Sarasvati River

Favour ye this my laud, O Gangā, Yamunā, O Sutudri, Paruṣṇī and Sarasvatī: With Asikni, Vitasta, O Marudvrdha, O Ārjīkīya with Susoma hear my call. First with Trstama thou art eager to flow forth, with Rasā, and Susartu, and with Svetya here, With Kubha; and with these, Sindhu and Mehatnu, thou seekest in thy course Krumu and Gomati. ~ Rigveda

The main sites of the Indus civilization. The Sarasvatī river (in a segmented line) follows the course of the Ghaggar-Hakra. Note the density of sites in the Sarasvatī basin, particularly in the Cholistan Desert of Pakistan.

Although the river below the confluence [with the Ghaggar] is marked in our maps as Gaggar, it was formerly the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people. ~ C.F. Oldham

The Sarasvati River (IAST: sárasvatī nadī́) was one of the Rigvedic rivers mentioned in the Rig Veda and later Vedic and post-Vedic texts. The Sarasvati River played an important role in the Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda.

Quotes from Hindu texts

• At a distance of a journey of forty days on horseback from the spot where the Sarasvati is lost (in the sand of the desert), (is situated) Plaksa Prasravaja.
  • Pañchavimsa Brahmana (Calad 1931: 636) (25.10.16). Calad, W., 1931 [1982]. Pañchavinmsa Brahmaja. Calcutta: Asiatic Society.in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge page 65

• Sarasvatī’s stream lost in barbarous sandy wastes.
  • Kālidāsa, The Loom of Time: A Selection of His Plays and Poems, tr. Chandra Rajan, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1989, p. 261. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• When Harsha’s father, the king of Sthānvīshvara, passed away, the people ‘bore him to the river Sarasvatī, and there upon a pyre befitting an emperor solemnly consumed all but his glory in the flames’. In a classic ritual, Harsha ‘passed on to the Sarasvatī’s banks, and having bathed in the river, offered water to his father’.
  • 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. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

Rigveda

• [The composer begs the river Sarasvatī:] "let us not go from thee to distant countries".
  • Rigveda 6.61.14, Quoted in [1]

• THIS stream Sarasvatī with fostering current comes forth, our sure defence, our fort of iron. As on a car, the flood flows on, surpassing in majesty and might all other waters. Pure in her course from mountains to the ocean, alone of streams Sarasvatī hath listened. Thinking of wealth and the great world of creatures, she poured for Nahuṣa her milk and fatness.
  • RV 7:95:1-2
  • Quoted in Frawley, David. The Rig Veda and the History of India. (2001). Quoted from Frawley, D. The Hindu, 25th June 2002. WITZEL’S VANISHING OCEAN – HOW TO READ VEDIC TEXTS ANY WAY YOU LIKE. A Reply to Michael Witzel’s article “A Maritime Rigveda? How not to read the Ancient Texts”.

• Coming together, glorious, loudly roaring - Sarasvatī, Mother of Floods, the seventh- With copious milk, with fair streams, strongly flowing, full swelling with the volume of their water.
  • RV 7:36:6

• Favour ye this my laud, O Gangā, Yamunā, O Sutudri, Paruṣṇī and Sarasvatī: With Asikni, Vitasta, O Marudvrdha, O Ārjīkīya with Susoma hear my call. First with Trstama thou art eager to flow forth, with Rasā, and Susartu, and with Svetya here, With Kubha; and with these, Sindhu and Mehatnu, thou seekest in thy course Krumu and Gomati.
  • Rigveda 10.75.5-6

• O Gangā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Shutudrī (Sutlej), Parushnī (Ravi), hear my praise! Hear my call, O Asiknī (Chenab), Marudvridhā (Maruvardhvan), Vitastā (Jhelum) with Ārjīkiyā and Sushomā.
  First you flow united with Trishtāmā, with Susartu and Rasā, and with Svetyā, O Sindhu (Indus) with Kubhā (Kabul) to Gomati (Gumal or Gomal), with Mehatnū to Krumu (Kurram), with whom you proceed together.
  • Rigveda 10.75.5-6
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

Mahabharata

• They that dwell in Kurukshetra which lies to the south of the Sarasvatī and the north of the Drishadvatī, are said to dwell in heaven.
  • The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli vol. I, Vana Parva, III.83, p. 173. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The sacred Sarasvatī is the foremost river of all rivers. She courses towards the ocean and is truly the first of all streams.
  • The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli vol. IV, Anusasana Parva, XIII.146, p. 315. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘In some parts (of her course) she becomes visible and in some parts not so.
  • The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli vol. II, Bhisma Parva, VI.6, p. 16. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘Where else is such happiness as that in a residence by the Sarasvatī? . . . All should ever remember the Sarasvatī! Sarasvatī is the most sacred of rivers!
  • The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli vol. III,, IX.54, p. 150. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘Although the Sarasvatī seems to be lost, yet persons crowned with ascetic success . . . and owing also to the coolness of the herbs and of the land there, know that the river has an invisible current through the bowels of the earth’.
  • The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, tr. Kisari Mohan Ganguli vol. III,, IX.35, p. 101.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

