Funky Rake
June 7th, 2001, 06:51 AM
It is billed as an expedition to "correct the myths about our past".
Whatever it may be, the expedition is on, in search of river Saraswati, until now considered a "mythical fantasy, confined to the religious texts of the Hindus".
Come September and a team of the best historians, archaeologists and geologists will head towards Adibadri in Haryana, a site where the remnants of the legendary Saraswati is believed to exist. The catalyst for this 'search for Saraswati' expedition is SP Gupta of the Archeological Society of India, who wants to convert what has been until now, an obsession of the
few, to the status of a "national project".
While Gupta insists that there is no government funding involved, the fact remains that the expedition is powered by, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (funded by the Department of Science and Technology), the Arid Research Institute of Jodhpur and the Physical Research Laboratory of Ahmedabad ( both quasi-Government institutes) besides the Department of
Geology of the Delhi University.
But why the obsession with Saraswati?
There are references to Saraswati in the vedas as well as in
post-Vedicliterature. Mahabharata describes Balarama's pilgrimage from Dwarka toMathura along the bed of this river. If that is so, then if the antecedents of the river are established, as the expedition is setting out to do, then it can be established that a "Saraswati Valley civilisation" pre-dated the Indus Valley civilisation.
The sites excavated so far, which is said to be the paleo-channels (traces on the earth of a the path of a dried -up river) of the Saraswati, while showing evidence of an ancient civilisation "do not have any artifacts form the Central Asian region where the Aryans are supposed to have invaded.
"None of the artifacts of the Aryans have been found across the Sindhu river, which means that there was no invasion and the people who wrote the Vedas and the texts were of indigenous origin. The whole theory of the Aryan invasion is a myth created by western historians and archeologists with aims of establishing the supremacy of th white man", asserts Gupta.
But much of that theory rests on the expedition conclusively establishing that the "paleo-channels" of an ancient river was "indeed the Saraswati", making the expedition to Adibhadri of vital importance.
However, the fact remains that the Saraswati debate is not an outcome of the rise of the Rightists forces in India, or of the BJP's ascendancy to power.
It was in the early eighties that the Landsat (a US satellite) first
discovered the paleo-channels of an ancient river running across parts of Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat. By the mid-eighties, the Archeological Survey of India and its counterpart in Pakistan had actively begun the task of digging up sites alongside the riverbed of the mythical river as part of their ongoing historical research. Recently, satellite images have also confirmed the existence of a largenumber of ground faults in the earthquake-prone northwest India that is saidto have constituted the Saraswati riverbed. Such ground faults may havecaused the seepage of Saraswati water to underground channels, contributing to the legend of the
Vedic Saraswati disappearing underground.
Meantime, digging work for the Saraswati sites continues at a brisk pace at different locales: at Alamgirpur, Muzaffarnagar, Banawali, Rakhigarhi,Kunal, Kalibangan, Dhaulaveera and Lothal. Archeologists are evidently proceeding on the belief that there exist no less than 650 Saraswati sitesin India besides the 150-odd sites in Pakistan.
If the expedition succeeds in its objective of establishing the
antecedents of Saraswati, it will not only make Indian history, but re-make it.
Whatever it may be, the expedition is on, in search of river Saraswati, until now considered a "mythical fantasy, confined to the religious texts of the Hindus".
Come September and a team of the best historians, archaeologists and geologists will head towards Adibadri in Haryana, a site where the remnants of the legendary Saraswati is believed to exist. The catalyst for this 'search for Saraswati' expedition is SP Gupta of the Archeological Society of India, who wants to convert what has been until now, an obsession of the
few, to the status of a "national project".
While Gupta insists that there is no government funding involved, the fact remains that the expedition is powered by, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (funded by the Department of Science and Technology), the Arid Research Institute of Jodhpur and the Physical Research Laboratory of Ahmedabad ( both quasi-Government institutes) besides the Department of
Geology of the Delhi University.
But why the obsession with Saraswati?
There are references to Saraswati in the vedas as well as in
post-Vedicliterature. Mahabharata describes Balarama's pilgrimage from Dwarka toMathura along the bed of this river. If that is so, then if the antecedents of the river are established, as the expedition is setting out to do, then it can be established that a "Saraswati Valley civilisation" pre-dated the Indus Valley civilisation.
The sites excavated so far, which is said to be the paleo-channels (traces on the earth of a the path of a dried -up river) of the Saraswati, while showing evidence of an ancient civilisation "do not have any artifacts form the Central Asian region where the Aryans are supposed to have invaded.
"None of the artifacts of the Aryans have been found across the Sindhu river, which means that there was no invasion and the people who wrote the Vedas and the texts were of indigenous origin. The whole theory of the Aryan invasion is a myth created by western historians and archeologists with aims of establishing the supremacy of th white man", asserts Gupta.
But much of that theory rests on the expedition conclusively establishing that the "paleo-channels" of an ancient river was "indeed the Saraswati", making the expedition to Adibhadri of vital importance.
However, the fact remains that the Saraswati debate is not an outcome of the rise of the Rightists forces in India, or of the BJP's ascendancy to power.
It was in the early eighties that the Landsat (a US satellite) first
discovered the paleo-channels of an ancient river running across parts of Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat. By the mid-eighties, the Archeological Survey of India and its counterpart in Pakistan had actively begun the task of digging up sites alongside the riverbed of the mythical river as part of their ongoing historical research. Recently, satellite images have also confirmed the existence of a largenumber of ground faults in the earthquake-prone northwest India that is saidto have constituted the Saraswati riverbed. Such ground faults may havecaused the seepage of Saraswati water to underground channels, contributing to the legend of the
Vedic Saraswati disappearing underground.
Meantime, digging work for the Saraswati sites continues at a brisk pace at different locales: at Alamgirpur, Muzaffarnagar, Banawali, Rakhigarhi,Kunal, Kalibangan, Dhaulaveera and Lothal. Archeologists are evidently proceeding on the belief that there exist no less than 650 Saraswati sitesin India besides the 150-odd sites in Pakistan.
If the expedition succeeds in its objective of establishing the
antecedents of Saraswati, it will not only make Indian history, but re-make it.