Sarasvati River

For other rivers of the same name, see Saraswati River (disambiguation).

Vedic and present-day Ghaggar-Hakra river-course, with Aryavarta/Kuru Kingdom, and (pre-)Harappan Hakra/Sutlej-Yamuna paleochannels as proposed by Clift et al. (2012) and Khonde et al. (2017).[a] See also this satellite image.
1 = ancient river
2 = today's river
3 = today's Thar desert
4 = ancient shore
5 = today's shore
6 = today's town
7 = dried-up Harappan Hakra course, and pre-Harappan Sutlej paleochannels (Clift et al. (2012)).
Cemetery H, Late Harappan, OCP, Copper Hoard and Painted Grey ware sites

The Sarasvati River (IAST: Sárasvatī-nadī́) is a mythologized and deified ancient river first mentioned in the Rigveda[1] and later in Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda.

As a physical river in the oldest texts of the Rigveda, it is described as a "great and holy river in north-western India,"[2] but in the middle and late Rigvedic books, it is described as a small river ending in "a terminal lake (samudra)."[3][b] As the goddess Sarasvati, the other referent for the term "Sarasvati" which developed into an independent identity in post-Vedic times.[4] The river is also described as a powerful river and mighty flood.[5] The Sarasvati is also considered by Hindus to exist in a metaphysical form, in which it formed a confluence with the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna, at the Triveni Sangam.[6] According to Michael Witzel, superimposed on the Vedic Sarasvati river is the "heavenly river": the Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life."[7]

Rigvedic and later Vedic texts have been used to propose identification with present-day rivers, or ancient riverbeds. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, while RV 7.95.1-2, describes the Sarasvati as flowing to the samudra, a word now usually translated as 'ocean',[c] but which could also mean "lake."[3][8][9][10][d] Later Vedic texts such as the Tandya Brahmana and the Jaiminiya Brahmana, as well as the Mahabharata, mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

Since the late 19th century, numerous scholars have proposed to identify the Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra River system, which flows through modern-day northwestern-India and eastern-Pakistan, between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, and ends in the Thar desert. Recent geophysical research shows that the supposed downstream Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannel is actually a paleochannel of the Sutlej, which flowed into the Nara river, a delta channel of the Indus River. Around 10,000-8,000 years ago, this channel was abandoned when the Sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a system of monsoon-fed rivers which did not reach the sea.[11][12][13][14]

The Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago.[11][13][14][e] and ISRO has observed that major Indus Valley civilization sites at Kalibangan (Rajasthan), Banawali and Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Dholavira and Lothal (Gujarat) lay along this course.[15][web 1] When the monsoons that fed the rivers further diminished, the Hakra dried-up some 4,000 years ago, becoming an intermittent river, and the urban Harappan civilisation declined, becoming localized in smaller agricultural communities.[11][f][13][12][14]

Identification of a mighty physical Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra system is therefore problematic, since the Gagghar-Hakra had dried up well before the time of the composition of the Rigveda.[16][17][f][13][12][14] In the words of Wilke and Moebus, the Sarasvati had been reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert" by the time that the Vedic people migrated into north-west India.[18] Rigvedic references to a physical river also indicate that the Sarasvati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra) approximately 3000 years ago,"[3][b] "depicting the present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water."[19][b][20] Also, Rigvedic descriptions of the Sarasvati do not fit the actual course of the Gagghar-Hakra.[21][22]

"Sarasvati" has also been identified with the Helmand in ancient Arachosia, or Harauvatiš (Old Persian: 𐏃𐎼𐎢𐎺𐎫𐎡𐏁), in present day southern Afghanistan,[23] the name of which may have been reused from the more ancient Sanskrit name of the Ghaggar-Hakra river, after the Vedic tribes moved to the Punjab.[23][21][g] The Sarasvati of the Rigveda may also refer to two distinct rivers, with the family books referring to the Helmand River, and the more recent 10th mandala referring to the Ghaggar-Hakra.[23]

The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century,[24] with some Hindutva proponents suggesting an earlier dating of the Rigveda; renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the "Sarasvati culture", the "Sarasvati Civilization", the "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization" or the "Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization,"[25][26][27] suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedic cultures can be equated;[28] and rejecting the Indo-Aryan migrations theory, which postulates an extended period of migrations of Indo-European speaking people into the Indian subcontinent between ca. 1900 BCE and 1400 BCE.[h][i]


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Kinsley 1998, p. 11, 13.
  2. ^ Wilke & Moebus 2011, p. 310.
  3. ^ a b c Witzel 2001, p. 93.
  4. ^ Kinsley 1998, p. 10, 55-57.
  5. ^ Ludvík 2007, p. 11-13.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference EB-Sarasvati was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Witzel 2012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Klaus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference DOW was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Bhargava, M.L. (1964). The Geography of Rigvedic India. Lucknow. p. 5.
  11. ^ a b c Giosan et al. 2012.
  12. ^ a b c Maemoku et al. 2013.
  13. ^ a b c d Clift et al. 2012.
  14. ^ a b c d Singh et al. 2017.
  15. ^ Sankaran 1999.
  16. ^ Wilke & Moebus 2011.
  17. ^ Giosan et al. 2012, p. 1688-1689.
  18. ^ Wilke & Moebus 2011, pp. 310–311.
  19. ^ Witzel 2001, p. 81.
  20. ^ Mukherjee 2001, p. 2, 8-9.
  21. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Thapar2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kocchar was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ a b c Kochhar, Rajesh (1999), "On the identity and chronology of the Ṛgvedic river Sarasvatī", in Roger Blench; Matthew Spriggs (eds.), Archaeology and Language III; Artefacts, languages and texts, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-10054-0
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference EB was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ Upinder Singh (2008). A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Pearson Education India. pp. 137–8. ISBN 978-81-317-1677-9.
  26. ^ Charles Keith Maisels (16 December 2003). "The Indus/'Harappan'/Sarasvati Civilization". Early Civilizations of the Old World: The Formative Histories of Egypt, The Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China. Routledge. p. 184. ISBN 978-1-134-83731-1.
  27. ^ Denise Cush; Catherine A. Robinson; Michael York (2008). Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Psychology Press. p. 766. ISBN 978-0-7007-1267-0.
  28. ^ Danino 2010, p. 258.


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