Quotes

B

• A third, even wider, dating range (8,000 B.c.E.-l 800 B.C.E.) was proposed for the Sarasvati's channels through which it discharged into the Rann of Kutch via the Luni River.... The Sarasvati as known to the Rgveda must have well predated the end of the second millennium B.C.E., when the entire course of the Hakra had already dried up. A further terminus ante quern can be postulated by the fact that Painted Gray Ware (PGW) sites dated to around 1000 B.C.E. were found on the bed of the river, as opposed to on its banks, indicating that the river had already become dry well before this time (Gaur 1983, 133).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• However, the Vedic hymns preserve no reference to of the river drying up (although this is explicitly described in the Mahabharata; see 3.130.3; 6.7.47; 6.37.1- 4; 9.34.81; 9.36.1-2).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• The quintessential domain of the Rgveda is the land of the Sapta Sindhu, or 'Seven Rivers', a land which, as we have seen, goes by this name even in Avestan sources (Hapta liendu). The heartland of this area more or less corresponds to the present-day Punjab in India and Pakistan and surrounding areas. Among these seven rivers, the Sarasvati is praised as the best6 and as distinct in majesty (R.V. vi.61. 13). Likened to a fortress of metal (R.V. vii. 95. 1), it presses forward like a chariot fighter going from the moun- tains all the way to the river (or ocean).7 Its prestige is such that various rulers (R.V. viii.21.18) situated themselves on its banks, and it causes the five 'peoples' to prosper. Over sixty hymns referring to Sarasvati in the Rgveda, many of which are specifically dedicated to it, attest to its importance in the world of the Vedic poets. An invocation in R.V. 10.75.5, which lists the rivers in geographically correct order from east to west, situates Sarasvati between the Yamuna and the Sutudri (Sutlej). However, although the other rivers in the list are all still presently extant in the north of the Indian subcontinent, nothing is to be found of the mighty Sarasvati today except for an insignificant stream in the foothills of the Himalayas that preserves its name.... Archaeological researches in the Cholistan desert have uncovered the bed of a once-massive river— up to ten kilometers wide, (Misra 1989, 159)—situated between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, exactly where the Rgveda places the Sarasvati. This river is presently known as the Hakra in Pakistan, and the Ghaggar in India.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• In addition to locating and mapping a number of Harappan and post-Harappan sites along the banks of the SarasvatI (some of which he excavated with a few exploratory trenches), Stein, like Oldham before him, also concluded that the main reason for the demise of the river was that the waters of its main tributary, the Sutlej, had been de- toured, thus depriving it of the bulk of its water flow. Satellite imagery has confirmed his observation. The present Sutlej River, rising in the Himalayas, heads in a southeasterly direction directly toward the old bed of the Ghaggar. In the vicinity of modern-day Ropar, about a hundred kilometers from where it would have coincided with the Ghaggar bed had it continued in a straight line, it suddenly takes a sharp right-angle turn to flow away from the Ghaggar in a westerly direction, where, after about 150 kilometers, it is joined by the Beas. These two rivers then merge and proceed in a southwesterly course until they join the Indus and then on to the Rann of Kutch. The satellite imagery revealed the following data: (1) The sudden westward turn of the Sutlej is suggestive of its diversion in the past for which no physical obstruction is evident.14 (2) At the point where the Sutlej would have impacted the Ghaggar riverbed had it not deviated, the latter suddenly widens. Since the bed of the Ghaggar upstream from this point is considerably narrower, this can only be explained if a major tributary was joining the Ghaggar at this place. (3) A major paleochannel can be clearly seen to connect the Sutlej from the point where it takes its sharp westward turn to the point on the Ghaggar where the old bed suddenly broadens. (4) Paleochannels from the Yamuna River show that it also once flowed into the Ghaggar and then subsequently changed its direction three times before assuming its present course. This deviation of the Yamuna also would have deprived the Ghaggar of a substantial supply of water (Pal et al. 1984, 492-497).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• In the course of a survey project limited to only a section of the Hakra/Ghaggar in the Cholistan desert in Bahawalpur state (representing three hundred miles of the Pakistan side of the Hakra part of the riverbed), Mughal (1993, 85) mapped out a total of 414 archaeological sites on the bed. This dwarfs the number of sites so far recorded along the entire stretch of the Indus River which number only about three dozen (Gupta 1993b, 28). The centrality of the river, both archaeologically and culturally, has led a minority of Indian archaeologists to propose, and to begin to adopt, die term Indus- Sarasvati Civilization in lieu of the labels Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• When the [Rig Vedic] hymns were written the focus of Āryan culture was the region between the Jamnā (Sanskrit Yamunā) and Satlaj (Shutudrī), south of the modern Ambālā, and along the upper course of the river Sarasvatī. The latter river is now an insignificant stream, losing itself in the desert of Rajasthan, but it then [in Rig Vedic times] flowed broad and strong...
  • Basham, A.L., The Wonder That Was India, third edn, Rupa & Co., Calcutta, 1981, pp. 31-32. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

