced in the 19th century that "the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra was the relic of the Sarasvati."
Recent archaeologists and geologists, such as Philip and Virdi (2006), K.S. Valdiya (2013) have identified the Sarasvati with Ghaggar. According to Gregory Possehl, "Linguistic, archaeological, and historical data show that the Sarasvati of the Vedas is the modern Ghaggar or Hakra."
According to R.U.S. Prasad, "we ..find a considerable body of opinions icamong the scholars, archaeologists and geologists, who hold that the Sarasvati originated in the Sivalik hills
The Sivalik Hills, also known as Churia Hills, are a mountain range of the outer Himalayas.
The literal translation of "Sivalik" is 'tresses of Shiva'. The hills are known for their numerous fossils, and are also home to the Soanian Middle Pale ...
..and descended through Adi Badri, situated in the foothills of the Shivaliks, to the plains ..and finally debouched herself into the Arabian sea at the Rann of Kutch
The Rann of Kutch is a large area of salt marshes that span the border between India and Pakistan. It is located mostly in the Kutch district of the Indian state of Gujarat, with a minor portion extending into the Sindh province of Pakistan. ...
." According to Valdiya, "it is plausible to conclude that once upon a time the Ghagghar was known as "Sarsutī"," which is "a corruption of "Sarasvati"," because "at Sirsā on the bank of the Ghagghar stands a fortress called "Sarsutī". Now in derelict condition, this fortress of antiquity celebrates and honours the river ''Sarsutī''."
Textual and historical objections
Ashoke Mukherjee (2001), is critical of the attempts to identify the Rigvedic Sarasvati. Mukherjee notes that many historians and archaeologists, both Indian and foreign, concluded that the word "Sarasvati" (literally "being full of water") is not a noun
In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
, a specific "thing". However, Mukherjee believes that "Sarasvati" is initially used by the Rigvedic people as an adjective to the Indus as a large river and later evolved into a "noun". Mukherjee concludes that the Vedic poets had not seen the palaeo-Sarasvati, and that what they described in the Vedic verses refers to something else. He also suggests that in the post-Vedic and Puranic tradition the "disappearance" of Sarasvati, which to refers to " oingunder heground in the sands", was created as a complementary myth to explain the visible non-existence of the river.
Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Quotr: "The pre-eminent interpreter of ancient Indian history today. ... " Thapar is a Professor ...
terms the identification controversial and dismisses it, noticing that the descriptions of Sarasvati flowing through the high mountains does not tally with Ghaggar's course and suggests that Sarasvati is Haraxvati of Afghanistan. Wilke and Moebus suggest that the identification is problematic since the Ghaggar-Hakra river was already dried up at the time of the composition of the Vedas, let alone the migration of the Vedic people into northern India.
Rajesh Kocchar further notes that, even if the Sutlej and the Yamuna had drained into the Ghaggar during Rigvedic, it still would not fit the Rigvedic descriptions because "the snow-fed Satluj and Yamuna would strengthen lower Ghaggar. Upper Ghaggar would still be as puny as it is today."
Helmand river
An alternative suggestion for the identity of the early Rigvedic Sarasvati River is the Helmand River
The Helmand river (Pashto/Dari: ; Ancient Greek: Ἐτύμανδρος, ''Etýmandros''; Latin: '), also spelled Helmend, or Helmund, Hirmand, is the longest river in Afghanistan and the primary watershed for the endorheic Sistan Basin. It o ...
and its tributary Arghandab River
The Arghandab is a river in Afghanistan, about in length. It rises in Ghazni Province, west of the city of Ghazni, and flows southwest, passing near the city of Kandahar, before joining the Helmand River below the town of Grishk. In its lowe ...
in the Arachosia region in Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, separated from the watershed of the Indus by the Sanglakh Range. The Helmand historically besides Avestan ''Haetumant'' bore the name ''Haraxvaiti'', which is the Avestan
Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...
