The Lost Vedic River Sarasvati

[barrykul]

Well, well. what do we have here. We have perpetual lying about India History by the Brits/Germans and assorted occidental scholars. Then we have coconuts (brown on the outside, white inside) defending the charlatan scholars theories and assumptions, piling it higher and deeper(Phd) with mathematical logic and theorems and yes throw in computer modelling based on probability. Then there are some who become label makers too. Also, there is a breed within India that loves the ensuing chaos created by the assumptions like Aryan, PIE, and other assorted nonsense and take advantage of the divisions.

If you look at the graph for trade over the centuries, India and China have dominated the world, up until the 1600s. This does not materialize in any society without the backing of world knowledge, civilization excellence and other characteristics. Think about it. India was a US in terms of global domination. South East Asia has living proof of such widespread influence. Math, Science, Astronomy and other advanced topics were in widespread use.

The Brits/Germans/occidentals started rewriting history to suit their needs. The Euclid (no Greek by that name existed!) story I posted above clearly shows that the influence of Arab translation of Indian work in science, maths and astronomy. The Brits/Germans/Occidentals usurped the knowledge base as their own claiming all kinds of occidental authorship. Face it: there would be no advancement in the western world without the notion of counting, zero, decimal system, base 10 numbers. All the rocketry, large firepower missile weapons, computers would be a big zero without the Indian system. Sanskrit the common language of communication of knowledge needed to be dismantled. Hence the BS about Horse riding Pontic steppe PIE hymn composing Aryan and the invasion into Indian continent at a suitably appointed time by the so called Occidental Linguists. All false, all made up by these inventive thieves.

BTW has it occurred to any Indian why these Germans like Witzel who take enormous efforts to study Sanskrit (mind you it is not their language) belittle a culture which created it. It requires a demented psyche (I dread another Hitler like psyche going beserk on this world). They seem to project themselves on this language and cling onto some glorious "Aryaness" on Sanskrit. They have their own sordid culture/history. Yet they project themselves elsewhere. Tis a bit scary, like one flew over a cuckoo's nest, clinging onto false assumptions and parading themselves as world experts, thrusting their demented views on the world and the original culture that is in question. Engaging in falsely projecting their own flaws/thievery by accusing the victim(India and Sanskrit). How very ironic.

[Mahratta]

Originally Posted by Marathaman

Aren't you part of that same category? Now we have a problem

Not at all.

I am indeed part of that same category, but I don't espouse the mainstream view of that category. Of course there will be subcategories which themselves can be broken up into smaller categories and so on. Every classification will have holes in it.

What do you propose -- we should only speak of what each individual thinks? Some amount of stereotyping has to occur in every classification despite the hurt feelings of the unique snowflakes that are thereby homogenized.

I dunno, overall, whether or not it's a good thing to classify, but there's no point complaining about it; everyone seems to be way too comfortable with it already.

Originally Posted by dayalbaba

having said that, at least everyone, barring the utterly uncouth has a voice in an online forum.

Online generally, yes. But the demographics need to be looked at when we consider forums simply because particular forums attract particular audiences. While some dominant community may not explicitly set the terms for the debate, the views which are "publicly" (wrt the forum) tolerated are fixed by the audience. Those who hold a view outside of the "mainstream" are shouted down rather than refuted in argument. I do agree that the forum is in general a freer environment than the university, though.

Originally Posted by dayalbaba

my view is this, modern mathematical models applied to linguistics would serve no purpose unless the field of linguistics itself reforms its foundations.
sans that, any fancy model would only result in GIGO.
and until that reform happens journals like nature should refrain from carrying articles on such topics, it amounts to encouraging bad science.

I agree, for the most part.

However, my interest is in whether these new methods can usher in a change in foundations. It seems like the answer would be "no" because there is no well-defined linguistic metric used in the models (rather it functions in the same manner as biological metrics), but there's no saying for sure what will happen.