C

• The Ghaghar river . . . does not in the heaviest season pass in force beyond Bhatnir . . . and the period when this river ceased to flow as one is far beyond record, and belongs to the fabulous periods of which even tradition is scanty... What the country about and west of Raneah [Rania, near Sirsa in Haryana] . . . has been, may be inferred from the numerous sites of towns and villages scattered over a tract, where now fixed habitations are hardly to be met with. I allude only to the vicinity of the bed of the Ghaghar, with which I am personally acquainted;—when the depopulation took place, I am not prepared to say; it must have been long since, as none of the village sites present[s] one brick standing on another, above ground,—though, in digging beneath it, very frequent specimens of an old brick are met with, about 16 inches by 10 inches, and 3 inches thick, of most excellent quality: buildings erected of such materials could not have passed away in any short period. The evident cause of this depopulation of the country is the absolute absence of water . . .
  • Colvin, Major, ‘On the Restoration of the Ancient Canals of the Delhi Territory’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. II, March 1833, p. 107. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The most sacred and eastern source of the Sarasvatī is said to be Adi-Badri Kunda north of Katgadh [Kathgarh], while the latter is still remembered to be the place where the sacred stream came out of the hills.
  • Alexander Cunningham, See Bhargava, M.L., Geography of Rgvedic India, , p. 71, with reference to Archaeological Survey of India Report, vol. XIV, p. 75. quoted from Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Provisional age data now show that between 2000 and 3000 BCE, flow along a presently dried-up course known as the Ghaggur-Hakkra River ceased, probably driven by the weakening monsoon and possibly also because of headwater capture into the adjacent Yamuna and Sutlej Rivers.
  • Peter Clift, ‘Harappan Collapse’, Geoscientist, vol. 19, no. 9, September 2009, p. 18. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

D

• Scholars such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and the late RS Sharma started questioning this identification in the 1980s. What prompted this rather late reaction? It was a new development: A study of the evolution of the pattern of Harappan settlements in the Saraswati basin now revealed that in its central part — roughly southwest Haryana, southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan — most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation.
  Why was this a problem? We must remember that the Saraswati is lavishly praised both as a river and a Goddess in the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns which mainstream Indology says was composed by Indo-Aryans shortly after their migration to India around 1500 BCE. However, by that time, the Saraswati had been reduced to a minor seasonal stream: How could the said Aryans praise it as a ‘mighty river’, the ‘best of rivers’, ‘mother of waters’, etc? There is a chronological impossibility. Hence, the objectors asserted, the Ghaggar-Hakra was not, after all, the Saraswati extolled in the Rig Veda. While some (Rajesh Kochhar) tried to relocate the river in Afghanistan, others (Irfan Habib) decided that the Saraswati was not a particular river but “the river in the abstract, the River Goddess”; but both theses ran against the Rig Veda’s own testimony that the river flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej." (DANINO:2010/2012)].
  • DANINO 2010/2012: The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Danino, Michel. Penguin, 2010.

• Raverty also traced the name ‘Hakra’ to the Sanskrit sāgara or ‘ocean’, an etymology that has been largely accepted and explains variants such as Sankra and Sankrah, terms used in Islamic chronicles.
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The etymology of the word ‘Ghaggar’ is interesting (and there are several rivers in India bearing kindred names, such as the Ghaghara or Gogra flowing through Ayodhya). We find a few candidates in Sanskrit texts: the word gargara occurs in the Atharva Veda (4.15.12) in the sense of a stream or a water body; the Mahābhārata (12.59.111) mentions a tīrtha‡ on the banks of the Sarasvatī called ‘Gargasrota’, where Garga, a yogi versed in astronomy, lived; ‘Ghargharikā Kunda’ is the name of a tīrtha in the Brahma Purāna (25.64).7 In the same line, we find the word gharghara, of obvious onomatopoeic origin: it is cognate with the English ‘gurgle’, and the river’s music must have suggested it.
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The Ghaggar crosses today’s Indo-Pakistan border near Anupgarh and continues, under the name of ‘Hakra’, through Fort Abbas, Marot, Derawar Fort (where it is also known as Wahind... Interestingly, ‘Wahind’ means ‘river (wah) of India (Hind)’.
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• In forty-five of its hymns, the Rig Veda showers praise on the Sarasvatī; her name appears seventy-two times, and three hymns are wholly dedicated to her. She is often invoked in the company of two sister-goddesses, Ilā and Bhāratī. Sarasvatī’s waters are lauded as a ‘great flood’, she is ‘great among the great, the most impetuous of rivers’, and was ‘created vast’. ‘Limitless, unbroken, swift-moving’, she ‘surpasses in majesty and might all other waters’ and ‘comes onward with tempestuous roar’. Sarasvatī, indeed, is the ‘mother of waters’ or of rivers (sindhumātā). At least one of the Vedic clans, the Purus, is said to dwell ‘on her two grassy banks’... The Sarasvatī is ‘seven-sistered’ or ‘one of seven sisters’, which, if not purely metaphorical, would indicate that she had several tributaries; this is also hinted at in a hymn that invokes her as ‘the seventh’. Once, she is mentioned in conjunction with another river, the Drishadvatī. She ‘breaks through the ridges of the mountains with her strong waves’, which points to a mountainous origin; this gets confirmed when, besides being ‘unbroken’, the Sarasvatī is hailed as ‘pure in her course from the mountain to the sea’(giribhya ā samudrāt).
  • quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

