RIGVEDIC SARASVATI: MYTH AND REALITY

Ashoke Mukherjee

Ambitame, naditame, devitame, Sarasvati Sindhu and the river Ganga of northern In- Aprasasta iva smasi prasastim Amba naskriti. dia, which had become dry in course of time — (Rigveda – 2. 41. 16) and lost in the desert. The second group (O Sarasvati, you the best of mothers, the best felt that the present river-system of north- of rivers, the best of gods ! Although we are of ern India precludes any possibility of pro- no repute, mother, grant us distinction.) viding space to another big river as promi-

nent as narrated in the Rigveda. They held ¡ HIS is how a Rigvedic seer had ex- that the Rigvedic Sarasvati is a poetic de- pressed his feelings about a river which piction of the grand river Sindhu, or any he had addressed as the best of rivers. other big river of the region. However, it was In fact, all the chapters of the Rigveda left at that, as a disputed case, unresolved are full of praises over a river referred to till now, awaiting further investigation and as Sarasvati. It is described as a “glori- more data. ous, loudly roaring”, “strongly flowing” (Rv- 7. 36. 6); “mighty river with great floods”, A FANATIC TURN “most powerful among rivers”, “flowing from the mountains to the sea” (Rv-7. 95. 2); Recently the entire debate has taken a new etc. There is an exclusive hymn (Rv-6. 61) turn. It is known to the informed cir- in which the river is praised as “fierce”, cles that with the advent of satellite imag- “swifter than the other rapid streams”, ing technology it has now become possi- “coming onward with tempestuous roar”, ble to get a picture of a vast geographical “bursting the ridges of the hills with its region with quite sharp resolution. Since strong waves”; it springs from a “threefold the Sindhu-Ganga sub-Himalayan penin- source”, etc. sula (now divided between India and Pak- All these forceful utterrences in the istan) is the focus of a very ancient civi- Rigveda and many other references in other lization, it has always attracted the atten- post-Vedic literature to the Sarasvati river tion of historians, archaeologists and Indol- had created a lot of interest among the In- ogists. Naturally, when the technology be- dologists and the scholars of ancient Indian came available, many interesting pictures history. They wondered, whether there was emerged of the area which helped to see a real river in the geographical region of the its geography within a vast canvas and in Vedic people which matched the descrip- minute detail. Many dry-beds of big and tion in the literatures. Scholars were di- small rivers, many palaeochannels of now vided into two schools. One group sought lost streams and rivulets, etc. have been a separate river in the relevant geography discovered, with the help of which a pos- of the past, somewhere in between the river sibility has been created to locate and tap

¢ potential sources of ground water. For the Mr. Mukherjee is one of the Vice-Presidents of Breakthrough Science Society and a member of the arid area of Rajasthan it is surely a piece of Editorial Board of this journal. good news. In fact, many canal irrigation

Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 1 From the Breakthrough archives projects are in progress in this region us- ternet. It is reported there that vari- ing the upstreams of the existing river sys- ous agencies of the Union Government are tem and the dry beds of the now-defunct old seriously engaged in reviving the famous rivers. Rigvedic river to its ancient status with the But an interested circle, among whom help of modern technology. A vast amount there are some professional scientists and of money has been allotted by the Union historians, has seized upon some of these Government for the purpose [2]. Actually, satellite images and lodged a claim in pub- with the patronage of the BJP-led Govern- lic as well as professional forums that the ment, this Hindutvavadi lobby has been lost channel of the Sarasvati river has been trying to hijack the irrigation projects as a ultimately discovered. This, they further Vedic Sarasvati revival programme, with an claimed, proved that the Vedic narratives ambition to promote some “heritage sites” are not mere mythologies, but refer to real as “pilgrimage sites” [3]. and historical entities. The Geological So- The Sarasvati episode was synchronized ciety of India, the professional platform of with a claim by Mr. N. S. Rajaram that he the geologists, and the Maharaj Shahjirao had deciphered all the Harappan scripts. University of Vadodara, jointly organized a Last year it was circulated to the press as symposium on this issue in 1997. Most the most significant event of the century. of the speakers were so chosen that they This year a book co-authored by N. S. Ra- would support the thesis of discovery of jaram and N. Jha with the title “The Deci- the river Sarasvati in more or less scien- phered Indus Script: Methodology, reading, tific, precisely speaking, geological terms. interpretations”, has been published by the Later, the Society published the proceed- Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi which con- ings of the symposium together with some tains their ‘discoveries’. This has attracted other articles to give it a comprehensive serious criticism from the relevant experts. look. An article was reproduced from ‘Man- than’, the theoretical mouthpiece of the FROM AYODHYA TO HARAPPA RSS. Moreover, Dr. B. P. Radhakrisna, the But both these issues have been corre- Chairman of the Society, and Dr. S. S. lated with a claim that has a far-fetched Merh, the joint editors of the publication significance. The ‘palaeontology’ of the commented in their Introduction, “Our ap- river Sarasvati has been identified with proach to the Veda— the oldest literature further back-dating of the Rigvedic cul- available to mankind, should not be as to- ture than presently presumed, pushing wards a mythological or religious text be- it even beyond the time of onset of the longing to one religion, but as a record of Harappan civilization (which is precisely geological and historical events of the past” known). Dr. Radhakrishna writes: “Geo- [1]. From this, one thing is clear. Behind logical record points to a period of aridity the search for the Rigvedic Sarasvati river 10,000 years ago, at the end stages of Pleis- lies not a simple academic or fact finding tocene glaciation, which gradually changed interest as it appears. There is more to it to a wet phase. Copious rainfall in the Hi- than visible. malayan region gave rise to innumerable It is seen that some people want to pop- rivers which flowed down in cascades bring- ularize the river episode to a much larger ing enormous amounts of water and silt. audience than usual. Some web-sites on The plains of Punjab, Rajasthan and north Sarasvati have been introduced in the in- Gujarat thus came to be one of the most

2 Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 From the Breakthrough archives fertile tracts, fed by copious supply of life- giving water as well as silt. The region re- ally became a paradise on earth and it was in this land watered by the great Sarasvati and its tributaries that a new civilization — the Vedic civilization of the Aryans — took shape in Aranyas (forests) and Ashramas (hermitages). For nearly three thousand 4 3 5 years from 6000 to 3000 B.C. this civiliza- 2 8 Y tion flourished, sowing the seeds of agricul- 1 4 6 1 ture and settled way of life. The antiquity 5 7 Y of Vedic civilization is thus intricately wo- 2 Y ven with the story of the birth and career 3 9 of river Sarasvati which had its source in the high Himalaya within sight of Manasa Sarovar at the foot of Kailas” [4]. N.S. Rajaram, who also authored “From Sarasvati River To The Indus Script” (1999), gave a lecture on “From Harappa to Ayo- dhya” in 1997 which was later published N in the form of a booklet. These titles themselves eloquently narrate the primary motive of the author behind so much of Figure 1: Landsat imagery showing NW In- intellectual exercise over so vast a re- dian rivers and palaeochannels after Yash search area, quite unlikely for a specialized Pal et al. [6] (lines superimposed for bet- scholar. It smacks of a purpose totally dif- ter clarity). 1: Sindhu, 2: Jhelam, 3: ferent from academic and scientific interest. Chenab, 4: Ravi, 5: Beas, 6: Sutlej, 7:

