No More Mythical
Settling the devious, motivated debate on the existence of the Vedic river Saraswati
Despite ample evidence – archaeological, geological, marine, historical, textual, all going against them, several news portals, for e.g. The Wire, spare no attempt to label the mighty Vedic river Saraswati as mythical, mythological. The Wire has published article after article, cautioning people that the search for Vedic Saraswati is futile, political, dangerous, unscientific and so on.1 It seems now that The Wire shall decide what cause is just and worthy of funding. It is neither for the people nor the government to decide but for the erudite journalists at The Wire. Apparently, one should search for the Vedic Saraswati only after the Ganga is cleansed.2
It is almost as if The Wire (and others like the Scroll3, NDTV4), is desperate to deny the existence of the Vedic Saraswati despite evidence screaming otherwise. If jaded opinion could pass off as science and research, The Wire (Scroll, NDTV) would be its prime example. None of this is surprising however. Having followed this platform, a rotten one, if I may add, for many years, it is abundantly clear what their intentions are, even if not explicitly stated.
The reason for denying the existence of the Vedic Saraswati is a well calculated and part of a long ongoing project to discredit the Vedas, to brandish them as the fertile imagination of rabid Aryans, who wrote in oppressive Sanskrit, hymns extolling mythical rivers and other such barbarous things. If it could be established that indeed there was no river called the Saraswati, much of the sacred texts that talk of this great river, repeatedly, could be easily dismissed as the puerile fallacies of a fallible race.
Merely a few days ago, excavations by the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI), at the Beeg district of Rajasthan, revealed an ancient paleochannel linked to the once mighty Vedic Saraswati river.5
Much before, works of Michel Danino6, Sanjeev Sanyal7, and several other scholars8 have established beyond reasonable doubt that the mighty Saraswati did flow in the past and that those who composed the Vedic hymns were not idiots unlike the journalists at The Wire or other such platforms.
In 2014, the Regional Remote Sensing Centre – West (RRSC-W) under the aegis of the prestigious Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) conducted and published a detailed 76-page report titled River Saraswati: An Integrated Study Based on Remote Sensing & GIS Techniques with Ground Information which contained 28 figures, 7 tables and 73 references all conclusively pointing to the existence of the Vedic Saraswati and the explanation for its disappearance. The abstract of the report is as follows:
The integrated report deals with the findings of paleochannels of Vedic Saraswati River in northwest India using Remote Sensing & GIS. For this purpose, IRS satellite data of WiFS, AWiFS, LISS-III and LISS-IV sensors have been used to delineate the buried palaeochannels through image processing techniques in parts of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The discovered river course has been validated with ground information like historical maps, archaeological sites, hydrogeology, sedimentology, drilling (litholog) and geochronological data. The integrated study helped in exploring the potential utility of the palaeochannels. Drilling of tube wells on the palaeochannels shows the availability of large quantity of potable water which may be tapped as groundwater source in the water striven Thar Desert.
The preface of the same report reads:
The existence of an extinct mighty river ‘Saraswati’ in the Thar Desert region is well known to the people of northwest India. Many workers have come across with the evidences in the form of occurrence of isolated palaeochannels, potable water and good yield in the wells drilled along these channels, archaeological artefacts, channel like anomalies on aerial photographs and satellites images etc. and have tried to suggest a number of courses of the river based on evidences and interpretations. The course of the river had been debated for a long time and also the reasons for its disappearance, necessitating a fresh look through latest available satellite data.
The main objective of the study is to carry out a detailed study to delineate the true course of river ‘Saraswati’ now covered below the sands in Thar Desert using latest satellite images. This study is carried out taking advantage of the multi-spectral, multi-date and multi-resolution data from new generation satellites / sensors and the developments in digital image processing and GIS techniques and supported by the ground evidences.
Further, the discovered river course has been validated on by a variety of scientific data and investigations carried out by various survey agencies. An integrated study has been carried out to explore the potential utility of the palaeochannels with ground information like historical, archaeological, hydrogeological, sedimentological, drilling (litholog) and geochronological data. Drilling of tube wells on the palaeochannels shows the availability of large quantity of potable water which may be tapped as groundwater source in the water striven Thar Desert.
An attempt has been made to compile the available geochronological ages of alluvial sands, aeolian sands and groundwater samples along the palaeochannels. All these chronological events lead to build drainage evolution of River Saraswati in NW India during Quaternary Period. Finally, the Vedic Saraswati River has been linked to the Himalayan Rivers like Yamuna / Tons River in the east and Sutlej River in the west. The entire course of Vedic Saraswati River has been delineated from Man Sarovar Lake in the Higher Himalaya to Gulf of Kachchh in Arabian Sea.
It is hoped that this scientific findings will give an end to the debate on the existence of ‘River Saraswati’ in the past and the reasons for its disappearance.
However, it is clear that the end to the debate on the existence of River Saraswati is nowhere near. How will The Wire (and others) survive if facts thrive?
References
The Sarasvati River and Why the Vedas Can't Be a Lesson in Geography, How the Indian Govt Is Pushing Money Down a Mythological River, Saraswati: The River That Never Was, Flowing Always in the People's Hearts, Located Between Fact and Fiction, 'Searching for Saraswati' Is a Warning for the Future
गंगा तो साफ़ नहीं हुई लेकिन सरस्वती को खोज निकालने का दावा किया जा रहा है
Fiction: A scheme to unearth the ‘lost’ Saraswati river becomes an act of Hindu nationalist pride
4,500-Year-Old Civilisation In Rajasthan Has Mythical River Saraswati Link
The Lost River: On The Trail of The Sarasvati by Michel Danino
Land of The Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography by Sanjeev Sanyal
Saraswati: The River Par Excellence ed. by S.K. Acharya, Kunal Ghosh, Amal Kar