[Marathaman]

Originally Posted by Mahratta

Not at all.

I am indeed part of that same category, but I don't espouse the mainstream view of that category. Of course there will be subcategories which themselves can be broken up into smaller categories and so on. Every classification will have holes in it.

Says who? Have you done some sort of survey that establishes the "mainstream view" of that category? Or did you just assume such a thing?

What do you propose -- we should only speak of what each individual thinks? Some amount of stereotyping has to occur in every classification despite the hurt feelings of the unique snowflakes that are thereby homogenized.

Yes. There are no "Snowflakes" here. Each individual here has their own opinion on the subject. If you want to classify, better go and classify the views of professional historians.

I dunno, overall, whether or not it's a good thing to classify, but there's no point complaining about it; everyone seems to be way too comfortable with it already.

You mean you're comfortable with it, because you can lump two unpleasant (to your mind) things together: Indian nationalism and barrykul's views on Indian history.

[Mahratta]

Originally Posted by Marathaman

Says who? Have you done some sort of survey that establishes the "mainstream view" of that category? Or did you just assume such a thing?

Ahahaha,

Each individual here has their own opinion on the subject.

Says who?

If you want to classify, better go and classify the views of professional historians.

Why's that?

You mean you're comfortable with it, because you can lump two unpleasant (to your mind) things together: Indian nationalism and barrykul's views on Indian history.

Perhaps, but I'm quite fond of Indian nationalism (as nationalisms go).

[skganji]

Aryan Invasion Theory is simply farce. The truth is against AIT. The diluted version of this theory Aryan migration theory is equally farce since to date no evidence has been shown by any body to prove it conclusively. Clearly archaeologists have not noticed any significant change in the burrial habits from the times of Harappa till Cemetry-H burials. Clearly saraswati's existence and its drying by 2000 BCE and the glorification of Saraswati numerous times in Rigveda proves that Aryans are indigenous to India way before 2000 BCE. What is the point to simply parotting the western scholars who have been indulging in dubious manipulations saying Saraswati is located in Afganisthan/Iran and it never reached Ocean bla.. bla.. bla.. When numerous evidences are clearly showing that Saraswati was a major river and the Aryans of the Saptha-Sindhu are fully aware of its flow from mountains ( Himalaya) to Ocean and glorified in their Nadi-Sukti hymns , why should any body believe that they came from Europe. It is not about nationalism but it is the agenda of these dubious scholars like Witzel and company that irritates anybody who is interested in knowing the truth about ancient India. Numerous astrological events in Rigveda also point to Aryans living in Saptha-Sindhu region by 3400 BCE.

[barrykul]

Rigveda proves that Aryans are indigenous to India

As Indians who fully know the distinction of "Arya" (Honorable Sir) vs "Aryan" ( a genetic oriented race), the term "Aryan" should never be used in describing Indians. It is a false and borrowed term and hence should be banned from vocabulary and discourse.

The notion of British/German "Aryan" is racism pure and simple. The racist word can be termed "Baryan" or "Garyan" or "Siryan" or "Herryan" since its their notion of these PIE speaking dudes who rode on Arabian horses and in their spare time dreamed about profound thoughts, verses and recited/chanted them to the passing breeze. Wonder if they had time to stop and get a crowd to chant/recite them and keep it in memory for years to come. You see the contradictions with these horse riding nomadics talking PIE which eventually gave birth to myriads of languages, including English and German. Oh what fairy tales they weave.

[barrykul]

This is the "The Lost Vedic River Sarasvati" thread and poster Mahratta and Marathaman are filling this thread with a lot of side comedy - Erm, Why, What, How, Labels anyone, Ahahaha, Says Who, Mathematical Logic, Godel's Theorem, Nationalists... Reminds me of John Cleese's recent DirectTV Ad - Who, What, Why, ... Just buy DirectTV.


Now back to the thread.