Those who had taken pride in public demo- Ghaggar, 8: Palaeo Sutlej on Ghaggar, Y ¢ lition of a 700-year old archaeological mon- and Y ¡ : Palaeo-Yamuna on Ghaggar, Y : ument in Ayodhya in the name of religion Palaeo-Yamuna shifting, 9: Present Ya- now target their weapons on the historical muna. Firm lines: present channels, bro- status of Harappan civilization. ken lines: (white) palaeo and (black) dry channels. The ‘discovery’ of the lost channel of the river Sarasvati has been linked with the ‘deciphering’ of the Indus scripts, which cate the ethnographical difference and his- according to Rajaram represents the late- torical disconnection between the two cul- Vedic Sanskrit language. It is ‘late-Vedic’ tures. Now Rajaram is there ready with a because it originated after the Vedic cul- computer simulated horse image suppos- ture. To show the continuity of the Harap- edly developed from a broken seal (usually pan and the Vedic cultures he has also referred to as Mackay 453) obtained from ‘discovered’ a horse seal in Indus Valley Harappa. Armed with these new discov- archaeology. So far the absence of any eries they have already raised a voice to horse motif among the Harappan seals rewrite the entire history ancient India in was contrasted against the profuse refer- new terms. ences to horse in Vedic literature to indi- In fact also they claim: 1) Vedic culture

Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 3 From the Breakthrough archives is much older than Harappan civilization; reputed archaeologist, who had also stud- 2) A settled agricultural population — the ied the entire northwestern (undivided) In- so-called Aryans — developed the Rigvedic dia in the thirties and forties, wondered culture on the banks of the river Sarasvati; whether Satadru and Yamuna were once 3) The river Sarasvati was an important the two tributaries to feed the Ghaggar- and a very large river in the sub-Himalayan Hakra with round the year supply [8]. peninsula before the advent of the Harap- It is this idea which has been seized pan civilization, which gradually dried up; by some people who now deem it fit to 4) The Harappan civilization was a contin- claim that this Yamuna-Hakra palaeochan- uation of the Vedic culture which in course nel represents the so long lost river Saras- of time developed from a village culture into vati and conforms to the Rigvedic descrip- an urban culture; 5) It is, therefore, wrong tion. But does it really fit? And what is to ethnically differentiate between the two more, does it fit with the long-held Vedic cultures; they belong to the same ethnic tradition? group of people — namely, the ‘Aryans’;

6) The ancient Indian civilization should 68 70 72 74 not be termed Indus Valley Civilization, it 30 should better be referred to as the Sarasvati Sirsa

Civilization, or, at most as the Sarasvati- Satadru Sindhu Civilization; etc. etc. [5].

28 Sindhu

SARASVATI: A LOST RIVER OR A Ghaggar/Sarasvati MYTH?

Pokhran In order to examine the validity of these 26 claims, let us, first of all, recount the facts Drishadvati about the river, which is sought to be es- tablished as the Sarasvati. There is a flat, shallow and very wide river called Ghaggar N in its upper segment (mostly within India), 24 and Hakra in its lower part now in Pakistan. Arabian sea 100 Km It is born in the Shivalik hills and receives rain water in the upper catchment area. It is, therefore, an occasional river, more or less dry throughout the year except in the Figure 2: Ancient rivers after Sridhar et al. rainy season. A visual examination of the [1]. LANDSAT satellite images obtained during 1972-79 shows that in some unknown past Whenever a material entity is examined the river Satadru (also known as Sutlej or in scientific discourses, it involves gather- Satluj) used to flow Southward, while, the ing empirical data and their interpretation. river Yamuna originaly flowed South-West, When all examiners agree on the data and both of them feeding the river Ghaggar at the interpretation, it may be accepted as a Shatrana 60 km South of Patiala [6; see scientific fact. On the question of Sarasvati Fig. 1]. It may be recalled here that a geolo- river, just the reverse is the case. All the ob- gist R.D. Oldham had also speculated such servers who accept it as a real river, take the a possibility in 1886 [7]. Sir Aurel Stein, a cue from the Rigveda. But when they ex-

4 Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 From the Breakthrough archives

