Saraswati The River Par Excellence

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The Asiatic Society in its long journey of two hundred and thirty six-years has engaged itself in pursuing the rich tradition of academic commitments in the broad context of Man-Nature interface as envisaged by the founder Sir William Jones way back in 1784. The essential focus in the beginning was primarily to trace the ancient roots and excellence of human knowledge replete in the available sources in the field of history, science and arts of Asian Culture in general and of Indian Culture in particular.

Coming back to the present task, let me mention that the earlier publications of papers in the Asiatick Researches, Proceedings and Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal by H. T. Colebrooke (1801), E. V. Raper (1810), J. A. Hodgson (1822), A. Burns (1832), T. Oldham (1868) and others reveal that their interest was centred around, among other things, the subject like the course of the Ganges, or geography of the Punjab and its rivers, etc. Keeping in line with the earlier initiatives of the Asiatic Society, as the Editors have also mentioned in their Introduction, we had held a seminar in collaboration with the Indian National Science Academy on 12.10.2017 in Kolkata. The title of the seminar was The Lost River Saraswati: Geo-dynamic Aspects'. In fact, the spatial coverage of research in the early years in this organisation touched between the apparently composed great height of the Himalayas in the north to the more turbulent and roaring waves of the Indian Ocean in the south.

Quite a long time-scale has passed by since a massive tectonic shift occurred in the Siwalik Hill Ranges in the Himalayas. Our leading experts and scientists participating in the said seminar had exchanged their valuable notes as to the great impact of that vicissitude on the particular elevated terrain. They observed, as a result, that the causes of gradual drying up of the river Saraswati might be the end of that impact. This river having a long run of about 1500 km flowing from the south of Siwalik, traversing through parts of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and north Rajasthan ended up in the Arabian Sea. In the course of this rolling down, the lost holy River Saraswati had become an embodiment of a complex syndrome embracing historical, archaeological, socio-cultural, geographical and geological dimensions. These mutually exclusive aspects are even now being explored and studied by multi-disciplinary scholars in India and beyond, especially after the excavations of many important Harappan sites along the stretches of the River Saraswati, which was also known as the Hakra or the Ghaggar. According to the estimates of the subject specialists, this holy river started drying up around 1800 B.C., beginning its journey since 6000 B.C. They pointed out that important excavations of some Harappan sites on the bank of River Hindon, which was a tributary of the River Yamuna, brought into relief many significant information on the geo-dynamic aspects, along with concomitant socio- cultural spectrum over the years.

We were eager to build up a collegium towards a formidable academic interaction among the acclaimed experts on this subject. Not only confined to the seminar participants alone, but even beyond, their valuable contributions of papers ultimately culminated into fruition of such an important publication. I am sure, the scholars of this country and abroad, by and large, will receive this much awaited book with appreciation.

River Saraswati is one of the most sacred and mighty rivers of the Indian subcontinent. It was, indeed, the first river to receive epithets like the most powerful among the rivers' (Nadinam asurya), the purest among the rivers' (Nadinam suchi), and the best among the rivers' (Naditame), in the oldest book of knowledge of the subcontinent, the Rig Veda. Rig Veda justifies the conferring of those epithets on the Saraswati by describing its swift and voluminous discharge from the Himalayas to the ocean, its command over the basins of seven major Himalayan rivers (hence the term 'Sapta Saraswati'), its potentials to flood and destabilise human settlements but also its generosity in providing bountiful natural resources, including food and milk which supported the life and the livelihood of people in the region. As we know now, the later Vedic verses suggested a gradual decadence of the Saraswati River when its major tributaries began to shift away to join the Indus or the Sindhu (hence the term 'Pancha Nadya', or the Five rivers for what combined flow remained of the 'Sapta Saraswati', and 'Sapta Sindhu'. or the Seven Sindhu for the newly combined flows of seven major rivers, dominated by the Indus). By the time the Mahabharata was composed, Saraswati River had almost totally dried up. Its course could be identified from a string of small lakes or pools of water (justifying the term 'Saraswati', i.c., an entity composed of numerous 'Saras' or small lakes). In sharp contrast to the descriptions in the Rig Veda, the Mahabharata provides some description of the river's disappearance at a place called Vinasana in the sub-Himalayan foothills and re-appearance downstream at three places called Sirodbheda, Nagodbheda and Chamasodbheda. Mahabharata also mentions that even though it was customary during the period to track the then Saraswati's source-waters at Plaksha Prasravana in the Siwalik Hills, the river actually came out from the Brahma's Lake far to the north, meaning the Manas Sarovar - Rakshas Tal area in the Trans-Himalayas. Reminding the Pandavas that the river supported scores of human settlements in the past, including the hermitages of great sages and monks whose dictums from the richly-supplied banks of the river helped to establish civility in the Society, the narrator sage in the Mahabharata advises them to not only visit the ancient hermitages on pilgrimage, but also to walk along the banks of the Saraswati in deep appreciation of what the River contributed in the past to nourish the countryside.

The geographical details provided on the Saraswati River in the Vedas, the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other ancient literature, evoked sustained interest in the inquisitive minds of the subcontinent's inhabitants. In the present-day context such interest since the 19th Century founded the basis for a highly systematic scientific investigation on the river's origin, its life-history, its contributions to natural resource endowment, as well as its role in the origin and maintenance of the ancient civilization, better known today as the Harappan Culture, with supportive evidence from its sedimentary and other palaeo records, etc.