Saraswati River

The Saraswati River (IAST: Sárasvatī-nadī́) is a deified Rigvedic river first mentioned in the Rigveda 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," but in the middle and late Rigvedic books, it is described as a small river ending in "a terminal lake (samudra)." As the goddess Saraswati, the other referent for the term "Saraswati" which developed into an independent identity in post-Vedic times, the river is also described as a powerful river and mighty flood. The Saraswati is also considered by Hindus to exist in a metaphysical form, in which it formed a confluence with the sacred rivers Ganga and Yamuna, at the Triveni Sangam, as described in the Puranas. According to Michael Witzel, superimposed on the Vedic Saraswati river is the "heavenly river" of the Milky Way, which is seen as "a road to immortality and heavenly after-life."

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

Since the late 19th century CE, numerous scholars have proposed to identify the Saraswati 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. Yet, 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, which was abandoned. 10,000–8,000 years ago when the Sutlej diverted its course, leaving the Ghaggar-Hakra as a system of monsoon-fed rivers which did not reach the sea.

The Indus Valley Civilisation prospered when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished around 5,000 years ago, and ISRO has observed that major Indus Valley Civilisation sites at Kalibangan (Rajasthan), Banawali and Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Dholavira and Lothal (Gujarat) lay along this course. 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.

Identification of a mighty physical Rigvedic Saraswati with the Ghaggar-Hakra system is therefore problematic, since the Ghaggar-Hakra had dried up well before the time of the composition of the Rigveda, reduced to a "small, sorry trickle in the desert." Also, Rigvedic descriptions of the Saraswati do not match the actual course of the Ghaggar-Hakra. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the most important of Rigvedic rivers would lose it's Sanskrit name and be renamed in a local dialect, whereas other rivers in the area preserved their names for thousands of years.

"Saraswati" may originally have been andjective meaning "being full of water" and preserved when the Vedic people moved further eastwards. "Saraswati" has also been identified with the Helmand in ancient Arachosia, or Harauvatiš, in present day southern Afghanistan, the name of which may have been reused when the Vedic tribes moved to the Punjab. The Saraswati 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.

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