Channels in amine and interpret the available data, they Vedic time Present differ among themselves about the who-is- channel who of the ancient rivers, as seen in Figs. 2 and 3. Five different papers in the same Kailash book “Vedic Sarasvati” present five different Satadru pictures of the Sarasvati river in relation to Sindhu the other visible rivers [9]. No attempt is made to account for the discrepency — not Drishadvati Sarasvati even by the editors, two geologists by pro- Delhi fession. For the disappearance of Sarasvati Jamuna Pirate also, different authors assign widely vary- ing times. The first thing to note is that all the other rivers mentioned in Rigveda have been ex- Arabian sea 150 km tant at least for the last 3.5 thousand years (and if we consider the new dating of the Figure 3: Vedic Sarasvati after Kalyanara- Rigveda according to Radhakrishna, Ra- man [1]. jaram & Co., for 8 thousand years). It is only the biggest and the strongest of them, the Sarasvati, which got lost in the Thar the last 250 km of which pass through the desert of the Kutchch. Is it possible or Soneran, the hottest desert of the world. conceivable? It is one thing to say that In both cases the rivers have been able rivers often change their courses, and so to cut across the desert bed with their may have been done by the Sarasvati; it current. The Thar desert of Rajasthan is is completely different thing to say that the much weaker and quite younger compared river has been lost in the deserts. For so big to the two cases cited. It is, therefore, un- a river as the Rigvedic Sarasvati to exist and likely that a big river, the ‘naditama’ which then perish, it requires a major geological was supposed to receive continuous supply event. However, such an event would have from the upper Himalayan glacier as well as affected not only the Sarasvati but the en- from precipitation below, could not survive tire river-system of the whole region. As far in the desert area. as our knowledge goes, there is no such re- Thirdly, in the geological sciences there port for the last, say, 10000 years, let alone are well-defined methods of determining the the late-Vedic period. period in which a certain river-bed was Secondly, some geologists show that in active. No such study is known to have cases where great rivers with substantial been carried out in the Ghaggar-Hakra pa- supply of water at the source and catch- leochannel, without which there is no sci- ment areas round the year flow through entific basis of claiming that the river was deserts, they overcome the resistance of active within the past 5,000 years. How- aridity to make way for their courses. For ever, certain geological indicators point to example, the river Nile has been flowing the logical possibilities. According to some along its 1600-km lower course through research data, all the major rivers of north- the Sahara, the fiercest desert of the world. ern India (and Pakistan) have been flow- Similarly, the river Colorado flows through ing more or less in their present channels a comparable desert for almost 900 kms, (within their meandering belts) for the last

Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 5 From the Breakthrough archives 30,000 years [10]. C. F. Oldham, a geolo- remained Sindhu, Satadru remained Sa- gist of the 19th century observed in 1893: tadru, Yamuna remained Yamuna, Ganga “Between Sutlej and Yamuna there is no remained Ganga, but the most important opening in the Himalaya through which a river Sarasvati became Ghaggar? Moreover, large river could have entered the plains” if it is kept in mind that many minor rivers [11]. This means that even if the conflu- in different isolated parts of India have been ence of Satadru and Yamuna were able to given the name Sarasvati by the Hindus out make a big river like the Rigvedic Saras- of a religious nostalgia, is it not very pe- vati out of the Shivalik-born Ghaggar, it had culiar that they should rename the original ceased to do so at least for the last thirty Sarasvati into a desanscritized drab title of thousand years. Because, Rigveda explic- local dialect? C. F. Oldham also was both- itly associates the Satadru with Vitasta and ered by this peculiar fact: “How the sacred refers to their confluence (Rv – 3.33), as river came to lose its own name and acquire at present, when it has already taken the that of its former tributary is not known” westerly course. It can therefore be in- [12]. ferred that the Vedic poets had not seen that palaeo-Sarasvati. What they had de- It is this absence of any material evidence scribed in the Vedic verses refer to some- or cultural tradition that prompted many thing else. historians and archaeologists — both In- dian and foreign — to conclude that the Fourthly, it is interesting to note here that word “Sarasvati” is not actually a noun but Ptolemy, the renowned scientist of Alexan- an adjective which qualified a river evok- dria in the 2nd century A.D.,who wrote a ing strong sense of respect among the Vedic book on geography presenting many valu- tribes [13]. They point out the fact that the able information about south Asia in gen- Sanscrit word Sarasvati can be split into eral and northwestern India in particu- the following two parts: saras (sarah = wa- lar,mentioned all the important rivers of ter) + vati (= filled with), which indicates this Sindhu-to-Ganga region are,However, the meaning of qualifying something as be- quite significantly there is no reference ing full of water. It can also be used as about Sarasvati. This implies that at least an adjective. These scholars therefore ar- by that time there was no such big river in gued that the Rigvedic tribes had probably the region. adored the majestic river Sindhu as Saras- Lastly, there is a strong cultural- vati, i.e., as a river with large dimension. historical and social psychological argu- With the passage of time, we may further ment. Let us suppose that the dry bed surmise, the later generations of the Vedic of the Ghaggar-Hakra represents the rem- tribes who gradually moved eastwards and nants of the river Sarasvati. And this Saras- southwards and settled on the banks of the vati was supposedly associated with all the Ganga and Yamuna, carried with them a cultural ethos of the Vedic people. It is popular and collective memory of the di- therefore natural to expect that the river, mensions of Sindhu. Since then the ad- although no longer as powerful as earlier, jective probably got converted into a noun, should at least preserve its nominal title and perhaps a popular myth arose around as such to the adherents of Vedic tradi- the existence of another river, as big as river tion. Is it not, therefore, very strange that Sindhu, or even bigger. Since the other big during the entire post-Vedic era of nearly rivers like Ganga had already been given three thousands of years up to now, Sindhu proper names, there was no other river left

6 Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 From the Breakthrough archives to be identified as the Sarasvati. Hence duce Sarasvati Vandana (chanting prayers the search for a river Sarasvati around dif- to the goddess Sarasvati) in all schools of ferent parts of the country. It also gave the country. All the non-BJP ministers re- birth to an imaginary river Sarasvati which jected the proposal and it was discarded for joined the confluence of Ganga and Yamuna the time being. The BJP minister however at the Triveni-Sangam near Allahabad. A did not give in so easily. Now they are trying real Sarasvati on the bed of river Ghaggar- to create a new craze over the loss and dis- Hakra in Vedic times could hardly explain covery of the Rigvedic Sarasvati river and all these subsequent developments. relate it on the one hand with the Hindu In this connection another interesting goddess of learning and on the other with fact needs be recalled. Associated with the existence of a Vedic civilization prior to the Rigvedic exhortations of river Sarasvati Harappa. And then they want to float the is a post-Vedic and Puranic tradition over claim that Harappa’s was the epitome of the ‘vinashan’ (disappearance) of Sarasvati. In developed Vedic culture. the Mahabharata and other contemporary Here, certain terms should be clarified texts it is said that Sarasvati, after enter- and precisely defined. ing the kingdom of the nishadas, the lower For example, the term ‘Arya’ (Aryan) be- caste of the brahmanical era, felt embar- ing applied on the Vedic tribes has created rassed and went under ground in the sands a lot of confusion among the scholars as [14]. This legend also seems to support the well as common people. ‘Aryan’ in modern above hypothesis. In order to sustain the usage refers to a very large family of lan- myth of existence of the Sarasvati in face of guages, also called Indo-European family, its non-reality, it was necessary to generate spread almost all over the world. It does not another, complementary myth which would connote any particular ethnic or racial com- explain away the visible non-existence of munity. In the conventional sense, taken the river. from the Vedic parlance, it means ‘great’, Thus there is no reason to assume a ‘noble’, ‘powerful’, ‘higher-caste born’, etc. palaeo-river matching the Rigvedic descrip- There is no harm if the Vedic tribes call tion of the so-called Sarasvati, nor has themselves great, noble, powerful, etc. or to there been obtained any new data to look place themselves higher in their own caste- for it in the relevant region. The entire scale. Who does not want to occupy the fanfare created around its existence, disap- higher places? pearance and recent discovery is geared to the ongoing attempts of the BJP-led Gov- But if a student of history today reads the ernments at the centre and in some States same meaning of the word and attaches it to boost up Hindu religious sentiments and on the ancient Vedic tribes, he falls into a prejudices over some of the sensitive areas dilemma. He finds the Vedic tribes in a ne- of Indian history. olithic village culture, still in semi-nomadic Let us see how. and pastoral mode of living, yet to attain the settled agricultural way of life, as docu- OCCUPY HARAPPA AGAIN? mented in the vast Vedic literature. He then finds the Harappan civilization at a much Only two years back Mr. M. M. Joshi, developed and higher level of urban culture, the Union HRD Minister, had proposed to as evinced by the hard facts of established a Conference of the education ministers archaeology. He also finds that the Vedic of the States that they wanted to intro- tribes attained the urban culture more or

Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 7 From the Breakthrough archives less 1500 years after the end of the Harap- Some people, failing to understand the pan civilization. He cannot reconcile these point, capitalize this fact to claim that these facts with the ‘Aryan’ image of the Vedic Ghaggar-Hakra settlements are not Harap- tribes. Hence begins the fitful attempts to pan relics but belong to the Vedic people ‘discover’ some ‘noble’ deeds and achieve- who had given birth to the civilization here, ments of these tribes1. Where facts are not because this is the Sarasvati river of the available, facts are distorted or fabricated. Rigveda. Here they puts forward a peculiar This is why many things are interpolated circular argument: How do you know these within the data about river Ghaggar-Hakra are Vedic settlements? They say,because to ‘discover’ the Rigvedic Sarasvati in its old these are on the banks of the Sarasvati.But history. how do you know this the Sarasvati river? There are 1600-odd Harappan settle- Then they answer, because so many Vedic ments spread throughout the northwest- settlements are situated on its banks. They ern India and eastern parts of Pakistan as do not understand that assertions are not available to archaeology at present. Out proofs. Both the statements have to be sep- of that about 75% have been found on the arately proved with geological and archae- two sides of the dry bed of Ghaggar-Hakra. ological evidences. These people fail to see Archeologists have observed that this is a the simple thing that both the contentions common feature of all pre-iron age settle- cannot be simultaneously true. If Ghag- ments: they are not located in the “flood- gar had been the Rigvedic Sarasvati there plains” of large rivers where dense forests would be very few pre-iron age settlements are nourished by the annual supply of wa- on its banks, as is clearly seen from the ex- ter. The reason is obvious. Stone and ample of the Sindhu. If most of the Vedic copper-age implements were not sufficient tribes had really found the banks of this to clear such dense forests as required for river suitable for settlement, it must have urban settlements. The Harappans were been more or less as it is today. In that at the age of copper and bronze, and so it case there is no question of its having been is natural for a majority of them to settle the Rigvedic Sarasvati. Let them choose away from the grand river Sindhu. Clear- whichever they prefer. ing the dense forests on the bank of Sindhu Another point. The search for Vedic required heavy weapons made of iron. But Sarasvati is scientifically meaningful in the iron age started in India not before the 7th only sense that it might be the first defi- century B.C. So naturally it was easier for nite material evidence for the location of the the Harappans to settle on the banks of the Vedic tribes. But for that the river must weaker rivers like Ghaggar etc. be unambiguously identified. On the other hand, calling Ghaggar-Hakra as Sarasvati 1 It is peculiar that these people do not see the real does not automatically prove the adjacent achievements of the Vedic people, without being Arya in Vedic sense. The Vedic tribes created the vast Vedic settlements to be Vedic. This has also to be and post-Vedic literature, the oldest record of human unambiguously established. literary activities in the world. They developed the grandeurous Sanscrit language, most organized and For us it is already clear that these could refined among the world’s ancient languages. They not be Rigvedic settlements. With radio- devised the most comprehensive alphabets with the carbon method it is established beyond maximum phonetic coverage. These achievements are doubt that the Harappan settlements lasted all the more commendable because they had acquired these even when they were wandering in the forests at till the 19th century B.C. [15]. On the other the level of village culture. — A. M. hand, many scholars at home and abroad

