Search of Saraswati River

Haryana government renamed the Mustafabad tehsil in Yamunanagar district as ‘Saraswati Nagar’. The renaming was done to mark the discovery of the mythical river Saraswati and its importance in the Hindu mythology. According to officials, there exists an old dried up riverbed of Saraswati in the area.

Basis for the existence of Saraswati River

The Saraswati River is mentioned in Rig Veda as one of the main river among the Rigvedic Rivers. It finds mention in later Vedic and post Vedic texts as well. For centuries, Saraswati is believed to form a confluence with Ganga and Yamuna at the Triveni Sangam in an invisible form.

Rigveda, which is likely to be composed between 1,500 BC and 1,200 BC has described Saraswati as the best of all the rivers. It has described the river to be a great river with perennial water supply which originated in the hills or mountains. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda orders the rivers from the Ganges in the east up to the Indus in the west. It has placed the river Saraswati between Yamuna (in the east) and the Sutlej (in the west).

The later Vedic texts like Tandya Brahmana and Jaiminiya Brahmana has references to the disappearance of the Saraswati river.

Post Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata, which reached its final form probably in the 4th century AD mentions that the river Saraswati disappeared in the desert and then reappeared at some place and finally joined the sea. Other literatures such as the Skanda Purana, Vasistha Dharmasutra, Baudhayana Dharmasutra etc. also mentions about the river Saraswati.

Rationale for Search

Why it is important to search for the remains of a river which disappeared many thousand years ago?

It is believed that the Vedic Sanskrit and the first part of the Rig Veda originated in the 2nd millennium BC when the Vedic people are believed to live on the banks of this mighty river.

The Indus Valley civilization is dated to around 3300 BC much before the Vedas were written in 2000 BC. Many Indus Valley sites like Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Banawali, dholavira, Lothal are believed to be located along the Saraswati River. Given this fact, discovering the river Saraswati might help to make a claim that the people who wrote the Vedas also belonged to the Indus Valley civilization. Hence, the Indus Valley civilization can be claimed as our own. Some historians like SP Gupta (in 1996) even suggested that the Indus Valley civilization may be renamed as Indus-Saraswati civilization.

The river has also played an important role in Hinduism. The goddess Saraswati was a personification of this river. It is believed that the Vedic Sanskrit has its genesis on this river’s banks. It may also help the Hindu right wing to proclaim the concept of a golden age of ancient India with the discovery of the river.

Theories associated with the River Saraswati

The physical existence of the river is hotly debated among the scholars. While some believe its existence others question the veracity of the claims of Rigveda.

There are two popular theories which attempt to identify the river Saraswati. Some scholars identify the river with the present day Ghaggar-Hakra river or its dried up part, and its tributaries in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the Cholistan region in Pakistan. This theory was first proposed in the 19th and 20th centuries by the first generation of orientalists and Indologists such as Christian Lassen, Max Müller and Aurel Stein. The Ghaggar River originates in the Shivalik Hills of Himachal Pradesh and flows through the states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. The Hakra river is the dried out channel near Fort Abbas City in Pakistan. Michel Danino’s 2010 book, The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati, has put forward several arguments on the basis of topography, geological studies and satellite imagery to argue that the dried up riverbed of Ghaggar-Hakra river system was the course of the Saraswati River.

The second theory identifies the river with the Helmand River in the Helmand Valley in Afghanistan.

Yet another group of people regard Saraswati as a mythical river which flows invisibly to form confluence in Triveni Sangam.

Discoveries till date

The search for Saraswati has been carried out for many years by historians, archaeologists, politicians and researchers.

Last year, MNREGA workers while digging in Mughalwali village as a part of the effort to discover Saraswati River in Yamunanagar district found water bubbling at around 10 feet. This has been hailed by the Haryana government as having discovered the mythical Saraswati River. A channel of about 5 km long has been made as Saraswati Marg at the Mughalwali village. It has yet to be ascertained whether the water discovered was part of palaeo-channels of dried up ‘mythical’ river Saraswati.

Earlier, ASI had conducted excavations at 10 sites between 2002 and 2004 under the Saraswati project. The sites include Adibadri, Kurukshetra, Fatehabad and Hisar in Haryana; Ganganagar and Hanumangarh in Rajasthan; and Kutch in Gujarat. Again it conducted independent excavations at Khisara (Gujarat) in 2009-2013 and at Karanpura (Rajasthan) in 2012-2014. ASI is of the view that multidisciplinary approach involving agencies like Geological Survey of India is needed to ascertain the link between the Ghaggar-Hakra river system and the Saraswati River.

Previously in 2002, NDA government under Vajpayee constituted a panel of experts under the minister for culture to search for the river. Subsequently, the project was dropped with UPA coming to power.

Role of the Central government

With NDA government at the centre and the four states (Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat) where the Saraswati River is believed to have flowed, the project to search the river got revived.

The central government has constituted a panel of experts under KS Valdiya to verify the claims of Haryana government’s apparent discovery of the Saraswati River.

Recently, ASI has been mandated by the Ministry of culture to carry out fresh excavations along the course of Ghaggar-Hakra river system to ascertain whether it has any link with the Saraswati River.

Role of Haryana government

As traces of Saraswati river have been believed to be found at various places in Haryana, the state government has earmarked Rs 50 crore to discover the ‘lost river’. Construction of paleo channels, digging of borewells, carbon-dating and other works have already been started by the state government. The Saraswati Development Board and WAPCOS (a public sector enterprise under the aegis of Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation) was entrusted by the Haryana government to conduct survey and prepare a project report on discovering and reviving the river. WAPCOS plans to use 70,000 cusecs of water that gets collected in the catchment area of the Saraswati River during the monsoon. This water is likely to be channelized to flow in the estimated path of the Saraswathi river throughout the year.