22 August, 2015
MessageToEagle.com -
'There is a river, spoken of
repeatedly in the Rig Veda, that vanished into the earth - though not from
human memory - thousands of years ago and that was only revealed again by
satellite imaging and remote-sensing technology in the latter half of the twentieth
century...'
Graham Hancock wrote in his fascinating book
Where is the famous Saraswati river?
The Saraswati, a river mentioned in several ancient
Indian texts and believed to have disappeared some 4,000 years ago, is now
intensively searched for.
Researchers from Haryana and Rajasthan are separately
working on finding and establishing the existence of the Saraswati river.
In July 2015, Rajasthan sought Rs70 crore from the
central government to conduct studies and trace the route of the Saraswati
river. The state has set up the Rajasthan River Basin and Water Resources
Planning Authority (RRBWRPA) to study the paleo-channels—remnants of an
inactive river—and help revive the Saraswati river.
“The data of the Central Ground Water Board and ISRO
(Indian Space Research Organisation) satellite maps indicate that there are
paleo-channels flowing under the ground,' according to source.
However, it has to be further analysed and studied
whether these channels are Saraswati river,” Sriram Vedire, chairman of
RRBWRPA, told reporters on Aug. 12.
Last week, the Rajasthan government asked the RRBWRPA
to submit a report on its findings in the next six months. Meanwhile, the
Haryana government allotted Rs10 crore for establishing a Haryana Saraswati
Heritage Development Board and committed Rs50 crore for reviving the river in
April this year. The board will work alongside the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Archaeological Survey of
India (ASI) for the project.
In August 2014, union water resources and river
development minister Uma Bharti said, “There are enough scientific evidences on
the presence of the river Saraswati in some parts of the country through which
it flowed about five to six thousand years ago…Saraswati is not a myth.”
See also
Since 2003, the ASI has conducted excavations under
the Saraswati Project at 10 locations spread across Haryana, Rajasthan and
Gujarat.
Saraswati river mentioned in the Vedas.
So far, most explorations have indicated that what is
now called Ghaggar river—a seasonal river that flows between India and Pakistan
during the monsoon months—may be what was referred to as Saraswati in ancient
Indian literature.
This, however, isn’t the first time that such a theory
has been floated.
In 1880s, archaeologist Marc Aurel Stein recorded that
the eastern-most tributary of the Ghaggar river was still known as “Sarsuti” at
that time, which he argued was a corruption of the name “Saraswati.”
Another believer of this idea is French scholar Michel
Danino. In his 2010 book The Lost River: On the Trail of Sarasvati, Danino
suggested that Saraswati was not a mythological river, instead claiming that
there is strong evidence linking the Ghaggar and the fabled river of India’s
ancient texts.
Meanwhile, in May this year, the Haryana
government—immediately after it started excavation work to find the river—found
water pools on a dry river bed, further strengthening its claim about the
presence of the river. But since then, not much has been discovered.
The Saraswati river has been mentioned in several
Hindu manuscripts, where rivers are described as sacred, and often personified
as deities. The Mahabharata glorifies the Saraswati as the river that covers
the universe, while the Rig Veda describes Saraswati as one of the seven major
rivers of the Vedic times.
Reviving the river may not be easy and is likely to
take a long time. But perhaps, the Modi government can take a cue from all the
efforts to revive a dead river, to ensure that many of its existing
rivers—which are at the verge of dying—don’t end up becoming another Saraswati.
© MessageToEagle.com
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