The Lost River: On The Trail of Saraswati

by Michel Danino

51 Brihat Samhitā, XIV.2, The Brhat Samhitā of Varāha Mihira, tr. N.C. Iyer, Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi, 1987, p. 81.

  52 Bāna, Harsa-Carita, tr. E.B. Cowell, F.W. Thomas, London, 1929, pp. 158 & 160, quoted by Darian, Steven, ‘Gangā and Sarasvatī: An Incidence of Mythological Projection’, East and West, vol. 26, nos 1-2, 1976, p. 155.

  53 The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, op. cit., vol. I, Vana Parva, III.83, p. 180.

  54 See Bharadwaj, O.P., ‘The Vedic Sarasvatī’, op. cit., p. 41.

  55 Pehowa Inscription of Imperial Pratihāra Dynasty, Epigraphia Indica, I.187, pp. 1114-15, quoted by Raychaudhuri, H.C., ‘The Sarasvati’, Science and Culture, vol. VIII, no. 12, June 1943, p. 469, and in Studies in Indian Antiquities, University of Calcutta, Calcutta, 1958, p. 129; the inscription is discussed by Bharadwaj, O.P., in ‘The Vedic Sarasvatī’, op. cit., p. 40.

  56 Quoted by Raychaudhuri, H.C., ‘The Sarasvati’, op. cit., p. 473.

  57 Cunningham, Alexander, The Ancient Geography of India, sec. revised edn, Calcutta, 1924; reprint Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2002, map X, facing p. 375. The map plots Hsüan-tsang’s travels in northwest India; for clarity, I have omitted from the detail reproduced here Hsüan-tsang’s route reconstituted by Cunningham.

  58 Cunningham’s story is told in a fine account of the beginnings of archaeology in India: Singh, Upinder, The Discovery of Ancient India° (also, more briefly, in Lahiri, Nayanjot, Finding Forgotten Cities°).

  59 See Bhargava, M.L., Geography of Rgvedic India, op. cit., p. 71, with reference to Archaeological Survey of India Report, vol. XIV, p. 75.

  60 Cunningham, Alexander, The Ancient Geography of India, op. cit.

  61 Bharadwaj, O.P., ‘The Vedic Sarasvatī’, op. cit., p. 40.

  62 E.g. A Road Guide to Rajasthan, TTK Healthcare, Chennai, 2006.

  63 Albêrûnî’s India, tr. Edward C. Sachau, 1888; republ. Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2002, p. 511.

  64 The Vishnu Purāna: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, tr. H.H. Wilson, John Murray, London, 1840, pp. lxvi-vii.

  65 Rig Veda, 1.32.12, 2.12.3 & 12, 4.28.1, 8.24.27, 8.54.4, 8.69.12.

  66 For example, Müller, F. Max, A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature°, p. 7.

  67 Müller, F. Max, Vedic Hymns°, p. 60.

  68 Monier-Williams, M., Indian Wisdom,1875; republ. Rupa & Co., New Delhi, 2001, p. xix.

  69 Weber, A., The History of Indian Literature, Trübner, London, 1878, pp. 4 & 38.

  70 Eggeling, Julius, The Satapatha Brāhmana°, p. 104.

  71 Oldenberg, Hermann, The Religion of the Veda, 1894; republ. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1988, pp. 123 & 171.

  72 Fontane, Marius, Inde védique (de 1800 à 800 av. J.-C.), Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, 1881, with the map at the end of the book.

  73 Macdonell, A.A. & A.B. Keith, Vedic Index°, vol. 2, pp. 435-36.

  74 Pargiter, F.E., Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, London, 1922; republ. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1997, p. 313.

  75 Gowen, Herbert H., A History of Indian Literature from Vedic Times to the Present Day, D. Appleton, New York & London, 1931, p. 96.

  76 Ibid., p. 9.

  77 The map is found in Pargiter, F.E., ‘The Nations of India at the Battle between the Pandavas and Kauravas’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1908, pp. 309-36.

  78 Renou, Louis & Jean Filliozat, L’Inde classique: manuel des études indiennes, vol. 1, Payot, 1947; republ. Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1985, p. 372.

