Its banks are believed to have been a haven for early Vedic Aryans. This alternate view also equates the Vedic people with the Harappans. However, population genetics studies have disfavoured the latter hypothesis and have supported the former. So when some influential Indian geologists supported the idea that the Saraswati could have been a major all-season river in the Indus-Yamuna interfluve, it was a shot in the arm for those who believed the India-centric theory of Aryans.
Some geologists also said that landform changes triggered by tectonic activities around BC along the frontal Himalaya could have severed the river from its Himalayan source. Originating in the high Himalaya, the Saraswati is believed to have descended to the plains from Adi Badri, situated in the Shivalik foothills, joining the Arabian Sea at the Rann of Kutch.
But these longstanding geological views have been challenged by a spate of research papers published in the last few years, backed up by refined satellite imagery, topographic analysis and more precise dating techniques.
The Sutlej river winds its way through Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Analytical techniques in particular helped trace the source and provenance of sand grains collected from defunct river channels. Sediments from the high Himalaya carry certain isotopic signatures that sets them apart from sand from the lower hills.
The change in perspective began with a paper by Liviu Giosan and others. They suggested that the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial network was not the product of a large glacier-fed Himalayan river but of a rain-fed stream originating from the lower hills. A worsening drought peaked about 3, years ago, likely forcing the Harappans to downsize their settlement and migrate east or even north, towards the wetter parts of upper Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. However, it is safe to say that sometime in the past — much before human settlements — some channels of the Yamuna or the Sutlej had flowed through the Indus-Yamuna interfluve region.
Glacial melting after the ice age from 11, to , years ago may have generated additional, short-lived channels that flowed to the interfluve region due to greater discharge from Himalayan rivers. In another paper, Peter Clift and his peers posited that subsurface river channels near sites in Cholistan near the northern part of the Ghaggar-Hakra floodplain contain sediments affiliated with the Beas river in the western sites and the Sutlej and the Yamuna in the eastern ones.
This implies that the Yamuna itself, or one of its channels, along with an offshoot of the Sutlej may have occupied the Ghaggar-Hakra course sometime between 47, and 10, years ago. In , Ajit Singh et al agreed that the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel was a former course of the Sutlej, which diverted to its present course 17, years ago, much before the Harappan civilisation.
They also studied sites near the Kalibangan in Rajasthan to conclude that the urban populations had settled along a monsoon-fed seasonal river, not along a perennial river. Then, in , Aditi Krishna Dave and others suggested that glacially driven rivers stopped flowing in that part of the interfluve region sometime between 24, and 45, years ago — again, much before the Harappans settled in that area.
So it seems the Harappans were not enamoured by a mighty Himalayan river as much as the Vedic Aryans might have been. When some of them reached a much drier Indus interfluve region around BC, they must have been disappointed by the landscape and eager to push eastward to the water-rich Gangetic plains. Get our Daily News Capsule Subscribe. Thank you for subscribing to our Daily News Capsule newsletter.
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Healthy Living. All India World Sports Weird. INDIA 5 years ago. BCCL The river is considered the personification of Goddess Saraswati - it is believed that it was on the banks of the Saraswati that parts of the Rig Veda were written. Even the central government and especially Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharati had in made "finding the missing river" a priority of the Modi government Wikipedia "There is enough scientific evidence on the presence of the river Saraswati in some parts of the country through which it flowed about five to six thousand years ago.
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