E

• As for Burrow‘s thesis that some place names reflect the names of geographical features to the west, and thus preserve an ancestral home, they once again rather rely on an assumption of Arya migrations than prove it. [...] His cited equivalence of Sanskrit Saraswati and Avestan Haraxvaiti is a case in point. Burrow accepts that it is the latter term that is borrowed, undergoing the usual change of s- > h in the process, but suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran, then it was brought into India at the time of the migrations, while its original bearer had its name modified by the speakers of Avestan who assumed control of the areas vacated by proto-Indoaryans. It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion.
  • ERDOSY 1989: Ethnicity in the Rigveda and its Bearing on the Question of Indo-European Origins. Erdosy, George. pp. 35-47 in ―South Asian Studies‖ vol. 5. London (ERDOSY 1989:41-42). Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The frequent Rg-Vedic references to the Saraswati river are seen by both sides as a key to the solution of the Aryan question. Non-invasionists have pointed out that the biggest concentration of Harappan cities was along the Saraswati river, and that it nearly dried up synchronously with the decline of Harappan city culture. Therefore, the Rg-Veda cannot be post-Harappan...
  • Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• The treatment of the Saraswati evidence forms an interesting case study in the stonewalling of putative pro-OIT evidence by AIT militants, typically outsiders to Indo-European studies such as comparative historian Steve Farmer: they lambast the equating of the Vedic Saraswati with today’s Ghaggar as a paranoid Hindu-nationalist concoction, when actually it was established by a string of Western scholars since the 1850s, in tempore non suspecto. A case study of how this debate has been poisoned by endless political imputations.
  • Elst K. Why Indo-Europeanists Have A Duty To Face The Out-Of-India Theory, 2022

G

• Often enough it seemed as though, like the river Sarasvatī, the lost stream of the old Sapta-sindhavas, the river of Indian thought had disappeared beneath the surface or had become lost in shallow marshes and morasses . . . But, sooner or later, we see the stream reappear, and then old ideas resume their way.
  • Gowen, Herbert H., A History of Indian Literature from Vedic Times to the Present Day, D. Appleton, New York & London, 1931, p. 9 in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

I

• ‘In ancient times the lower portion of the river seems to have borne the name of its confluent the Saraswati or Sarsuti, which joins the main stream in Patiala territory. It then possessed the dimensions of an important channel . . . At present, however, every village through which the stream passes has diverted a portion of its waters for irrigation, no less than 10,000 acres being supplied from this source in Ambala District alone . . . During the lower portion of its course, in Sirsa District, the bed of the Ghaggar is dry from November to June, affording a cultivable surface for rich crops of rice and wheat.’
  • entry ‘Ghaggar’, in the encyclopaedic Imperial Gazetteer of India . Hunter, W.W., ‘Ganjam’ to ‘India’, Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 5, Trübner & Co., London, sec. edn, 1885, pp. 54-55. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ... the entry ‘Saraswati (Sarsuti)’, defined as a ‘sacred river of the Punjab, famous in the early Brahmanical annals’. We learn that the river rises ‘in the low hills of Sirmur State, emerges upon the plain at Zadh Budri [Ad Badri], a place esteemed sacred by all Hindus’, and, before joining the Ghaggar, ‘passes by the holy town of Thanesar and the numerous shrines of the Kuruksetra, a tract celebrated as a centre of pilgrimages, and as the scene of the battle-fields of the Mahabharatha’. The Gazetteer repeats, ‘In ancient times, the united stream below the point of junction appears to have borne the name of Sarsuti, and, undiminished by irrigation near the hills, to have flowed across the Rajputana plains . . .’ ‘Some of the earliest Aryan settlements in India were on the banks of the Saraswati, and the surrounding country has from almost Vedic times been held in high veneration. The Hindus identify the river with Saraswati, the Sanskrit Goddess of Speech and Learning.’
  • ‘Ratlam’ to ‘Sirmur’, Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 12, Trübner & Co., London, sec. edn, 1887, pp. 261-62. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘In the year A.D. 1000 it [the Sutlej] was a tributary of the Hakra, and flowed in the Eastern Nara . . . Thus the Sutlej or the Hakra—for both streams flowed in the same bed—is probably the lost river of the Indian desert, whose waters made the sands of Bikaner and Sind a smiling garden.’
  • Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 23, new edn, London, 1908, p. 179. Quoted by Vishal Agarwal in ‘A Reply to Michael Witzel’s “Ein Fremdling im Rigveda”’, August 2003, available online at: www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/ documents/ReplytoWitzelJIES.pdf (accessed 15 September 2009).quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