  79 Burrow, T., ‘On the Significance of the Term arma-, armaka- in Early Sanskrit Literature’, Journal of Indian History, vol. 41, 1963, p. 162.

  80 Basham, A.L., The Wonder That Was India, third edn, Rupa & Co., Calcutta, 1981, pp. 31-32.

  81 Gonda, Jan, Vedic Literature (Samhitās and Brāhmanas)°, pp. 23-24.

  82 Bhargava, M.L., The Geography of Rgvedic India, op. cit.

  83 Law, Bimalachurn, ‘Mountains and Rivers of India (from Epic and Paurānic Sources)’, op. cit.

  84 Raychaudhuri, H.C., ‘The Sarasvati’, op. cit.

  85 Pusalker, A.D., ‘Aryan Settlements in India’, ch. XIII of The Vedic Age, vol. I, in Majumdar, R.C., (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People, op. cit., pp. 246-48.

  86 Sircar, D.C., Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India, first edn 1960, sec. edn Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1971, p. 49.

  3. New Light on an Ancient River

  1 Ghosh, A., ‘The Rajputana Desert: Its Archaeological Aspect’, in Bulletin of the National Institute of Sciences in India, vol. I, 1952, pp. 37-42, reproduced in S.P. Gupta, (ed.), An Archaeological Tour along the Ghaggar-Hakra River, Kusumanjali Prakashan, Meerut, 1988, p. 100.

  2 Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 16, and Raghav, K.S., ‘Evolution of Drainage Basins in Parts of Northern and Western Rajasthan, Thar Desert, India’, in Vedic Sarasvatī°, p. 176.

  3 Bakliwal, P.C. & A.K. Grover, ‘Signatures and Migration of Sarasvatī River in Thar Desert, Western India’, Records of Geological Survey of India, vol. 116, parts 3-8, 1988, pp. 77-86, partly reproduced in Vedic Sarasvatī°, p. 115.

  4 Raikes, Robert L., ‘Kalibangan : Death from Natural Causes’, Antiquity, vol. XLII, 1969, reproduced in The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization, p. 204.

  5 Ibid., p. 208.

  6 Ibid., pp. 208-09.

  7 Ibid., p. 209.

  8 Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 55.

  9 Wilson, H.H., The Vishnu Purāna, op. cit., ch. XXV, p. 572.

  10 The Bhāgavata Purāna, tr. Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare, Motilal Banarsidass, X.65.31, Delhi, 1988, p. 1673.

  11 Singh, Gurdev, in The Geography, vol. 5, 1952, p. 27, mentioned by Pal, Yash, Baldev Sahai, R.K. Sood & D.P. Agrawal, ‘Remote Sensing of the Sarasvatī River’, first published in Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Earth and Planetary Sciences), vol. 89, no. 3, November 1980; reprinted in Lal, B.B. & S.P. Gupta, (eds), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization°, p. 493.

  12 Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 24.

  13 Ibid, p. 60.

  14 The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, op. cit., vol. I, Adi Parva, I.178, pp. 359-60.

  15 Courty, Marie-Agnès, ‘Le Milieu physique et utilisation du sol’, in Henri-Paul Francfort, (ed.), Prospections archéologiques au nord-ouest de L’Inde : rapport préliminaire 1983-1984, mémoire 62, Éditions Recherches sur les Civilisations, Paris, 1985, p. 30.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Courty, Marie-Agnès, ‘Integration of Sediment and Soil Information in the Reconstruction of Protohistoric and Historic Landscapes of the Ghaggar Plain (North-West India)’, in Frifelt, Karen & Per Sorensen, (eds), South Asian Archaeology 1985, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Occasional Papers no. 4, Curzon Press, London, 1989, p. 259.

  18 Puri, V.M.K. & B.C. Verma, ‘Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas’, Itihas Darpan, vol. 4, 1998, no. 2, pp. 7-36.