Here is the Rg Veda 10:75:5:
इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या ।
असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ॥५॥

How is it that Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutlej etc are mentioned in the exact order that they exist today? Who ever created the hymn knew his/her geography rather well. They are listed in East to West order.

Oh what will the AIT backers now do? AIT really stands for Anti India Thugs.

BTW, I found this book reference.

A leading astronomer proves that India had a thriving civilization capable of sophisticated astronomy long before Greece, Egypt, or any other world culture.

[barrykul]

Originally Posted by Marathaman

so I don't think we're adding much

Man Maratha I finally agree, that you are not adding much with your twin Mahratta man, with the "We" of the comedy team of Marathaman and Mahratta.

[barrykul]

Mods, can you clean up the inane squabbling between Mahratta and Marathaman. What relevence is there to their stupid label making exercise with "The Lost Vedic River Sarasvati".

[barrykul]

Here is some research done by Indians on dates.

the History of India has been written using the dates of Alexander and Megasthenese as fixed points in time and a chronology given on the basis of AIT or some variant there of. These accounts have been repeated so often that they have acquired the status of ‘ground-truth’. It is important therefore to reclaim the proper chronology of Bharatam

Reclaiming the Chronology of Bharatam

The Mahabharatha War

The Date of the Mahabharata War has been determined uniquely to be 3067 BCE, on the basis of archaeo-astronomical investigations using planetarium software and the references to astronomical events found in the epic.

This places the event right in the middle of Indus Valley Civilization and hence the vedic sarasvati.

Gautama Buddha’s Nirvana occurred on the vaisakha pornima on March 27, 1807 BCE. The usually ‘accepted’ date of 544 BCE for the event of Buddha Nirvana is incorrect.

My Note: Buddha teachings became a framework for the Early adopters of Christianity of the Byzantine Empire.

[barrykul]

Another brilliant article on the Farce called Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) researched by director of IIT KGP.

Aryan Invasion: Myth or Reality it is a google doc.

Current Science has another myth busting article

There is no scientific basis for Aryan Invasion Theory

Time for Harvard to revoke the professorship of M. Witzel and his snake oil peddling of Nazi theories.

[barrykul]

If we can decipher the INDUS valley scripts then the ancient history of India becomes very clear. Here is some research into the Indus Script in Current Science.

Indus Writing is Multi-lingual

Kind of makes sense. We had a truly democratic society in the Indus Era. No kings or supreme commanders. Since it was a civilization that had extensive trade, it was a magnet for people of the world to migrate. Very similar to the US in current era. Hence the people must have many spoken languages. They came up with a pictorial representation of concepts for writing.

It is like todays modern computers, filled with icons for programs in Windows, iPhone, Android.

[Marathaman]

Originally Posted by Mahratta

There was no argument to address.

Ah well, then why have you been wasting your time replying to my non-arguments? Too much free time?

To know that, you must know barry very well. I apologise for labelling your friend. I'm sure he has a very multidimensional personality.

In the way that an apple labeled as an orange has a multi-dimensional personality, sure.

A bit at odds? Completely at odds seems more accurate. I didn't vote for the Nationalist party, so "Canadian nationalist" is more appropriate, I think.

But anyway, you're being too kind -- enough about me, let's talk about you.

Nah, I'm not nearly as interesting as you.

[HedonistAtBlr]

Originally Posted by barrykul

If you look at the graph for trade over the centuries, India and China have dominated the world, up until the 1600s. This does not materialize in any society without the backing of world knowledge, civilization excellence and other characteristics. Think about it. India was a US in terms of global domination. South East Asia has living proof of such widespread influence. Math, Science, Astronomy and other advanced topics were in widespread use.

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that before the industrial revolution, GDP everywhere was merely proportional to population. India and China had the largest share because they were the most populous regions. I don't see "domination" here in the same way that the industrialized world "dominated" the 20th century(that is, a much bigger share in science and trade compared to the size of population).

Of course, I'm only here for the lulz and don't want to get into a huge debate but it would be interesting to read MM's thoughts on this.