L

• Lal (1997, 9) considers the Sarasvati to have been alive in Kalibangan in the third millennium B.C.E. and dried up at the turn of the millennium: "The Sarasvati dried up around 2000 BC. This clearly establishes that the Rigveda, which speaks of the Sarasvati as a mighty flowing river, has to be assigned to a period prior to 2000 BC. By how many centuries it cannot be said for certain" (Lal, forthcoming).
  • Lal quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

M

• The country bears traces of having once been well inhabited. At no very distant period, the waters of the Guggur [Ghaggar] river reached as far as Sooratgurh, and old wells are numerous as far as Bhatner [Hanumangarh]’. ...‘one remarkable feature in the country traversed to Bahawalpore, which is the traces that exist in it of the course of some former river’. And ‘it is to the forsaken bed of this river that we are indebted for the opening to us of a road through the desert’. ... the breadth to which the bed of the Slakro [Hakra] attains in this part of its course is such as to favour the idea that it was a larger river than the Sutlej . . . Ages have elapsed since this river ceased to flow, and I shall leave to those who care to prosecute the inquiry to establish the permanency or otherwise of its character, merely observing here, that . . . I traced to my entire satisfaction the deserted course of a large river as far as the Kalipahar wells . . . From that point its course was reported to me to continue . . . passing Delawur [Derawar Fort] and other forts in the desert, built on its channel . . .
  • Mackeson, F., Major, ‘Report on the Route from Seersa to Bahawulpore’, in Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XIII, January-June 1844, no. 145-50, p. 298-302 quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• In contrast, changes taking place in the Saraswati Valley in the early second millennium were probably a major contributor to the Indus decline. In Harappan times, the Saraswati was a major river system flowing from the Siwaliks at least to Bahawalpur, where it probably ended in a substantial inland delta. The ancient Saraswati River was fed by a series of small rivers that rose in the Siwaliks, but it drew the greater part of its waters from two much larger rivers rising high in the Himalayas: the Sutlej and the Yamuna. In its heyday the Saraswati appears to have supported the densest settlement and provided the greatest arable yields of any part of the Indus realms. The Yamuna, which supplied most of the water flowing in the Drishadvati, a major tributary of the Saraswati, changed its course, probably early in the second millennium, to flow into the Ganges drainage. The remaining flow in the Drishadvati became small and seasonal: Late Harappan sites in Bahawalpur are concentrated in the portion of the Sarawati east of Yazman, which was fed by the Sutlej. At a later date the Sutlej also changed its course and was captured by the Indus. These changes brought about massive depopulation of the Saraswati Valley, which by the end of the millennium was described as a place of potsherds and ruin mounds whose inhabitants had gone away. At the same time new settlements appeared in the regions to the south and east, in the upper Ganges-Yamuna doab. Some were located on the palaeochannels that mark the eastward shift of the Yamuna. Presumably many of the Late Harappan settlers had originated in the Saraswati Valley.
  • Jane McIntosh, The Ancient Indus Valley, 2008

• There is general agreement among scholars that all this demonstrates that "it can be stated with certainty that the present Ghaggar-Hakra is nothing but a remnant of the RgVedic Sarasvati which was the lifeline of the Indus Civilization".
  • (V. N. Misra 1994,511). quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• Mughal's broad chronological periods are not specific enough to assist us in definitively situating the Vedic-speaking Aryans as inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization. It is significant, however, that about 80 percent of Mughal's 414 archaeological sites along a three-hundred-mile section of the Hakra were datable to the fourth or third millen- nium B.C.E, suggesting that the river was in its prime during this period.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• Mughal (1993) proposes the following outline: On the Pakistan side, archaeological evidence now overwhelmingly affirms that the Hakra was a perennial river through all its course in Bahawalpur during the fourth millennium . . . and early third millennium B.C. About the middle of the third millennium B.C., the water supply in the Northeastern portion of the Hakra [the Yamuna] was consider- ably diminished or cut off. But, abundant water in the lower (southwestern) part of this stream was still available, apparently through a channel from the Sutlej. . . . About the end of the second, or not later than the beginning of the first millennium B.C., the entire course of the Hakra seems to have dried up. (4)
  • Mughal (1993) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• The Sarasvatī comes between the Jumna and the Sutlej, the position of the modern Sarsūti . . . There are strong reasons to accept the identification of the later and the earlier Sarasvatī throughout [the Rig Veda].
  • Macdonell, A.A. & A.B. Keith, Vedic Index°, vol. 2, pp. 435-36. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

