Saraswati, river
Contents |
Saraswati
This section has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
(i). River of the Punjab, rising in Sirmur State close
to the borders of Ambala District. It debouches on the plains at Adh
Badri, a place held sacred by all Hindus. A few miles farther on it
disappears in the sand, but comes up again about three miles to the
south at the village of Bhawanipur. At Balchhapar it again vanishes
for a short distance, but emerges once more and flows on in a south-
westerly direction across Karnal, until it joins the Ghaggar in Patiala
territory after a course of about no miles. A District canal takes off
from it near Pehowa in Karnal District. The word Saraswati, the
feminine of Saraswat, is the Sanskrit form of the Zend Haragaiti
(Arachosia) and means 'rich in lakes.' The name was probably
given to the river by the Aryan invaders in memory of the Haragaiti
of Arachosia, the modern Helmand in Seistan.
2014: A quest for long-lost river
ASI encouraged by the new BJP regime re news search for the mythical Saraswati river
Anubhuti Vishnoi
October 9, 2014
Merely months into the Narendra Modi regime, a cherished Sangh Parivar project is being reactivated-the quest for the long-lost Saraswati river, venerated in Vedic texts. While the BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and tourism and culture minister Jagmohan Malhotra had directed scientific and archaeological resources into tracing Saraswati, the UPA wound up this project after taking charge in 2004, with Jaipal Reddy telling Parliament that no amount of research had succeeded in locating this "mythical" river.
Now with the BJP back at the helm, the Saraswati revival project is also back on track. Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Uma Bharti, told the Lok Sabha in August 2014 that her government seriously intended to locate the river. Her ministry ordered the Central Ground Water Board to test the water of a well located inside the Allahabad Fort, in an attempt to trace the source and route of the lost river. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Culture Ministry seem to have responded to the new interest in the project.
The ASI has planned to initiate excavation at key sites along the Ghaggar-Hakra river course, believed to be the course that the Saraswati river once took. The Ghaggar originates in Himachal Pradesh and flows through Punjab andHaryana into Rajasthan; the Hakra flows in from Pakistan and is seen as a continuation of the Ghaggar in India. The ASI plans to identify ancient settlement sites in the upper reaches of the Ghaggar-Hakra river course later this month, so that fresh excavations can be carried out. The first of these sites will be in Rajasthan or Haryana.
"Our objective is limited. While ASI cannot be working on revival projects, we will be exploring and excavating sites around the Ghaggar-Hakra river course to assess the architecture, planning and living style of the inhabitants of that period. We hope to start excavation next month," a highly placed official told India Today on condition of anonymity.
The ASI, this time, has been carefully following the rulebook, and with good reason. In 2006, a parliamentary panel headed by CPM leader Sitaram Yechury had raised questions about procedural lapses and the lack of scientific basis in the Saraswati Heritage Project initiated by the NDA. It had pulled up the ASI, asking how it could take up a project on river revival and excavation when no institute had proposed such a study, as is the requirement.
Now, curiously timed with the change in government, several proposals have come to ASI, suggesting excavations along the Ghaggar-Hakra course. Those who recommended this reportedly include the excavation branch of ASI, Delhi and Deccan College, Pune, among others.
The ASI is doubly wary, having burnt its fingers last year with the controversial Daundiya Kheda excavation in Uttar Pradesh, it had undertaken a search for a fabulous treasure on the basis of a dream and prompting from a self-styled seer called Shobhan Sarkar. This time, it is waiting for the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology (CABA) to allow this key excavation. The CABA, the apex body at the ASI that deliberates on the archaeological merits of a proposed excavation before giving it the green signal, will take up over 140 excavation proposals including those proposed along the Ghaggar-Hakra course.
B.R. Mani, a field archaeologist and additional director general in the ASI, sought to defend the move, arguing that it had never really stopped its investigative research on early Harappan sites, also called Ghaggar-Hakra sites, which were taken up as part of the NDA-era Saraswati project.