[barrykul]

Originally Posted by HedonistAtBlr

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that before the industrial revolution, GDP everywhere was merely proportional to population. India and China had the largest share because they were the most populous regions. I don't see "domination" here in the same way that the industrialized world "dominated" the 20th century(that is, a much bigger share in science and trade compared to the size of population).

The following link has compilation of seven industrial epochs By Peter Marsh, Caroline Nevitt, Katie Carnie and Martin Stabe. Click on the chart.

seven industrial epochs

[barrykul]

Here is a more thorough researched paper on the ancient Indian Civilization.

Paper by K.V. Ramakrishna Rao
A Paper presented during the International Seminar on "Saraswati and Hindu Civilization" held at New Delhi from Oct. 24 to Oct 26, 2008

http://www.scribd.com/doc/5707092/GVC-to-IVC-to-SVC

[kannan infratech]

Hi

Go through Jayashree Saranathan's Blog.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...&postcount=579

A treasure trove of information. Many are in Tamil, though.

She has also dealt with AIT in detail.

[skganji]

Distribution of archaeological sites on Sarasvati river 4500 BP to 3900 BP.



Distribution of archaeological sites 3500 BP to 3000 BP

[kannan infratech]

Role of shell in Mesopotamia: evidence for trade exchange with Oman and the Indus valley (1984)

https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/

[barrykul]

By MICHEL DANINO

a long-time student of Indian protohistory; he is currently guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar and visiting professor at IIM Ranchi

The Lost River

The now dried up Saraswati river holds the key to many riddles of ancient Indian history — from the fate of the Harappans to the identity of the Vedic people. A convergence of archaeological, geological and climatic studies may soon provide us some answers

The riddle of the Saraswati river never goes long out of public view. The fascination the lost river has exerted on Indian minds is understandable: Praised in the Rig Veda’s hymns as a “mighty” river flowing “from the mountain to the sea” somewhere between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, it is reported a few centuries later by the Brahmanas (commentaries on the Vedas) as disappearing in the desert at a point called Vinashana, which was then a highly revered pilgrimage site. The Mahabharata, whose great war is waged in the region of Kurukshetra watered by the Saraswati and its tributaries, paints a similar picture, adding some details about the broken-up westward course of the river all the way to Prabhasa on the Arabian Sea. The river went on dwindling down, eventually becoming ‘mythical’, finally relocated at the confluence between Ganga and Yamuna as an ‘invisible’ river — a convenient device to remember it.

A modern myth is that satellite imagery ‘rediscovered’ the river in the 1970s. Actually, it only confirmed what had been known for over two centuries: As early as in 1760, a map from The Library Atlas published by Bryce, Collier & Schmitz showed the Saraswati (spelt ‘Soorsuty’) joining the Ghaggar (‘Guggur’) in Punjab; indeed, even today a small stream called ‘Sarsuti’ seasonally flows there. In 1778, James Rennell, a noted English geographer and cartographer, published a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire with similar details. In the early 19th century, several topographers surveyed the bed of the Ghaggar, a seasonal river that flows down from the Shivalik hills, and found it much too wide for the paltry waters it carried during monsoons; the first scholar to propose that the Ghaggar-Saraswati combine was the relic of the Vedic Saraswati was the French geographer Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, who authored in 1855 a massive Geography of India’s North-West According to the Vedic Hymns. Subsequently, nearly all Indologists, from Max Müller to Monier-Williams or Macdonell (and later Louis Renou) accepted this thesis. Geologists such as RD Oldham (1886) joined in, followed by geographers such as the Indian Shamsul Islam Siddiqi (1944) or the German Herbert Wilhelmy (1969).



