SARASVATI RIVER (circa 3000 to 1500 B.C.) Dr. S. Kalyanaraman October 1997 Sarasvati Sindhu Research Centre, 19 Temple Avenue, Chennai 600015 Tel. 044-2354640;
[email protected] http://www.investindia.com 1 SARASVATI RIVER (circa 3000 to 1500 B.C.) Dr. S. Kalyanaraman (October 1997) Table of Contents Sarasvati: An Overview 3 Sarasvati: River and Goddess 13 Sarasvati: Economy and Polity 34 Sarasvati: Geography and Archaeology 57 Sarasvati: Soma yajña and the Veda 89 Sarasvati: Heritage and Language 96 Sarasvati River Basin (NW India) Watershed Development Project 127 Sarasvati River Basin Project: Haryana 145 Annex 1: Maps, images and lists used for delineating the Sarasvati river and ancient sites of the civilization 149 Annex 2: Locality Index: Archaeological sites in the Sarasvati River Basin 151 Bibliography 162 Continuity and Legacy of Sarasvati Civilization in India: A Pictorial Presentation 179 Sarasvati: Maps and Figures 180 2 SARASVATI RIVER Dr. S. Kalyanaraman1 SARASVATI: AN OVERVIEW The mighty, sacred, Vedic Sarasvati river nourished, on her banks, an ancient, the most expansive, remarkably homogeneous, civilization of the times, circa 3000 B.C. The river is adored in the Rigveda as: ambitame, naditame, devitame. (Best of mothers, best of rivers and best of goddesses). The people of this maritime, riverine civilization (with a marked preference for alluvial plains) traversed the Himalayan rivers and the oceans across the gulf of Bahrain and the gulf of Khambat. This is evident from the over 1200 settlements located along the banks of the dried-up river bed of this great river (approx. 1600 km. long) and also trade with Mesopotamia and South India (e.g.