9.12.19

Scientists find evidence of Saraswati’s existence

There has been a strong belief that the Harappan civilization depended on monsoons. But now there is ample evidence that a large number of Harappan settlements had mushroomed and flourished along the ancient course of the modern seasonal stream, Ghaggar, in northwestern India. And this ancient course was that of the mythical river Saraswati.

A new research — led by the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, in collaboration with IIT-Bombay — has reported “unequivocal evidence” that there existed a perennial river on the plains of northwestern India. The river, according to the researchers, flowed roughly along the course of the modern Ghaggar. Researchers say that this river was the Saraswati mentioned in the Rig Veda.

Later epics such as the Mahabharata describe the Saraswati’s diminishing flow till it disappeared completely. The research has been published in the latest issue of the journal “Scientific Report” of Nature Publishers and is in the public domain.

The researchers provide evidence that the Saraswati was perennial and had flowed from the Higher Himalayas between 7,000 BC and 2,500 BC, and that the Harappans had built their early settlements along this powerful river between 3,800 BC and 1,900 BC. The research posits that the decline of the Saraswati had led to the collapse of the Harappan civilization. The demise of the river and the civilization approximately coincide with the beginning of the Meghalayan Stage — the current dry phase in the global climate that began about 4,200 years ago.

The scientists behind the study — Anirban Chatterjee, J S Ray and Anil Shukla of PRL, and Kanchan Pande of IIT-Bombay — say that the Saraswati had sources in the glaciated regions of the Higher Himalayas, similar to the Ganga, Yamuna and Sutlej. The modern Ghaggar has no direct connection to the Higher Himalayas and originates from the foothills of the Himalayas. Ray explains, “The likely path for the glacier-melt water for the course of present-day Ghaggar (Saraswati) could have been through the distributaries of the mighty Sutlej River.”

The scientists reached this conclusion by determining the depositional ages of the white sand layers 3-10 metres below the modern alluvium of the Ghaggar’s floodplain.

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