"ASI and other learned institutions have been working in Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Gujarat and have come across many significant sites and archaeological material. Details about the significance and early antiquity of new material from sites such as Bhirrana in Haryana have put Indian civilisation in the 8th millennium BC. ASI and others will take up new excavations in this region which would be shortly decided after the standing committee of CABA meets," he told India Today by email.
Mani, who has directed more than 14 excavation projects, including Lal Kot (Delhi), Salimgarh (Delhi), Muhammad Nagar and Harnol (Haryana), Siswania, Sankisa, Ayodhya, Lathiya (UP) and Kanispur andAmbaran (J&K) has also written extensively on the 'Indus-Saraswati' civilisation. In a recent piece, "The 8th Millennium BC in the 'Lost' River Valley", Mani writes of the "lost" Saraswati/Hakra valley and posits Haryana and Rajasthan as the epicentre of pre-Harappan cultures.
"The Hakra river basin in Cholistan, which is a continuation of the 'lost' Saraswati valley, has yielded a set of pottery in exploration known as 'Hakra ware' whose stratigraphic position has now been assigned at Bhirrana in excavation, thereby confirming that the cultural level achieved in the valley of the 'lost' Saraswati river is the cradle of Indian civilisation," Mani has written. He claims that the radiometric dates from Bhirrana, Rakhigarhi and Kalibangan show the clear developmental stages of Harappan culture in the subcontinent.
This also fits in seamlessly with the mission to revive the Saraswati, seen not just as a river, but as a civilisation.
In June 2002, Jagmohan Malhotra announced at the Saraswati Nadi Shodh Sansthan in Yamunanagar, Haryana, that the Centre would initiate excavation along the entire length of what was believed to be the extinct Saraswati river. A four-member committee was set up and two-phase excavations were planned. The first phase would cover the stretch from Adi Badri in Yamunanagar district to Bhagwanpura in Kurukshetra district to Sirsa, while the second phase would see it go up to Kalibangan in Rajasthan.
Meanwhile, a study jointly carried out by scientists of the Regional Remote Sensing Service Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur, and ground water department, government of Rajasthan, Jodhpur, in 2004 suggested the existence of a mighty palaeo drainage system of the Vedicera Saraswati river in this region.
The ASI's Saraswati Heritage Plan was elaborate. Fifteen sites were identified for excavation. Ten of these had been partially excavated even then, including Adi Badri, Thanesar, Sandhauli, Bhirrana, and Hansi in Haryana, Rajasthan's Baror, Tarkhanwala Dera, and Chak 86, as well as Gujarat's Dholavira and Juni Karan. R.S. Bisht, an archaeologist who has conducted excavations at various sites, was then deputy director general at ASI, and largely steered the Saraswati Heritage project. Until the Lok Sabha election of 2004, which changed everything. In Bisht's words, as stated in his CV, "Most unfortunately, the successor government uncannily shelved the project".
Bisht, who had retired, but had been given a six-month extension by the NDA to take the project forward, put in his papers. Now, a decade later, political winds have shifted again.The ASI is said to have quietly sought his suggestions on sites to be picked for excavation in the Saraswati search. "The project was killed before it could take off just because a new government came in. It was seen as a saffronisation attempt. Actually, this was a genuine multi-disciplinary project to understand how so many settlements came up," he says.
Many question the historical accuracy of his claims, and the conflation of the supposed river Saraswati with the Ghaggar-Hakra river system. Another archaeologist, also with ASI, said on condition of anonymity that the Ghaggar-Hakra river system and civilisations around it may bear no relation with the fabled river of Vedic scriptures. "In my view, Ghaggar-Hakra has nothing to do with the Saraswati at all. The whole settlement system from Kalibangan to Rakhigarhi is clearly part of an ancient trade route. The hunt for the Saraswati has been on since the British were here and it has become increasingly political now. The fact is, there is no clear archaeological evidence to suggest where the Saraswati flowed and if it flowed at all," the archaeologist said.