The Indus Civilisation

The story of the Saraswati’s rediscovery would thus have ended long ago if archaeology had not sprung a major surprise by redefining its role in antiquity. In the 1920s, cities of the Bronze Age like Mohenjodaro and Harappa came to light; initial findings were limited to the Indus Valley and Baluchistan, but in 1941, the intrepid explorer Sanskritist Marc Aurel Stein conducted an expedition in the then Bahawalpur State — today’s Cholistan, a very arid region of Pakistan which is technically part of the Thar desert. The Ghaggar’s dry bed continues there under the name of ‘Hakra’, and had long been known to be dotted with numerous ruined settlements. Stein’s contribution, encapsulated in his paper titled ‘A Survey of Ancient Sites along the Lost Saraswati River’, was to show that some of those sites went back to Harappan times. So the Saraswati, too, had nurtured the ‘Indus civilisation’, which prompted a few archaeologists to propose the broader term of ‘Indus-Saraswati civilisation’.

Indeed, decades of further explorations both in India and Pakistan have established that the Saraswati basin was home to about 360 sites of the Mature Harappan Phase (the urban phase that saw cities thrive, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE). This includes settlements such as Bhirrana, Rakhigarhi, Kunal or Banawali (all in Haryana), Kalibangan (Rajasthan) or Ganweriwala (Cholistan) — altogether, almost a third of all known urban Harappan sites. (Gujarat was also host to over 300 of them, another indication that the term ‘Indus civilisation’ is something of a misnomer.)

Again, that the Ghaggar-Hakra was the Saraswati’s relic was accepted by most archaeologists, including Mortimer Wheeler, Raymond Allchin (both from Britain), Gregory Possehl, JM Kenoyer (both from the US), Jean-Marie Casal (France), AH Dani (Pakistan), BB Lal, SP Gupta, VN Misra or Dilip Chakrabarti (India).

The Aryan Issue

Despite the broad consensus, scholars such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and the late RS Sharma started questioning this identification in the 1980s. What prompted this rather late reaction? It was a new development: A study of the evolution of the pattern of Harappan settlements in the Saraswati basin now revealed that in its central part — roughly southwest Haryana, southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan — most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation.

Why was this a problem? We must remember that the Saraswati is lavishly praised both as a river and a Goddess in the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns which mainstream Indology says was composed by Indo-Aryans shortly after their migration to India around 1500 BCE. However, by that time, the Saraswati had been reduced to a minor seasonal stream: How could the said Aryans praise it as a ‘mighty river’, the ‘best of rivers’, ‘mother of waters’, etc? There is a chronological impossibility. Hence, the objectors asserted, the Ghaggar-Hakra was not, after all, the Saraswati extolled in the Rig Veda. While some (Rajesh Kochhar) tried to relocate the river in Afghanistan, others (Irfan Habib) decided that the Saraswati was not a particular river but “the river in the abstract, the River Goddess”; but both theses ran against the Rig Veda’s own testimony that the river flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej.

However, what should have remained a scholarly issue now turned into an ideological and often acrimonious battle: On the one hand, those who stuck to the identity between the Saraswati and the Ghaggar-Hakra concluded that the composers of the Rig Veda must have lived in the region during the third millennium BCE at the latest — but as the only settlements known of that period were Harappan ones, they often held that the Harappans were part of the Vedic people; cultural evidence such as a Harappan swastika, yogic postures, figurines in namaste and more was pressed into service to bridge the Harappan and the Vedic worlds. On the other hand, scholars who continued to swear by an Aryan immigration in the mid-second millennium BCE, and therefore a pre-Vedic Harappan civilisation, accused the former of ‘chauvinism’, ‘jingoism’ or worse, conveniently forgetting that dozens of Western scholars had, for a century-and-a-half, accepted the same location for the Saraswati river.

New Research

Leaving aside the controversy, we now have scientific research combining geology and river studies. Satellite imagery is another useful tool, but cannot by itself date the numerous buried palaeo-channels (ancient waterways) it has brought to light; anyone can today access websites such as Google Earth and view the well-marked bed of the Ghaggar, but when did a perennial river last flow through it, and where did it draw its waters from?

