Talk:Yamuna

Surplus

• To reconstruct the main stages in the [Sarasvati] river’s life—in a manner which, I believe, respects all the strands of our web—I will begin with a useful clue in the Mahābhārata. In two places at least, the epic tells us that the Sarasvatī’s course in the mountain was close to the Yamunā’s. In the more precise passage of the two, Balarāma climbs to a tīrtha on the Sarasvatī called ‘Plakshaprāsravana’ (the name of the river’s source as we saw earlier) and, from there, soon reaches the Yamunā.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• The Yamunā was thus a double river—which would conveniently explain the root meaning of the word yamunā: ‘twin’.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Thus, the terraces studied in Sudanwala, Bata, Garibnath and Markanda provide an irrefutable geological evidence to suggest a course of a river that was flowing in almost west-northwesterly direction in the past. Its dimension was very large as it contained a very high discharge that tra- versed in its upper reaches a terrain of quartzite and metamorphic rocks. Such a region does exist in central and upper reaches of Yamunå fourth order basin where Central Crystallines and Jutogh group of rocks are located towards north, north-east and eastern side of above-mentioned four terraces. Moreover, in the Paonta valley, there is a clear evidence that prior to the present Yamunå river, there existed a major river channel at a much higher elevation that followed a westerly and southwesterly course through a route now almost completely obliterated on Siwalik platform due to erosion but its terraces are still observed along Adh Badri- Markanda link in the plains immediately to the south of Siwalik belt.
  • V. M. K. Puri and B. C. Verma, “Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas”, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1998, pp. 7-36. (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)

• In this context attention must be drawn to some very telling evidence from the Ghaggar-Sarasvati bed itself, at Kalibangan. When the excavations over here were in progress, we were naturally keen on verifying locally the facts about the drying up of the river, since it was obvious to us that the massive settlement at Kalibangan could not have flourished without the adjacent river having been alive and active. With this end in view, a project, combining the efforts of the Archaeological Survey of India, Geological Survey of India (repre- sented by Shri R. K. Karanth) and an Italian firm named Raikes and Partners (headed by Mr. R. L. Raikes), was set in motion. Four bore- holes were dug, one of which lay in between the two mounds compris- ing the site and three in the river-bed itself, located at a distance of 300 metres from one another towards the centre of the bed. All things apart, the most revealing fact was that the greyish sand encountered in these bore-holes, at a depth of about 11 m below the present flood- plain, was ‘very similar in mineral content to that found in the bed of the present-day Yamuna’. This confirms the findings of Puri and Verma that the source of the Ghaggar (Sarasvatœ) lay high up in the Himalayas from where the Yamunå also originated, thus making the sand similar in both the cases.
  • (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)

• Khan and Sinha noted, “A dense concentration of Harappan sites has been documented in the Jind and Hisar districts of Haryana and further west in the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan, and this can only be explained if the Yamuna once flowed through these southwesterly flowing palaeochannels. ... The palaeo-Yamuna does represent the courses of a major feeder to the Ghaggar–Hakra system (Sarasvati) as suggested by thick sand bodies.”
  • Khan, I. and Sinha, R. 2019. Discovering ‘buried’ channels of the palaeo-Yamuna River in NW India using geophysical evidence: Implications for major drainage reorganization and linkage to the Harappan Civilization. Journal of Applied Geophysics 167:128-139.
  • quoted in Chapter 8. The Sarasvati River: Issues and Debates Michel Danino in SARASWATI : THE RIVER PAR EXCELLENCE Edited by S. K. Acharyya, K. Ghosh and Amal Kar 2020 -- this is not good enough; the formatting is appalling Ficaia (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

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• Khan and Sinha noted, “A dense concentration of Harappan sites has been documented in the Jind and Hisar districts of Haryana and further west in the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan, and this can only be explained if the Yamuna once flowed through these southwesterly flowing palaeochannels. ... The palaeo-Yamuna does represent the courses of a major feeder to the Ghaggar–Hakra system (Sarasvati) as suggested by thick sand bodies.”
  • Khan, I. and Sinha, R. 2019. Discovering ‘buried’ channels of the palaeo-Yamuna River in NW India using geophysical evidence: Implications for major drainage reorganization and linkage to the Harappan Civilization. Journal of Applied Geophysics 167:128-139.
  • quoted in Chapter 8. The Sarasvati River: Issues and Debates Michel Danino in SARASWATI : THE RIVER PAR EXCELLENCE Edited by S. K. Acharyya, K. Ghosh and Amal Kar 2020

• Thus, the terraces studied in Sudanwala, Bata, Garibnath and Markanda provide an irrefutable geological evidence to suggest a course of a river that was flowing in almost west-northwesterly direction in the past. Its dimension was very large as it contained a very high discharge that tra- versed in its upper reaches a terrain of quartzite and metamorphic rocks. Such a region does exist in central and upper reaches of Yamunå fourth order basin where Central Crystallines and Jutogh group of rocks are located towards north, north-east and eastern side of above-mentioned four terraces. Moreover, in the Paonta valley, there is a clear evidence that prior to the present Yamunå river, there existed a major river channel at a much higher elevation that followed a westerly and southwesterly course through a route now almost completely obliterated on Siwalik platform due to erosion but its terraces are still observed along Adh Badri- Markanda link in the plains immediately to the south of Siwalik belt.
  • V. M. K. Puri and B. C. Verma, “Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas”, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1998, pp. 7-36. (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)

• In this context attention must be drawn to some very telling evidence from the Ghaggar-Sarasvati bed itself, at Kalibangan. When the excavations over here were in progress, we were naturally keen on verifying locally the facts about the drying up of the river, since it was obvious to us that the massive settlement at Kalibangan could not have flourished without the adjacent river having been alive and active. With this end in view, a project, combining the efforts of the Archaeological Survey of India, Geological Survey of India (represented by Shri R. K. Karanth) and an Italian firm named Raikes and Partners (headed by Mr. R. L. Raikes), was set in motion. Four bore- holes were dug, one of which lay in between the two mounds comprising the site and three in the river-bed itself, located at a distance of 300 metres from one another towards the centre of the bed. All things apart, the most revealing fact was that the greyish sand encountered in these bore-holes, at a depth of about 11 m below the present flood- plain, was ‘very similar in mineral content to that found in the bed of the present-day Yamuna’. This confirms the findings of Puri and Verma that the source of the Ghaggar (Sarasvatœ) lay high up in the Himalayas from where the Yamunå also originated, thus making the sand similar in both the cases.
  • (in Lal, B. B. (2005). Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach. IT, 31, 173-194.)