In Search of the Saraswati

[Guest guest]

Here is a nice article from the Feb. 15, 2003, edition of the

Washington Post, p. A23, on the continuing quest to find physical

evidence of the mighty Saraswati River of Vedic lore:

 

"A Hindu Quest for Some Holy Water: Attempt to Unearth Ancient

Waterway May Affect Indian History and Politics"

By Rama Lakshmi

 

KATGARH, India -- In a verdant valley amid the foothills of the

Himalayas, Hindu villagers prayed in silence and piously threw petals

into a small puddle they believe was a mighty river some 4,500 years

ago. Not far away, an archeologist leaned over a trench to examine

freshly excavated pieces of broken pottery.

 

"We have found remains of so many ancient settlements here. There

must have been a very important river flowing," said Sanjay Manjul,

35, squinting as he held up a piece against the sun. "It must have

been our holy Saraswati River."

 

Manjul is not the only one looking for the Saraswati, which was

mentioned in the oldest Hindu religious text, the Rig Veda and which

devout Hindus believe disappeared mysteriously thousands of years

ago. Dozens of archeologists like him have fanned across the northern

Indian state of Haryana in the last seven months to look for traces

of the river. A group of geologists and glaciologists, armed with

satellite imagery maps and remote sensing data, are studying rocks,

glaciers and sediments in the Himalayas, seeking any trace of the

river's course.

 

A heady mix of religion, politics, science and archeology drives

their efforts, and the results of the search may not only challenge

some fixed notions about the earliest civilization on the Indian

subcontinent, but could also confirm fears among India's secular

historians that the country's Hindu-nationalist ruling party is

trying to rewrite history to suit its agenda.

 

For decades, history books have maintained that the Indus Valley

people, who settled an area that straddles modern India and Pakistan

about 3000 BC, were the subcontinent's earliest civilization,

preceding the birth of Hinduism. Historians have held that the

Aryans, said to be the descendents of an Indo-European race who came

to India from near the Caspian Sea around 1500 BC, gave birth to

Hindu thought.

 

Hinduism became the region's predominant religion. Today, 84 percent

of India's 1 billion people are Hindus.

 

That predominance, however, did not prevent India from embracing

secularism when it achieved independence in 1947 and enshrining it in

the country's first constitution. Ruled by the staunchly secularist

Congress party for most of the past five decades, India pursued

policies designed to ensure equality for Muslims, Christians and

followers of other minority religions.

 

Nevertheless, many Hindus regarded their religion and culture as

supreme. A political force since the 1920s, Hindu nationalism reached

the peak of its influence in 1998, when the Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP) formed a coalition government with several other parties. The

BJP-led coalition set about a slow but systematic program to place

historians sympathetic to Hindu-nationalist ideology in charge of

research institutions and to introduce changes in history textbooks

in schools.

 

Last summer, the Culture Ministry appointed a special committee of

experts to prove that the Saraswati was not merely a mythological

river, dismissed by historians as nothing more than a figment of the

imagination of Hindu sages who praise it as the "greatest of mothers,

greatest of rivers and greatest of goddesses" in the Vedas. If the

panel succeeds, the birth of Hinduism would be pushed back at least

1,000 years by establishing that the ancient Indus Valley

civilization was Hindu in character.

 

"Saraswati is not only a matter of Hindu faith, but also fact," said

Ravindra Singh Bisht, director of the Archaeological Survey of India,

who supervises excavation along what is believed to be the course of

the river. "The overwhelming archeological evidence of ancient

settlements along the course of what was once the Saraswati River

proves that our earliest civilizations were not confined to the Indus

river alone. Those who wrote the Hindu Vedas on the banks of the

Saraswati were the same as the Indus Valley people."

 

The BJP-led government already has taken steps to make these findings

official. In October, it ordered several significant changes in the

history textbooks, one of which was to change the name of the Indus

Valley civilization to the Saraswati River civilization.

 

The first real boost to the Saraswati believers came in the 1970s,

when American satellite images showed signs of channels of water in

northern and western India that disappeared long ago. When popular

folk memory was matched with the images, some historians ecstatically

claimed they had cracked the riddle of the revered river. In 1998,

groundwater experts dug wells along the dry bed identified in the

images and they found potable water, even under vast stretches of

desert.

 

"We still need to study the sediments to prove the origin of the

river was in the Himalayan glacier like our Vedas claimed," said

Baldev Sahai, a member of the Culture Ministry's expert committee,

who was the first, in 1980, to use remote sensing data to study the

course of the river. "After that, we can proudly claim to be the

oldest living civilization and culture with an unbroken link to our

past."

 

Once the entire course of the river, "from the Himalayas to the

Arabian sea" is established, the Culture Ministry plans to turn

archeological sites of lost cities along the Saraswati into tourist

hubs. And water specialists in the government wish to give new life

to the Saraswati River, by reviving old water channels.

 

The Hindu-nationalist government's quest for the Saraswati has split

historians along political lines, with some accusing the government

of giving a deliberate Hindu slant to Indian history and others

alleging that much of Indian history was written from a Eurocentric

perspective by British colonizers and needed to be "Indianized."

 

"Hinduism was not brought to us by a foreign race called Aryans. It

was born here on our land. The Rig Veda was composed here on the

banks of Saraswati by indigenous people around the time of the Indus

Valley period," said Arun Kesarwani, professor of ancient history at

Kurukshetra University. "That is why the quest for Saraswati is

important. It will shatter all the prevalent theories to pieces."

 

But many say that history is being distorted to suit the ruling

political ideology.

 

"This is an assault on history," said historian Arjun Dev. "This

version of the past is crucial to their political and religious

ideology of Hindu supremacy. They will go to any lengths to achieve

this -- even put forth a fake, invented past."

 

"It is propaganda work," said Suraj Bhan, a retired

archeologist. "The quest for Saraswati is not about history, it is

myth-making."

 

For the devout Hindus who pray at tiny ponds and puddles, the

Saraswati is both a real river and a deity.

 

"In our hearts we know this is the water of holy Saraswati," said

Prem Vallabh, 75, head priest at a Saraswati temple. "We don't need

any scientific proof."

 

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10141-

2003Feb14.html

Courtesy of Hindu Press International

[Guest guest]

Hello devi_bhakta,

 

I think its a repeat of the post 5196

 

- Seshadri.

[Guest guest]

Too right, Sesh;

 

I must have missed your post. My apologies.

 

DB

 

, "Seshadri <dksesh@h...>"

<dksesh@h...> wrote:

> Hello devi_bhakta,

>

> I think its a repeat of the post 5196

>

> - Seshadri.