O

• The first person who attempted to correlate the textual descriptions of Sarasvati with empirical paleogeology was C. F. Oldham, in 1874. He surmised that "the waters of the Sarasvati [are] continuous with the dry bed of a great river [Hakra], which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea".
  • C.F. Oldham 1893, 54) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• Although the river below the confluence [with the Ghaggar] is marked in our maps as Gaggar, it was formerly the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people.
  • C.F. Oldham, 1893 quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• (the Rig Veda in one of its hymns clearly places the river) ‘between the Yamuna and the Satudri [Sutlej] which is its present position’. ... ‘it was formerly [known as] the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people . . .’ Its ancient course is contiguous with the dry bed of a great river which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea. In confirmation of these traditions, the channel referred to, which is called Hakra or Sotra, can be traced through the Bikanir and Bhawulpur [Bahawalpur] States into Sind, and thence onwards to the Rann of Kach. The existence of this river at no very remote period, and the truth of the legends which assert the ancient fertility of the lands through which it flowed, are attested by the ruins which everywhere overspread what is now an arid sandy waste. Throughout this tract are scattered mounds, marking the sites of cities and towns. And there are strongholds still remaining, in a very decayed state, which were places of importance at the time of the early Mahommedan invasions. Amongst these ruins are found not only the huge bricks used by the Hindus in the remote past, but others of a much later make. All this seems to show that the country must have been fertile for a long period . . . Freshwater shells, exactly similar to those now seen in the Panjab rivers, are to be found in this old riverbed and upon its banks... ... ‘great changes in the course of the Sutlej have occurred in comparatively recent times. Indeed, only a century ago [that is, in the late eighteenth century], the river deserted its bed under the fort of Ludiana, which is five miles from its present course’... the ‘old riverbed generally known as Narra. This channel, which bears also the names of Hakra or Sagara, Wahind, and Dahan, is to be traced onward to the Rann of Kach59 . . . The name Hakra . . . is also applied to the Narra, as far as the Rann of Kach, so that the whole channel is known by this name, from Bhatnair [Hanumangarh] to the sea’.... the Sutlej ‘flowed southwards from the Himalāya . . . and onwards, through Sind, to the sea’—until, for some reason, a prince-turned-ascetic named Puran, a hero of many Punjabi legends, cursed the river to leave its bed and move westward. ‘The stream, in consequence, changed its course more and more towards the west, until, six hundred and fifty years ago, it entered the Beas valley . . .’, which would take us to the thirteenth century CE; but leaving aside the date, the consequence was ‘a terrible drought and famine in the country on the banks of the Hakra, where [large] numbers of men and cattle perished. The survivors then migrated to the banks of the Indus, and the country has ever since been desert’... ‘the traditions of all the tribes bordering upon it [the Rann of Kachchh] agree that this expanse of salt and sand was once an estuary’... The course of the ‘lost river’ has now been traced from the Himalaya to the Rann of Kach . . . We have also seen that the Vedic description of the waters of the Saraswatī flowing onward to the ocean, and that given in the Mahabharata, of the sacred river losing itself in the sands, were probably both of them correct at the periods to which they referred.
  • Oldham, C.F., ‘The Sarasvatī and the Lost River of the Indian Desert’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 34, 1893, pp. 49-76.

• the ‘Lost River of the Indian Desert was none other than the Sutlej, and that it was “lost” when the river turned westwards to join the Bias [Beas]’... ‘It may have been . . . that the Jumna [Yamunā], after leaving the hills, divided its waters . . . and that the portion which flowed to the Punjab was known as the Saraswati while that which joined the Ganges was called the Yamuna.’... (that double desertion of the Sarasvatī, by the Sutlej and the Yamunā, which brought about) ‘a considerable change in the hydrography of the region’... ‘a tradition prevalent, on the borders of Bikaner, to the effect that the waters of the Hakra spread out in a great lake at a place called Kak, south of the Mer country’.
  • Oldham, R.D., ‘On Probable Changes in the Geography of the Punjab and Its Rivers: An Historico-Geographical Study’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. 55, 1886, pp. 322-43. (Oldham’s paper is partly reproduced in Vedic Sarasvatī pp. 81-88.)quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