Nayanjot Lahiri, an archaeologist and professor of history at the Delhi University, has another point to make. She argues that it was equally important to move beyond the obsession with Saraswati.
"Instead of Saraswati alone, the Centre and the culture ministry should come up with a larger national vision for archaeology that covers the whole country," Lahiri points out. But even as historians debate the very existence of this elusive subterranean stream, it is clear that the state's cultural agencies will spare no effort in the search.
…along modern Ghaggar/ 2016
Paul John, Dec 9, 2019 Times of India
From: Paul John, Dec 9, 2019 Times of India
There has been a strong belief that the Harappan civilization depended on monsoons. But now there is ample evidence that a large number of Harappan settlements had mushroomed and flourished along the ancient course of the modern seasonal stream, Ghaggar, in northwestern India. And this ancient course was that of the mythical river Saraswati. A new research — led by the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, in collaboration with IIT-Bombay — has reported “unequivocal evidence” that there existed a perennial river on the plains of northwestern India. The river, according to the researchers, flowed roughly along the course of the modern Ghaggar. Researchers say that this river was the Saraswati mentioned in the Rig Veda.
Later epics such as the Mahabharata describe the Saraswati’s diminishing flow till it disappeared completely. The research has been published in the latest issue of the journal “Scientific Report” of Nature Publishers and is in the public domain. The researchers provide evidence that the Saraswati was perennial and had flowed from the Higher Himalayas between 7,000 BC and 2,500 BC, and that the Harappans had built their early settlements along this powerful river between 3,800 BC and 1,900 BC. The research posits that the decline of the Saraswati had led to the collapse of the Harappan civilization.
The demise of the river and the civilization approximately coincide with the beginning of the Meghalayan Stage — the current dry phase in the global climate that began about 4,200 years ago.
The scientists behind the study — Anirban Chatterjee, J S Ray and Anil Shukla of PRL, and Kanchan Pande of IIT-Bombay — say that the Saraswati had sources in the glaciated regions of the Higher Himalayas, similar to the Ganga, Yamuna and Sutlej. The modern Ghaggar has no direct connection to the Higher Himalayas and originates from the foothills of the Himalayas — the Siwaliks. Ray explains, “The only likely path for the glacier-melt water for the ancient course of present-day Ghaggar (Saraswati) could have been through the distributaries of the mighty Sutlej River.”
The scientists reached this conclusion by determining the depositional ages of the coarse-grained white sand layers that occurred 3-10 metres below the modern alluvium of the Ghaggar’s floodplain. The dating was done with radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence methods at the PRL.
“We found that the perennial river had uninterrupted flow starting 80,000 years ago; that flow continued till 20,000 years ago,” says Ray. “It then diminished due to the extreme aridity of the last glacial period. However, the river revived its strength about 9,000 years ago and flowed for the next 4,500 years.”
Ray says the duration coincides with the flourishing of the Pre-Harappan and Early Harappan cultures along the river’s banks. “The river later lost its perennial strength again,” he says.
“The final decline of the Ghaggar was probably due to the rapid drying up of the Sutlej-fed channels that had fed the Saraswati in the ancient times,” Ray adds.
Likely course of the river
Baholi village, 2022: Paleochannel of the river?
Jaskaran Singh, April 25, 2022: The Times of India
KURUKSHETRA: The Centre for Excellence for Research on Saraswati River (CERSR) at Kurukshetra University claims to have found another paleochannel of the disappeared river at Baholi village near Pipli.
This is new evidence to support the theory that the river mentioned in sacred Indian texts had dried up over time due to natural reasons. CERSR director A R Chaudhri said his team of research scholars and students had explored a site near Baholi on the Kurukshetra-Ladwa road and hit upon Saraswati's thick sand deposits in a 10-metre-deep trench dug "for establishing a reservoir". He said: "Baholi falls on the paleochannel that crosses National Highway-44 at Pipli near Kurukshetra."
