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With the Global Heritage Fund planning to set up the
Indus-Saraswati Heritage Centre in association with the Maharaja
Sayajirao University of Baroda, the mystic River Saraswati has once
again become the focus for passionate research. Noted archeologists
and researchers like Jagdish Gandhi have a treasure of knowledge to
share with us…
Shri Panchami or Basant Panchami is celebrated every year in
January-February as the day of Saraswati Pooja with beautifully
crafted idols of the goddess of learning and knowledge. It will be
celebrated on January 31, 2009
“The Indus-Saraswati Civiliation in Mohen-jo-daro,
Harappa and Lothal was the earliest urban society with a bustling
economy that worked on the principles of democracy and prosperity.
It had several flourishing industries and there is little or no
evidence of continuous warfare or conquests with other contemporary
civilizations in Egypt or Mesopotamia which were built around
conquest and wars. It is thus not only the oldest known
pre-historic culture of the world, but also attracts international
researchers because of its theme of peace and progress,” says
Kalpana Desai, India Director of the Global Heritage
Fund based in the U.S.A., “The Indus-Saraswati culture was
extraordinarily innovative and rich in entrepreneurship and
promoted technological excellence in various products – specially
jewellery. The processes of cutting precious stones and making
intricate jewellery are comparable to modern designs! It traded
extensively with faraway lands from its wonderfully built huge
ports. Sixty to eighty thousand people with various skills lived in
every city which was well designed and had good water supply and
drainage systems.
“But around 4000 years ago, it is believed that this civilization
died out without any proof of war or devastation. Researchers’
conjecture is that a huge earthquake or tectonic movement of the
layers of the earth took place around that time and the River
Saraswati changed its course towards the east leaving the rest of
its waters to pool into lakes in Gujarat or vanished into the Rann
of Kutch and the deserts of Rajasthan. Thus the glorious
civilization, with its dependence on water for trade and living,
shifted possibly to the fertile plains of the Ganga and Yamuna and
became an agricultural rather than industrial community. The new
initiative will form a collection of the coins, the artifacts and
the archeological remnants of this cultural miracle to be housed in
a world class centre with a museum and a research laboratory in
Baroda within the next few years.”
This is not the only initiative by archeologists and researchers to
track the ancient basin and intermittent streams and pools of the
River Saraswati, which once flowed from the Himalayas to the Gulf
of Cambay. The Government of India has set up a huge initiative to
track the flow of the river and establish the truth about this
magical nerve centre of India’s original civilization, a river that
has been deified as the Goddess of wisdom and learning. Much work
has been done with excavations and re-digging extinct of water
canals as well as satellite tracking of its underground waters and
pictures of its remaining streams and pools.
Additionally, Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, a unique researcher with an
unparalleled passion for the Saraswati, has walked through the
extinct basin and located some of the streams of the lost river and
brought fascinating new facts and nuggets of knowledge into
limelight. He says that many highly-cultured communities called
Saraswats lived on the banks of the Saraswati and that over the
millenniums after it vanished, they scattered all over India – and
lived in Bengal, Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Kerala and Goa. Even today, they continue to follow
their ancient culture and still venerate the lost river as their
cultural mother and the goddess of knowledge, learning and wisdom.
Dr. Gandhi has traveled to every mountain and valley where remnants
of the Saraswati can be seen and has built a huge body of pictures,
videos and documents about the river.
“Even an illiterate Indian knows that the River Saraswati
is ‘gupt’ – meaning ‘invisible’ – but definitely present
in the waters of the Yamuna and joins the Ganga to make the holy
Triveni Sangam in Prayag. My research – as that of other scholars –
shows that the Saraswati rose in the Yamdhar Glacier in the
Himalayas, barely five kilometers from the sources of the Yamuna
and Ganga as the crow flies. She flowed as a beautiful stream in
the Doon Valley and then gushed through Uttaranchal, touching
Yamunanagar in Haryana and Sirsa, Hanumangarh, Suratgarh and
Anupgarh in Rajasthan. Passing through the tri-junction of
south-west Rajasthan, Kutch and the border of south-east Pakistan,
the left arm of Saraswati entered Gujarat, where she emptied into
the Gulf of Cambay.