P

• The dating range proposed by Pal et al. (1984) is no more specific: "The Ghaggar continued to be a living river during the pre-Harappan (c. 2500-2200 B.C.E.) and the Harappan times (c. 2200-1700 B.C.E.)" (496).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• The ancient bed of the Ghaggar has a constant width of about 6 to 8 km from Shatrana in Punjab to Marot in Pakistan. The bed stands out very clearly having a dark tone in the black-and-white imagery and reddish one in false colour composites. There is a clear palaeo-channel south-east of the river Markanda which joins the bed of the Ghaggar near Shatrana. The present Sarasvati mostly flows through this channel. (1984: 495) Our studies show that the Satluj was the main tributary of the Ghaggar and that subsequently the tectonic movements may have forced the Satluj westward and the Ghaggar dried. (Ibid.: 494) As discussed above, during the period 4–5 millennia BP northwestern Rajasthan was a much greener place with the Sarasvati flowing through it. Some of the present rivers joined to make the Sarasvati a mighty river which probably discharged into the sea (Rann of Kutch) through the Nara, without joining the Indus. (Ibid.: 497)
  • Yash Pal et al., 1984. “Remote Sensing of the ‘Lost’ Sarasvati River.” In Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, edited by B. B. Lal, S. P. Gupta, and Shashi Asthana. New Delhi: Books and Books, pp. 491–7. in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 55-56

• The river constituted the boundary between the Panjab and the Ganges-Jumna basin.
  • Pargiter, F.E., Ancient Indian Historical Tradition, London, 1922; republ. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1997, p. 313. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

R

• ‘Sursuti [Sarsuti] is the name of a river, the ancient Saraswatī . . . Sutlaj [Sutlej] was a tributary of the Hakrā or Wahindāh’... (The Hakra’s drying up, which according to Raverty took place in the fourteenth century CE,) ‘reduced a vast extent of once fruitful country to a howling wilderness, and thus several flourishing cities and towns became ruined or deserted by their inhabitants’.
  • Raverty, H.G., ‘The Mihrān of Sind and Its Tributaries: A Geographical and Historical Study’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 61, no. 1 & extra number (1892), pp. 155-206 & 297-508. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• ‘More important is the Sarasvatī, the true lifeline of Vedic geography, whose trace is assumed to be found in the Sarsutī, located between the Satlaj and the Jamnā. With the Indus and its five tributaries, it forms the Veda’s “seven rivers”.’
  • 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. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

S

• The Sarasvatī river is ‘the one which the hymns mention most frequently, whose name they utter with the highest praise and predilection’. It was also ‘the first river wholly belonging to the Veda’s historical arena’... He then noted the existence of today’s stream called ‘Sarsuti, . . . a rather insignificant river . . . which rises at the foot of the last steep slopes overlooking the plain [that is, the Shivaliks] in the rather narrow corridor between the Djemna [Yamuna] and the Satledj [Sutlej].’... ‘The ancient designation of Sarasvatī very much appears to have embraced, apart from the chief watercourse flowing far to the west, the totality of the streams flowing down from the mountain close to each other before they unite in a single bed.’... ‘its course then extended through the now arid and waterless plains extending between the Satlej and the gulf of Kotch...‘This positive recognition of the locale is crucially important for a full understanding of Vedic geography.
  • Vivien de Saint-Martin, Louis, Étude sur la géographie et les populations primitives du nord-ouest de l’Inde, d’après les hymnes védiques, op. cit., p. iii. 15-24 quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The trace of the ancient riverbed was recently found, still quite recognizable, and was followed far to the west. [This discovery] confirmed the correctness of the tradition.
  • Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, 1855 quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Pollen cores from Rajasthan seem to indicate that by the mid-third milennium BC, climatic conditions of the Indus Valley area became increasingly arid. Data from the Deccan region also suggests a similar circumstance there by the end of the second millennium BC. Additionally, and more directly devastating for the Indus Valley region, in the early second millennium BC, there was the capture of the Ghaggar-Hakra (or Saraswati) river system (then a focal point of human occupation) by adjacent rivers, with subsequent diversion of these waters eastwards. At the same time, there was increasing tectonic activity in Sindh and elsewhere. Combined, these geological changes meant major changes in the hydrology patterns of the region. These natural geologic processes had significant consequences for the food producing cultural groups throughout the greater Indus Valley area. Archaeological surveys have documented a cultural response to these environmental changes creating a “crisis” circumstance...
  • Jim Shaffer. South Asian archaeology and the myth of Indo-Aryan invasions in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge

• The Ran is the delta of the Hakra, the lost river of Sind.
  • Sivewright, Robert, ‘Cutch and the Ran’, The Geographical Journal, vol. 29, no. 5, May 1907, pp. 518-35. quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