Chaudhri said: "The site is a 400x100m depression littered with fine clay and silt. Our team started getting evidence of the presence of a mega-river's paleochannel (remnant of an inactive river) after the removal of the top 4m of clay-rich topsoil. Initially, it appeared to be a pit created by locals for soil excavation but a closer examination revealed a fascinating picture."
At the 10m depth, the team found 24 layers of varying sediment types, which in Chaudhri's words, "tells a very fascinating story of the evolutionary history of the paleo-river". The institute has identified nearly all the paleochannels of the Saraswati in Haryana and Rajasthan up to the Pakistan border in Anupgarh. The research findings are in a 2021 edition of peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Prospection published in the United Kingdom.
The Saraswati river channel at Pipli is more than 3-kilometre wide and the site at Baholi shows similar sedimentological characteristics as Mugalwali in Yamunanagar district, examined in the initial phase of the Saraswati rejuvenation programme started by late Darshan Lal Jain of the Saraswati Nadi Shodh Sansthan, Haryana.
At Baholi, the team found definite higher Himalayan sand with coarse muscovite grains derived out of the crystalline rocks exposed in the Higher Himalayas. Typical light grey sand at Baholi matches with similar sand examined at Bishangarh and Bhaur Saidan villages in Kurukshetra district, where a depositional history of the past 14,000 years of the Saraswati river is documented in the sediment record.
"The channel's walls show well-developed laminations, current and cross-bedding, and other sedimentary structures that develop in fluviatile depositional environments", said Chaudhri.
His students Rajesh Ranga and Subhash Rajput assisted him in collecting the samples for geochronological analysis. "Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun will study these samples to know the period when the Saraswati was in full flow and the time when its flow reduced. The CERSR's findings suggest that the river used to flow until 1402 AD.
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, 2016: Buried underground?
The Times of India, Apr 26 2016
Vimal Bhatia Is Saraswati finding a way out as farmers strike water in Thar?
In 2009, Arshad Ali, a farmer, started digging a tube well in Charanwala village in Nachana, Jaisalmer, about 50km from the Pakistan border. At the depth of 560 feet, he struck water so forcefully did it flow out that there was no stopping it. Today , his fields remain flooded and he has been draining water into nearby fields too.
Ali says his experience is not unique.Across a 60 sqkm area in the district, water seems to be flowing in abundance, he said. The pressure of the flow has not diminished with time. Pipes would burst if attempts were made to Charan control the flow. A similar gush of water Nachna flowed into the fields of Ismail Khan, who Phal lives in the same area. Jaisalmer At least 10 tube wells have been dug in the area, and water has been gushing out with great force. At Poonam Nagar in Jaisalmer, villagers have decided to build a temple at the spot.
However, at a time when 33 crore people in the country reel under drought and water is enormously scarce in many parts, the government has done little to test or harness the water gushing out of such `springs'. A year ago, former Jaisalmer DM Giriraj Singh Kushwaha had requested the state government to plan for utilisation of this water.
In October 2005, the ONGC Board had approved Rs1.7 crore for a pilot study to odi uncover the course of the Sar aswati, the “mighty river“ mentioned in the Rig Veda. By 2007, the ONGC had dug some wells and water was found in parts of Jaisalmer, at a depth of over 550 me tres, the deepest level at which wells had been dug in this region.
While many historians and scientists contest the claims that Saraswati was never more than a mythical river, there are those who claim that the sacred texts are corroborated by imagery from Isro satellites.
Senior groundwater scientist Narayan Das Inkhia said it's likely that the water is flowing out of reserves of groundwater collected over centuries on impervious rock like gypsum that now has no other mode of discharge. In hydrology this is called an “artesian condition“, he said. The Indira Gandhi canal in the area could have caused a rise in the groundwater level in these parts, forcing water to gush out.