  19 Ibid., p. 16.

  20 Valdiya, K.S., in Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 27.

  21 Lal, B.B., et al., Excavations at Kalibangan, vol. 1, Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 99-100.

  22 Bisht, R.S., ‘Urban Planning at Dholavira: A Harappan City’, in Malville, J. McKim & Lalit M. Gujral, (eds), Ancient Cities, Sacred Skies : Cosmic Geometries and City Planning in Ancient India, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts & Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 16-17. Note that Bisht does not propose a precise date for the earthquake but says it occurred ‘towards the closing years’ of the phase immediately preceding the Mature Harappan phase, which almost everywhere started around 2600 BCE.

  23 Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, pp. 52-54. Valdiya writes that the uplift took place ‘after 3663 ± 215 yr BP’, therefore after 3878 BP (‘before present’) or 1878 BCE.

  24 Ibid., p. 53.

  25 Pal, Yash, Baldev Sahai, R.K. So
od & D.P. Agrawal, ‘Remote Sensing of the Sarasvatī River’, in Lal, B.B. & S.P. Gupta, (eds), Frontiers of the Indus CivilizaIbid.tion0, p. 493.

  26 Ibid., p. 494.

  27 Ibid., pp. 494-96.

  28 Rajawat, A.S., C.V.S. Sastry & A. Narain, ‘Application of Pyramidal Processing on High Resolution IRS 1-C Data for Tracing Migration of the Sarasvatī River in Parts of Thar Desert’, in Vedic Sarasvatī°, pp. 259-72.

  29 Sharma, J.R., A.K. Gupta & B.K. Bhadra, ‘Course of Vedic River Saraswati as Deciphered from Latest Satellite Data’, Puratattva (Journal of the Indian Archaeological Society), no. 26, New Delhi, 2005-06, pp. 187-95. I am grateful to Dr A.K. Gupta for his kind collaboration and his permission to reproduce the maps in Figs 3.6 & 3.7.

  30 See Ghose, Bimal, Amal Kar & Zahid Husain, ‘The Lost Courses of the Saraswati River in the Great Indian Desert: New Evidence from Landsat Imagery’, The Geographical Journal, London, vol. 145, no. 3, 1979, pp. 44651, which was perhaps the earliest study of satellite imagery. Also Bakliwal, P.C. & A.K. Grover, ‘Signatures and Migration of Sarasvatī River in Thar Desert, Western India’, op. cit. One such recent view is in Roy, A.B. & S.R. Jakhar, ‘Late Quaternary Drainage Disorganization, and Migration and Extinction of the Vedic Saraswati’, in Current Science, vol. 81, no. 9, 10 November 2001, pp. 1188-95, and the references quoted in that paper.

  31 I have enhanced the contrast in Fig. 3.7, changed the watercourses from white to black, and made course numbers clearer in both maps.

  32 Rao, S.M. & K.M. Kulkarni, ‘Isotope Hydrology Studies on Water Resources in Western Rajasthan’, Current Science, vol. 72, no. 1, 10 January 1997, pp. 55 & 60.

  33 I tentatively offer those corrected dates on the basis of the nearest examples from ‘Calibrated Indian 14C Dates’, appendix 3 to Agrawal, D.P. & M.G. Yadava, Dating the Human Past, Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies, Pune, 1995.

  34 The Central Ground Water Board, the Regional Remote Sensing Centre (Jodhpur), the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (Jodhpur), Isro and the National Physical Laboratory participated in one way or another.

  35 Mahapatra, Richard, ‘Saraswati Underground’, Down to Earth, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, vol. 11, no. 12, 15 November 2002.

  36 Ibid.

  37 Soni, V., D.C. Sharma, K.S. Srivastava & M.S. Sisodia, ‘Hydrogeological, Geophysical and Isotope Study to Trace the Course of the Buried “Sarasvatī” River in Jaisalmer district, Rajasthan’, in Paliwal, B.S., (ed.), Geological Evolution of Northwestern India, Scientific Publishers, Jodhpur, 1999, pp. 305-11, quoted by Valdiya, K.S., in Saraswati, the River That Disappeared°, p. 29.