form cognate to Sanskrit ''Sarasvati''. The Avesta
The Avesta (, Book Pahlavi: (), Persian language, Persian: ()) is the text corpus of Zoroastrian literature, religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Mod ...
extols the Helmand in similar terms to those used in the Rigveda with respect to the Sarasvati: "The bountiful, glorious Haetumant swelling its white waves rolling down its copious flood". However unlike the Rigvedic Sarasvati, Helmand river never attained the status of a deity despite the praises in the Avesta. The identification of the ''Sarasvati'' river with the ''Helmand'' river was first proposed by Thomas (1886), followed by Alfred Hillebrandt a couple of years thereafter.
According to Konrad Klaus (1989), the geographic situation of the Sarasvati and the Helmand rivers are similar. Both flow into terminal lakes: The Helmand flows into a swamp on the Iranian plateau
The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature spanning parts of the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. It makes up part of the Eurasian plate, and is wedged between the Arabian plate and the Indian plate. ...
(the extended wetland
A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...
and lake system of Hamun-i-Helmand). This matches the Rigvedic description of the Sarasvati flowing to the '' samudra'', which according to him at that time meant 'confluence', 'lake', 'heavenly lake', 'ocean'; the current meaning of 'terrestrial ocean' was not even felt in the Pali Canon.[Klaus, K. Die altindische Kosmologie, nach den Brāhmaṇas dargestellt. Bonn 1986][Samudra, XXIII Deutscher Orientalistentag Würzburg, ZDMG Suppl. Volume VII, Stuttgart 1989, 367–371]
Rajesh Kocchar, after a detailed analysis of the Vedic texts and geological environments of the rivers, concludes that there are two Sarasvati rivers mentioned in the Rigveda. The early Rigvedic Sarasvati, which he calls ''Naditama Sarasvati'', is described in Suktas 2.41, 7.36, etc. of the family books of the Rigveda, and drains into a '' samudra''. The description of the ''Naditama Sarasvati'' in the Rigveda matches the physical features of the Helmand River
The Helmand river (Pashto/Dari: ; Ancient Greek: Ἐτύμανδρος, ''Etýmandros''; Latin: '), also spelled Helmend, or Helmund, Hirmand, is the longest river in Afghanistan and the primary watershed for the endorheic Sistan Basin. It o ...
in Afghanistan, more precisely its tributary the Harut River
The Harut River or Adraskan River is a river of Afghanistan which belongs to the Sistan Basin. The source of the river lies in the mountains to the southeast of Herat
Herāt (; Dari/Pashto: هرات) is an oasis city and the third-largest ...
(Heu Rúd or Sabzawar River). Rajesh Kocchar, however, believes that the name 'Harut' is traced to 'Harauvaiti' (the name for the region of Arachosia, not a river) and Harut is not actually a part of Arachosia but of Dragiana. The later Rigvedic Sarasvati, which he calls ''Vinasana Sarasvati'', is described in the Rigvedic Nadistuti Sukta (10.75), which was composed centuries later, after an eastward migration of the bearers of the Rigvedic culture to the western Ganga plain some 600 km to the east. The Sarasvati by this time had become a underground river, and the name was transferred to the Ghaggar which disappeared in the desert.[ The later Rigvedic Sarasvati is only in the post-Rigvedic Brahmanas said to disappear in the sands. According to Kocchar the Ganga and Yamuna were small streams in the vicinity of the Harut River. When the Vedic people moved east into Punjab, they named the new rivers they encountered after the old rivers they knew from Helmand, and the ''Vinasana Sarasvati'' may correspond with the Ghaggar-Hakra river.][ based on ]
Romila Thapar (2004) declares the identification of the Ghaggar with the Sarasvati controversial. Furthermore, the early references to the Sarasvati could be the Haraxvati plain in Afghanistan. The identification with the Ghaggar is problematic, as the Sarasvati is said to cut its way through high mountains, which is not the landscape of the Ghaggar.