“Total dissolved solids are high but the water is fit to drink,“ Inkhia said, express ing doubt that the flow would go on endlessly. “The reserve of water underground might be huge, but it will run dry with time.“
Scientist Ram Singh Mertia, formerly with the Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur, said only research would establish whether the water flowing out is from the Saraswati. “There is nothing at present to establish such claims,“ he said.
Saraswati river existed, concludes expert panel
- The Saraswati river, so far considered mythical, did exist, a government-constituted expert committee has found
- Uma Bharti lauded the committee members as "honest" and their efforts as "serious which cannot be challenged"
The Saraswati river, so far considered mythical, did exist, a government-constituted expert committee has found.
Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti said the government will take action on the report, which according to her, "cannot be challenged".
"We have reached a conclusion that river Saraswati existed, it flowed. It originated in the Himalayas and met gulf at the western sea," Professor KS Valdiya, who led the panel, said while handing over the report to the government.
Valdiya, an eminent geologist, said the river passed through Haryana, Rajasthan and North Gujarat, land texture of which was studied by the panel.
According to a senior Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) official, Saraswati passed through Pakistan before meeting Western Sea through Rann of Kutch and was approximately 4,000 km in length.
One-third of the river stretch fell in present-day Pakistan. The longer, two-third stretch measuring nearly 3000 km in length fell in India, the official claimed.
In its report, the seven-member committee has stated that the river had two branches: western and eastern. The Himalayan-born Satluj "of the PAST", which flowed through the channels of present-day Ghaggar-Patialiwali rivulets, represents the western branch of the ancient river.
On the other hand, it said, Markanda and Sarsuti (corruption of Saraswati) represented the western branch of Saraswati, known as Tons-Yamuna.
On his part, Valdiya, a Padma Bhushan awardee, said the committee, during its six-month research, came across "an unique" palaeochannel (a path abandoned by river when it changes its course) relating to present Ghaggar, Sarsuti, Hakra and Nara rivers. Historically, he stated, that around 1700 "small and big" towns and villages were located around the palaeochannel concerned during Harappa Civilisation.
"Some towns were spread over more than 100 hectares. These colonies were there for 5,500 years. Was it possible that these cities could live without water? No. It means that a flowing river provided water to the towns, villages. Which river it was? What was its name? We worked to find it out," Valdiya said.
During its six-month research period, the committee studied piles of sediments, their shapes and features which appeared to have been brought by a "big river" and are reminiscent to ones found in present-day Ghaggar, Ganga and Yamuna.
"At some places, there is 30-ft deep sand layer (in the palaeochannels), at some places the width of the palaeochannels is five km and is filled with water.
"This suggests that the relatively smaller rivers of today, like Ghaggar and its tributary Dangri, would not have brought such sediment. It must have been brought in by a big, flowing river," he said.
In the report, the committee also observed that constituent minerals of the palaeochannels, at several spots, have come from catchment areas of Sutlej and Yamuna and from Greater and Lesser Himalaya.
"Both the mineral and chemical compositions we studied tell us that the river which flowed through Sarsuti, Ghaggar-Harka had originated in Himalaya. It had two branches: eastern and western. The confluence of the branches was near Shatrana, 25 km south of Patiala. And suddenly, it flows crossing the dessert (Rann of Kutch) and meet gulf of western sea," he added.
Valdiya suggested the name Saraswati was popular among people from Haryana and several structures and bridges in the state were rechristened after it. The state's revenue records also suggest so, he added.
According to a statement issued by the ministry later, Minister Uma Bharti said the report is an assertion of assumption that River Saraswati originated from Adibadri in Himalaya to culminate in the Arabian Sea through the Rann of Kutch.
"...this river was once upon a time the lifeline of North-Western states of India and a vibrant series of civilizations from Mahabharat period to Harappa had flourished on the banks of this river," the statement quoted her as saying.
"We will see whether we can use water in the palaeochannels to quench thirst of arid areas of Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat. We will also see if it can be recharged artificially? Such an effort will be less expensive than coming up with new projects to provide water there," she said.