  38 Srinivasan, K.R., Paleogeography, Framework of Sedimentation and Groundwater Potential of Rajasthan, India : Central Part of Erstwhile Sarasvati Basin, a monograph presented at the Geological Society of India in December 1997 at Baroda; also his two project reports of September 1997 submitted to the Ministry of Water Resources by the Sarasvati Sindhu Research Centre, Chennai.

  39 Geyh, M.A. & D. Ploethner, ‘Origins of a Freshwater Body in Cholistan, Thar Desert, Pakistan’, in Dragoni, W. & B.S. Sukhija, (eds), Climate Change and Groundwater, Geological Society special publication, vol. 288, London, 2008, pp. 99-109. The two scientists had published an earlier report, ‘An Applied Palaeohydrological Study of Cholistan, Thar Desert, Pakistan’, in Adar, E.M. & C. Leibundgut, (eds), Applications of Tracers in Arid Zone Hydrology, International Association of Hydrological Sciences, publ. no. 232, Vienna, 1995, pp. 119-27.

  40 Geyh, M.A. & D. Ploethner, ‘Origins of a Freshwater Body in Cholistan’, op. cit., p. 102.

  41 Ibid., p. 104.

  42 Peter Clift, ‘Harappan Collapse’, Geoscientist, vol. 19, no. 9, September 2009, p. 18.

  43 Siddiqi, Shamsul Islam, ‘River Changes in the Ghaggar Plain’, The Indian Geographical Journal, vol. 19, no. 4, 1944, pp. 139-46.

  44 Ibid., p. 144.

  45 Ibid., p. 145.

  46 Ibid., p. 146.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Wilhelmy, Herbert, ‘The Ancient River Valley on the Eastern Border of the Indus Plain and the Sarasvatī Problem’, in Vedic Sarasvatī°, p. 99 (partial English translation of ‘Das Urstromtal am Ostrand der Indusebene und das Sarasvatī Problem’, in Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, N.F. Supplementband 8, 1969, pp. 76-93).

  49 Ibid., p. 108.

  50 Ibid., p. 102.

  51 Ibid., pp. 107-08.

  52 Ibid., p. 97.

  4. A Great Leap Backward

  1 See Possehl, Gregory L., Indus Age: The Beginnings°, pp. 49-51, and Lahiri, Nayanjot, Finding Forgotten Cities°, p. 18.

  2 Nayanjot Lahiri’s Finding Forgotten Cities° tells the gripping story of the discovery of the Indus cities and the various pioneers involved. I have drawn mostly from it (also from Possehl, above) for my brief narrative of that discovery.

  3 Ibid., p. 24.

  4 Upinder Singh’s Discovery of Ancient India° narrates archaeological explorations in nineteenth-century India, centred on Cunningham, his British assistants and Indian collaborators. Nayanjot Lahiri’s Finding Forgotten Cities° takes over from that period.

  5 See Tewari, Rakesh, ‘The Origins of Iron-working in India : New Evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas’, Antiquity, vol. 77, no. 298 (December 2003), pp. 536-544.

  6 Sahni, Daya Ram, quoted in Lahiri, Nayanjot, Finding Forgotten Cities°, p. 174.

  7 Marshall, John, quoted in ibid., p. 177.

  8 Ibid., p. 226.

  9 Ibid., p. 259.

  10 Sayce, Archibald Henry, quoted in ibid., p. 267.

  11 Marshall, John, quoted in ibid., p. 272.

  12 Jansen, Michael, ‘Settlement Patterns in the Harappa culture’, in South Asian Archaeology 1979, D. Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1981, pp. 251-269.

  13 Misra, V.N., ‘Indus Civilization and the Rgvedic Sarasvatī’, in Parpola, Asko & Petteri Koskikallio, (eds), South Asian Archaeology 1993, Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki, vol. II, 1994, p. 511.

  14 Possehl, Gregory L., Indus Age: The Beginnings°, p. 26.

  15 Some of them are described in Misra, V.N., Rajasthan : Prehistoric and Early Historic Foundations°, Agrawal, D.P. & J.S. Kharakwal, Bronze and Iron Ages in South Asia°, and Chakrabarti, Dilip K., The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology° (especially ch. 13).