Contemporary politico-religious meaning
Drying-up and dating of the Vedas
The Vedic description of the goddess Sarasvati as a mighty river, and the Vedic and Puranic statements about the drying-up and diving-under of the Sarasvati, have been used by some as a reference point for a revised dating of the Vedic culture. Some see these descriptions as a mighty river as evidence for an earlier dating of the Rigveda, identifying the Vedic culture with the Harappan culture, which flourished at the time that the Gaggar-Hakra had not dried up, and rejecting the Indo-Aryan migrations theory, which postulates a migration at 1500 BCE.
Michel Danino places the composition of the Vedas therefore in the third millennium BCE, a millennium earlier than the conventional dates. Danino notes that accepting the Rigveda accounts as a mighty river as factual descriptions, and dating the drying up late in the third millennium, are incompatible. According to Danino, this suggests that the Vedic people were present in northern India in the third millennium BCE, a conclusion which is controversial amongst professional archaeologists. Danino states that there is an absence of "any intrusive material culture in the Northwest during the second millennium BCE," a biological continuity in the skeletal remains, and a cultural continuity. Danino then states that if the "testimony of the Sarasvati is added to this, the simplest and most natural conclusion is that the Vedic culture was present in the region in the third millennium."
Danino acknowledges that this asks for "studying its tentacular ramifications into linguistics, archaeoastronomy, anthropology and genetics, besides a few other fields".
Identification with the Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation is sometimes called the "Sarasvati culture", "Sarasvati Civilization", "Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation," "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization," or "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization" by Hindutva
Hindutva (; ) is a Far-right politics, far-right political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Da ...
revisionists subscribing to the theory of Indigenous Aryanism. The terms refer to the Sarasvati river mentioned in the Vedas, and equate the Vedic culture with the Indus Valley Civilisation. In this view, the Harappan civilisation flourished predominantly on the banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra, not the Indus. For example, Danino notes that his proposed dating of the Vedas to the third millennium BCE coincides with the mature phase of the Indus Valley civilisation, and that it is "tempting" to equate the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures.
Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Quotr: "The pre-eminent interpreter of ancient Indian history today. ... " Thapar is a Professor ...
points out that an alleged equation of the Indus Valley civilization and the carriers of Vedic culture stays in stark contrast to not only linguistic, but also archeological evidence. She notes that the essential characteristics of Indus valley urbanism, such as planned cities, complex fortifications, elaborate drainage systems, the use of mud and fire bricks, monumental buildings, extensive craft activity, are completely absent in the Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...
. Similarly the Rigveda lacks a conceptual familiarity with key aspects of organized urban life (e.g. non-kin labour, facets or items of an exchange system or complex weights and measures) and doesn't mention objects found in great numbers at Indus Valley civilization sites like terracotta figurines, sculptural representation of human bodies or seals.
Hetalben Sindhav notes that claims of a large number of Ghaggar-Hakra sites are politically motivated and exaggerated. While the Indus remained an active river, the Ghaggar-Hakra dried-up, leaving many sites undisturbed. Sidhav further notes that the Ghaggar-Hakra was a tributary of the Indus, so the proposed Sarasvati nomenclatura is redundant. According to archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar, many Ghaggar-Hakra sites in India are actually those of local cultures; some sites display contact with Harappan civilization, but only a few are fully developed Harappan ones. Moreover, around 90% of the Indus script seals and inscribed objects discovered were found at sites in Pakistan along the Indus river, while other places accounting only for the remaining 10%.
Revival
In 2015, Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency ...
reported that "members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS,, ) is an Indian right-wing politics, right-wing, Hindutva, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar ( ...
know that proof of the physical existence of the Vedic river would bolster their concept of a golden age of Hindu Indian Subcontinent." The Bharatiya Janata Party
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; , ) is a political party in India and one of the two major List of political parties in India, Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. BJP emerged out from Syama Prasad Mukherjee's ...
Government had therefore ordered archaeologists to search for the river.