The Indus and the Saraswati served as the major
trade routes for the pre-historic cities of Mohen-jo-Daro
and Lothal. As is well known, the huge tectonic upheaval
which happened around 4000 years ago changed the course of many
rivers in India. The earthquake-like calamity erupted in Kutch and
spread through the desert of Rajasthan to Delhi via Jodhpur and
traveled finally to the foothills of the Shivaliks, striking
Kurukshetra, Ambala and Ropar.
Thus, the Saraswati reverted to the Yamuna channel flowing nearby.
Consequently, the Yamuna too shifted its course progressively from
time to time, from Govardhan to the Mathura of today. I also
believe that from the description of the Saraswati in the Rig-Veda,
the present day Tons could well be the remnant of the river. The
scriptures say that Saraswati burst through the mountain boulders
with an unimaginable force and cascaded down the slopes. The Tons
matches this description accurately.
“I also believe that many present day canals in the heart of India,
built for the purpose of irrigation in the river systems, have
followed the basin of the dried up Saraswati. Satellite pictures
show small streams in this basin and these could be the remaining
waters of the lost river. There is reason to believe that the Nal
Sarovar, today a popular tourist attraction for its magnificent
bird life and pools set in the midst of a variety of rushes and
water plants, is formed by the last still waters of the Saraswati.
The Nal Sarovar spreads over an area of 123 sq km.
The surrounding swamps and forests attract birds of all species.
More recently, when a devastating earthquake hit Kutch in January
2001, I went to the area and was surprised to find sweet water
gushing out of the land in the Rann which is full of salt and sea
water. This water was sent for analysis at a government laboratory
and found to be more than 5000 years old! Though no conclusion can
be drawn, it is proved that Kutch is an earthquake prone area and
that there could be sweet water streams from lost rivers or
reservoirs lying underground in this otherwise barren area.
“I have walked in the mountains towards the origin of the Saraswati
in the Yamdhar glacier and down the basin of the ancient river and
have made a 35 minute film to record my experiences of the
existence of the river which I refer to as the Vedic Saraswati.
Recently, a shrine has been built at Adi Badri in Haryana where the
flow of the Saraswati can be seen even today. Aside from this, the
only place where a river is actually called Saraswati is seen close
to Mana village near Badrinath Temple in the
Himalayas where the roaring river meets the Alaknanda at Keshav
Prayag. But I do not believe this river to be the original
Saraswati.
“India is endowed with the largest water-bearing cloud system in
the world in the monsoons. The Indian monsoon cloud, it is
estimated, is the size of the entire Europe and this feeds
innumerable rivers with their huge sweeps of tributaries to
fertilise the plains of India. I have studied these rivers in great
detail and presented reports to the Government of India and the
concerned authorities to be alert about the steady decline of
India’s main rivers like Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada, Godavari, Krishna
and Kaveri and to consider planning a network of canals which would
utilize the huge quantity of rain water that is presently wasted
when it flows into the sea.
“The system of canals which I have suggested could also reinvent
the basin of the lost Saraswati. Therefore, we will achieve two
goals with the canal system. We will enrich the existing rivers and
also reclaim the much-venerated Saraswati and establish its
presence once more in our subcontinent. This will be a cultural
triumph for us and help to bring pride to our young generations. To
accomplish this, I have made a detailed plan-report for
interlinking the rivers of India as well as a film for the
Government and the scholars concerned. I am still working hard to
find the complete basin and flow of the Saraswati and no doubt, in
the future, will unearth more details about this magical river.
“I believe that the Saraswati, though lost today, is the key to the
golden age of India’s culture. She is the thread which holds
together all the beads of our culture and civilization. She offers
us a continuous document of our ancient civilization. We should
know everything about the Indus-Saraswati
civilisation which surpassed all other contemporary ones
in the world so many millenniums ago.
“We should be proud of our heritage and help in
the re-discovery of a river that must be called the ‘Mother of
Indian Culture’. No wonder, she is also called the River Dharini,
the mother of prosperity!”
By Vimla Patil | esamskriti | [email protected]
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