  16 E.g. Lal, B.B., ‘Chronological Horizon of the Mature Indus Civilization’, in Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, (ed.), From Sumer to Meluhha: Contributions to the Archaeology of South and West Asia in Memory of George F. Dales, Jr., University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, 1994, pp. 15-25.

  17 Jansen, Michael R.N., ‘Mohenjo Daro and the River Indus’, in Meadows, Azra & Peter S. Meadows, (eds), The Indus River: Biodiversity, Resources, Humankind, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1999, p. 375.

  18 Lal, B.B., The Earliest Civilization of South Asia°, pp. 35, 54, 61 & 73.

  19 Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, ‘Culture and Societies of the Indus Tradition’, in India : Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan°, p. 52.

  20 Allchin, Raymond & Bridget, Origins of a Civilization°, p. 181.

  21 Shaffer, Jim G. & Diane A. Lichtenstein, ‘Ethnicity and Change in the Indus Valley Cultural Tradition’ in Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, (ed.), Old Problems and New Perspectives in the Archaeology of South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, 1989, p. 123.

  22 Jarrige, Jean-François, ‘De l’Euphrate à l’Indus’, Dossiers Histoire et Archéologie, Dijon, 1987, p. 84.

  23 Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization°, p. 39.

  24 Rao, L.S., et al., ‘New Light on the Excavation of Harappan Settlement at Bhirrana’, Puratattva, no. 35, 2004-05, pp. 60-68.

  25 Chakrabarti, Dilip K., The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology°, p. 145.

  26 Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, ‘Culture and Societies of the Indus Tradition’, in India : Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan°, p. 52.

  27 Simplified from Possehl, Gr
egory L., Indus Age: The Beginnings°, p. 23.

  28 Jarrige, Jean-François, ‘Du néolithique à la civilisation de l’Inde ancienne : contribution des recherches archéologiques dans le nord-ouest du sous-continent indo-pakistanais’, Arts Asiatiques, vol. L-1995, p. 24.

  5. The Indus Cities

  1 E.g. Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization”, pp. 64-65.

  2 Jansen, Michael R.N., ‘Mohenjo Daro and the River Indus’, in The Indus River: Biodiversity, Resources, Humankind, op. cit., p. 358.

  3 Ibid.

  4 This is the case of D.R. Bhandarkar, who visited Mohenjo-daro in 1911, ten years before R.D. Banerji, and concluded that the site was just 200 years old on account of its bricks of ‘modern type and not of large dimension like the old’! See Gregory Possehl, Indus Age: The Beginnings°, pp. 63-64.

  5 Marshall, John, ‘Mohenjo-daro’, Illustrated London News, 27 February 1926, quoted by McIntosh, Jane R., A Peaceful Realm°, p. 21.

  6 Marshall, John, (ed.), Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1931, 3 vols, several Indian reprints, vol. I, p. vi.

  7 See Cleuziou, Serge, ‘The Oman Peninsula and the Indus civilization : A Reassessment’, in Man and Environment, vol. 17, 1992, no. 2, pp. 93-103.

  8 Nissen, Hans J., ‘La civilisation de l’Indus vue de la Mésopotamie’, in Les Cités oubliées de l’Indus°, p. 144.

  9 Chakrabarti, Dilip K., The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology°, p. 175.

  10 Lawler, Andrew, ‘Report of Oldest Boat Hints at Early Trade Routes’, Science, vol. 296, 7 June 2002, no. 5574, pp. 1791-92.

  11 Casal, Jean-Marie, La Civilisation de l’Indus et ses énigmes°, p. 70.

  12 See Lal, B.B., The Earliest Civilization of South Asia°, pp. 187-88, and Chakrabarti, Dilip K., The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology°, p. 174.

  13 See a summary in Andrew Lawler; ‘Middle Asia Takes Center Stage’, Science, vol. 317, 3 August 2007, pp. 586-90.

  14 Francfort, Henri-Paul, ‘The Harappan Settlement of Shortughai’, in Lal, B.B. & S.P. Gupta, (eds), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization°, p. 309 (emphasis in the original).