According to the government of Indian state of Haryana
Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...
, research and satellite imagery of the region has confirmed to have found the lost river when water was detected during digging of the dry river bed at Yamunanagar. Surveys and satellite photographs confirm that there was once a great river that rose in the Himalayas, entered the plains of Haryana, flowed through the Thar-Cholistan desert of Rajasthan and eastern Sindh (running roughly parallel to the Indus) and then reached the sea in the Rann of Kutchh in Gujarat. The strange marshy landscape of the Rann of Kutchh is partly due to the fact that it was once the estuary of a great river.
The government constituted Sarasvati
Saraswati (, ), also spelled as Sarasvati, is one of the principal Devi, goddesses in Hinduism, revered as the goddess of knowledge, education, learning, arts, speech, poetry, music, purification, language and culture. Together with the godde ...
Heritage Development Board (SHDB) had conducted a trial run on 30 July 2016 filling the river bed with of water which was pumped into a dug-up channel from tubewells at Uncha Chandna village in Yamunanagar. The water is expected to fill the channel until Kurukshetra
Kurukshetra () is a city and administrative headquarters of Kurukshetra district in the Indian state of Haryana. It is also known as Dharmakshetra ("Realm of duty") and as the "Land of the Bhagavad Gita".
Legends
According to the Puranas ...
, a distance of 40 kilometres. Once confirmed that there is no obstructions in the flow of the water, the government proposes to flow in another after a fortnight. At that time, there were also plans to build three dams on the river route to keep it flowing perennially.
In 2021, the Chief Minister of the State of Haryana stated that over 70 organizations were involved with researching the Sarasvati River's heritage, and that the river "is still flowing underground from Adi Badri and up to Kutch in Gujarat."
The Sarasvati revival project seeks to build channels and dams along the route of the lost river, and develop it as a tourist and pilgrimage circuit.
See also
* Brahmavarta
* Drishadvati River
* Rigvedic rivers
* Sapta Sindhu
* Sarasvati
* Indus River
The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...
* Saraswat Brahmins
Saraswat Brahmins are spread over widely separated regions spanning from Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), Kashmir and Punjab in North India to Konkan coast, Konkan in West India to Kanara (coastal region of Karnataka) and Kerala in South In ...
* Triveni Sangam
In Hindu tradition, Triveni Sangam is the confluence (Sanskrit: ''sangama'') of three rivers that is a sacred place, with a bath here said to flush away all of one's sins and free one from the cycle of rebirth.
Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj ...
* Sarasvati Pushkaram
Notes
References
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* 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.
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* Keith and Macdonell. 1912. Vedic Index of Names and Subjects.
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* Kochhar, Rajesh, 'On the identity and chronology of the ic river ' in ''Archaeology and Language III; Artefacts, languages and texts'', Routledge (1999), .
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* Oldham, R.D. 1893. The Sarsawati and the Lost River of the Indian Desert. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 1893. 49–76.
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* 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)
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* S. G. Talageri, The RigVeda – A Historical Analysis
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Further reading
* Chakrabarti, D. K., & Saini, S. (2009). The problem of the Sarasvati River and notes on the archaeological geography of Haryana and Indian Panjab. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
* An archaeological tour along the Ghaggar-Hakra River by Aurel Stein
External links
Is River Ghaggar, Saraswati? by Tripathi, Bock, Rajamani, Eir
* ttps://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/ Sarasvati research and Education Trust* C.P. Rajendran (2019)
Saraswati: The River That Never Was, Flowing Always in the People's Hearts
The Wire
* Map
{{Hydrography of Uttar Pradesh
Places in Hindu mythology
Mythological rivers
Ancient Indian rivers
Rigvedic deities
Rigvedic rivers
Sacred rivers
Sea and river goddesses
Indigenous Aryanism
Rivers in Buddhism
Indus basin
Rivers of Haryana
Rivers of Uttarakhand
Rivers of Rajasthan
Rivers of Gujarat
Former rivers
Saraswati