8 Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 From the Breakthrough archives have determined the earliest possible time in scientific literature, one does not speak limit for the advent of the Rigvedic culture, of Vedic ‘civilization’. One can only refer to by using the comparative linguistic method, Vedic ‘culture’. There is nothing derogatory to be the 15th century B.C. [16]. in this characterization. It only points to Secondly, there is another hard point to the different levels of human achievements be reckoned with. Had the pastoralist Vedic in different spaces and times. When it is tribes really developed the Harappan civi- already well documented that Vedic culture lization, how is it that they could not build a did not reach the level of a civilization, it single similar urban settlement during the is simply ridiculous to identify it with the 1500 years from the end of the Harappan Harappan civilization. civilization (19th century B.C.) to the be- Once upon a time the Vedic tribes had oc- ginning of the Magadh empire (4th century cupied the territory of the Harappan settle- B.C.)? ments. Today a section of their distant de- scendents are trying to transfer the credit Lastly, what Mr Rajaram has been trying of creating the magnificent masterpieces of to do is another line of sure demarcation Harappa and Mohenjo-daro onto their ac- between the two cultures. The Rigveda is counts. resplendent with reference to horse, about 215 times. On the contrary, Harappan civi- RESIST REVISION OF HISTORY AND lization is significantly conspicuous for ab- GEOGRAPHY sence of any horse motif in its archaeo- logical findings. So, in order to establish Ancient Indian history is yet to be totally a link between the two cultures, Mr. Ra- understood. There are many gaps in be- jaram “cooked up” a horse motif in a bro- tween the facts in terms of space and time. ken seal from Harappa by directed lighting Whatever structure of this history has it so that the broken part looks like the head been possible to reconstruct is due to ex- of a horse. When Rajaram tried to recon- tremely laborious research efforts of a large struct a horse out of a broken seal to prove group of Indian and western scholars. They Vedic link of the Harappan settlements, he have done it not out of a mere academic ignored a quite irrefutable fact of palaeon- interest, but because they have earnestly tology: No horse fossil so far found in India loved this country and the cultural and in- dates back before 2000 B.C. [17]. So two tellectual achievements of her past, irre- conclusions inevitably follow from this: (1) spective of which community has achieved Harappan civilization had no experience of what. Religion has been only one aspect or the horse as a domestic animal. And (2) the area of these achievements. It is historically Vedic tribes which had intimate experience wrong to view these as religious achieve- of horse, also could not be precedent to or ments. It is also historically wrong to fo- simultaneous with Harappa. cus religion as the fount-spring of all these We must remember that ‘culture’ and ‘civ- achievements. What the BJP-minded intel- ilization’ are not synonymous terms in an- lectuals are trying to do is just this wrong thropology and history. ‘Culture’ means and unhistorical reduction of a vast mosaic any mode of collective livelihood of a defi- of variegated activities into a drab mono- nite community of people. ‘Civilization’ con- tone of religious ceremony. They don’t un- notes an urban culture with a definite level derstand how this undermines the coun- of production and distribution, division of try’s past heritage. Or, may be, they want to labour, writing and measuring system. So, bring all achievements within the monopoly

Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001 9 From the Breakthrough archives of the religion they belong to, no matter how10. I.B. Singh, V.N. Bajpai, A. Kumar and S. much is history vitiated thereby. Or, we are Singh — “Changes in the Channel Character- afraid, they want to create a frenzy over this istics of Ganga River During Late Pleistocene- religion in the name of protection of its past Holocene”; in Journal of the Geological Society glory, however falsified it might be. of India, 36, 1990. We must be on guard. We must de-11. C.F. Oldham (1893) — “The Sarasvati and the fend the scientific method of research in the Lost River of the Indian Desert”, in [1], p.92. study of Indian history. We must oppose 12. C.F. Oldham — ibid, p.94. these attempts to revise history and geogra-13. Refered to in R. C. Majumdar, A.D. Pusalkar

phy according to any body’s or group’s de- and A.K. Majumdar (ed.) — The Vedic

sign. Age; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai, 1996; p.246. References: 14. Mahabharata — Shalya Parba, 36.1. 1. B.P. Radhakrishna and S.S. Merh — Vedic15. K. Antonova, G. Bongard-Levin and G. Ko- Sarasvati: Evolutionary History of a Lost River tovsky — History of India; Progress Publish- of Northwestern India; Geological Society of ers, Moscow, 1982; p.21 (Rfd. from Bengali India, Bangalore, 1999 version) 2. The internet address http://sarasvati 16. B.K. Ghosh — The Aryan Problem, in Majum- .simplenet.com/theproject2/preface.htm dar, Pusalkar and Majumdar — op.cit. p.208. 3. S. Kalyanaraman — “Sarasvati: River, God-17. Asko Parpola — “The Coming of the Aryans dess and Civilization”, in [1], p.29. to Iran and India and the Cultural and Eth- 4. Radhakrishna — Holocene Chronology and nic Identity of the Dasas”, in International Indian Pre-history; in [1], p.xix. Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, XVII, No.2, p.150; Richard Meadow — “Continuity and 5. B.P. Radhakrishna — “Vedic Sarasvati and the Change in the agriculture of the Great Indus Dawn of Indian Civilization”; Kalyanaraman Valley; The Palaeo-Ethnobotanical and Zooar- — op. cit.; V. S. Wakankar — “Where is the chaeological Evidence” in J.M. Kenoyer (ed.) Sarasvati River? Fourteen Historical Findings — Old Problems and New Perspectives in the of Archaeological Survey”; in [1]. Archaeology of South India, University of Wis- 6. Rajesh Kochhar — “Rigvedic Sarasvati: Lost cosin, 1989; p.70. or Misplaced?” in [1], pp. 48-49; Y. Pal, B. Sa- hai, R.K. Sood and D.P. Agarwal (1980) — “Re- mote sensing of the ‘lost’ Sarasvati river.” in Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Science Note — Following the publicity of Rajaram’s (Earth and Planetary Science), vol.89, pp.317- ‘dicoveries’, many informed criticisms were 31 published in some of the renowned journals of our country. We may refer our readers to: 7. R.D. Oldham — ‘On Probable Changes in the a) Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer — “Horse- Geography of the Punjab and its Rivers — An play in Harappa”; Frontline, 13 October 2000 Historico-Geographical Study’; reproduced in b) Communications by N.S. Rajaram, Asko [1]. Parpola, Iravatham Mahadevan; Frontline — 8. Aurel Stein — “A Survey of Ancient Sites Along 24 November 2000, the ‘Lost’ Sarasvati River”, Geographical Jour- c) Witzel and Farmer — “New Evidence on the nal (London), Vol.99, pp.173-182, 1942. ‘Piltdown Horse’ Hoax”; ibid, 9. Papers in [1] by S. Kalyanaraman; R.D. Old- d) Witzel — “A Bushy Tail: The Piltdown ham; H. Wilhemy; P.C. Bakliwal and A.K. Horse”; Outlook — 6 November 2000. Grover; V. Sridhar, S.S. Merh & J.N. Malik.

10 Breakthrough, Vol.9, No.1, January 2001