T

• The importance of the Sarasvatī in Indian historical studies has multiplied manifold since archaeological analyses of the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, combined with detailed satellite imagery of the course of the ancient (now dried up) river, conclusively showed that it had almost dried up by the mid-second millennium BCE itself, and that, long before that, it was a mighty river, mightier than the Indus, and that an overwhelming majority of the archaeological sites of the Harappan cities are located on the banks of the Sarasvatī rather than of the Indus. This has lethal implications for the AIT, which requires an Aryan invasion around 1500 BCE after the decline of the Harappan civilization, since it shows that the Vedic Aryans, who lived ―on both banks (Rigveda VII.96.2) of a mighty Sarasvatī in full powerful flow, must have been inhabitants of the region long before 1500 BCE and in fact may be identical with the indigenous Harappans.
  Therefore, there is now a desperate salvage operation on, in powerful leftist and "secularist" political circles in India, to put a complete full stop to any further official research on the Sarasvatī (including archaeological and geological investigations), and to launch an all-out Goebbelsian campaign through a captive media to deny that there ever was a Vedic Sarasvatī river in existence in India: the river named in the Rigveda was either completely mythical, or it was the river in Afghanistan, but it definitely was not identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra!
  • Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• In Tod’s description, the ‘Marusthali’, as it was then called, consists of ‘expansive belts of sand, elevated upon a plain only less sandy, and over whose surface numerous thinly peopled towns and hamlets are scattered’. He also records ‘the tradition of the absorption of the Caggar river, as one of the causes of the comparative depopulation of the northern desert’. This tradition was transmitted in the form of a ‘couplet still sung among Rajputs, which dates the ruin of this part of the country back to the drying up of the Hakra.’ Although Tod could not recall the exact text of the said song, he acknowledged ‘the utility of these ancient traditional couplets’. ‘Folk history’, as we would call it today... Yet, James Tod finds worthy of mention a tradition alive in the 1810s that blames the region’s ‘depopulation’ on the Ghaggar’s ‘absorption’ or disappearance; he even notes how ‘the vestiges of large towns, now buried in the sands, confirm the truth of this tradition, and several of them claim a high antiquity.
  • James Tod's description, as reported in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India..
  • Tod, James, Lt-Col, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, London, 1829-32; republ. Lolit Mohun Audhya, Calcutta, 1894, pp. 239 & 242. vol. II, p. 187-9; p. 242 ‘Sketch of the Indian Desert’ The reference is to the first edition of 1832 : it is also quoted by the French geographer Vivien de Saint-Martin.

V

• Drainage analysis, basin identification, glaciological and terrace studies suggest that the Vedic Saraswati originated from a group of glaciers in Tons fifth order basin at Naitwar in Garhwal Himalaya. In early stages, it occupied the present day drainage of Tons river up to Paonta Doon and took a westerly swing after receiving nourishment from Algar, Yamuna and Giri. West of Paonta, it followed a westerly and southwesterly course along Bata valley and entered plains at Adh Badri.
  • (Puri and Verma 1998: 19) Puri, V. M. K. and B. C. Verma, 1998. “Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas,” Itihas Darpan, IV(2): 7–36.in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routled

• The cumulative effect of the above-mentioned events, viz. reactivation of Yamuna tear, constriction of catchment area of Vedic Saraswati by 94.05%, emergence and migration of river Drishadvati towards southeast acquiring the present day Yamuna course and finally shifting of Shatudri (Satluj) forced Vedic Saraswati to change drastically from the grandeur of a mighty and a very large river to a mere seasonal stream that depended for its nourishment on monsoon precipitation only . . . . [Thus] Vedic Saraswati was completely disoriented and attained the present day status of oblivion. (1998: 19)
  • (Puri and Verma 1998: 19) Puri, V. M. K. and B. C. Verma, 1998. “Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas,” Itihas Darpan, IV(2): 7–36.in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge page 59

W

• The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthān was undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Purānas lies between the Drishadwatī and Saraswatī rivers, the Caggar [Ghaggar] and Sursooty [Sarsuti] of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Āshramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatī . . . These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatī river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthān.
  • Introduction by HH Wilson, The Vishnu Purāna: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, tr. H.H. Wilson, John Murray, London, 1840, pp. lxvi-vii. in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The extraordinary breadth of the Hakra bed, which is not less than 3 km over a distance of 250 km and is even 6 km in some places, must therefore be due to the flood discharge from the big glacial rivers coming down from the Himalayas . . . The small Siwalik rivers would not have been enough to supply all the water in the Sarasvatī. In other words, the Sarasvatī must have had a source river in the Himalaya; the Sarasvatī must have lost this source river either due to a diversion or tapping, as indicated by the sharp bend near Rupar.... There should no longer be any doubt that Sutlej water flowed into the Hakra at three different places in an earlier period50 . . . In the very distant past, the Jumna [Yamuna] was certainly one of the big water suppliers of the ‘Lost River of Sind’. The water flowed through an old 1.5 km wide bed of the Chautang.. . . This dry bed is indeed the holy river ‘Sarasvatī’ . . .; once upon a time, this was a genuine solitary river which reached the ocean without any tributaries on its long way through the desert.52
  • 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). in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.