Several recent studies have thrown new light on the ancient river, though sometimes with contradictory findings. Thus, in an article of April 2011 published in the noted magazine Science,

A Lawler claimed that “the Ghaggar-Hakra was at most a modest seasonal stream... from 2500 BCE to 1900 BCE”, that is, at the height of the Harappan civilisation. This ran against the notion of a mighty, or simply perennial, Saraswati flowing during mature Harappan times. Lawler based himself on recent independent studies piloted by geologists Sanjeev Gupta, Peter Clift (both from the UK), and Hideaki Maemoku (Japan), which suggested that the river had largely dried up long before Harappan times.

But Clift had, in a paper of September 2009 in Geoscientist, found that “between 2000 and 3000 BCE, flow along a presently dried up course known as the Ghaggur-Hakkra river ceased, probably driven by the weakening monsoon and possibly also because of headwater capture into the adjacent Yamuna and Sutlej rivers”.

Clift’s multi-national team, using sophisticated methods to date zircon sand grains and identify their provenance, published in the journal Geology of 2012 a paper which showed that the Yamuna once flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra, but switched eastward tens of thousands of years ago; the Sutlej also contributed to the Ghaggar system but abandoned it 10,000 years ago or earlier. But the paper remained non-committal as regards the precise time for the drying of the Ghaggar itself.

More recently, in March 2012, a similar team of geoscientists published in Proceedings of National Academy of Science a paper entitled ‘Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilisation’ (its lead author was Liviu Giosan, with Clift as second author). The team disagreed that “large glacier-fed Himalayan river watered the Harappan heartland on the interfluve between the Indus and Ganges basins”; rather, “only monsoonal-fed rivers were active there during the Holocene” (that is, the last 10,000 years or so). In particular, “rivers were undoubtedly active in this region during the Urban Harappan Phase”. Indeed, the geoscientists found “sandy fluvial deposits approximately 5,400 (years) old at Fort Abbas in Pakistan,

and recent work on the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4,300 (years) old”. In other words, the Ghaggar-Hakra was active during the mature Harappan period, although not fed by glacial sources; it was a monsoon-fed river, like rivers of central or southern India: “Reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene, (which) explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river.”

While this conclusion of a perennial but monsoon-fed Saraswati in Harappan times may be provisionally accepted, further studies surveying larger areas may slightly alter it, since we know from a 15th century Islamic chronicle that the Sutlej and Ghaggar systems were still connected in medieval times, and therefore sands of Himalayan provenance carried by the Sutlej should be identifiable in the Ghaggar’s central and lower basin.

But that is, after all, a detail: What matters is the acknowledgement of a perennial Ghaggar’s role in sustaining numerous Harappan urban settlements, and the coincidence between its dwindling down and the withdrawal of Harappan sites from its central basin. This is further supported by another 2012 study, directed by Indian geologist Rajiv Sinha and published in Quaternary International, which mapped palaeo-river sedimentary bodies in the subsurface by measuring their electrical resistivity (water-bearing sediments having a lower resistivity than dry ones). The study offered “the first stratigraphic evidence that a palaeochannel exists in the sub-surface alluvium in the Ghaggar valley. The fact that the major urban sites of Kalibangan and Kunal lie adjacent to the newly discovered subsurface fluvial channel body suggests that there may be a spatial relationship between the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel and Harappan site distribution”.

Such a conclusion had been reached by archaeologists long ago, since Kalibangan, for instance, shows no evidence of independent water supply; unlike Mohenjodaro, it had very few wells, and unlike Dholavira, no reservoirs, yet it was continually occupied for several centuries: For its water supply through the year, it must therefore have depended on the Ghaggar, on whose left bank it lay (with entries into its fortified areas facing the riverbed).

A convergence of archaeological, geological and climatic studies is thus on the horizon, and we may soon be in a position to better understand the reasons for the decline of the Indus civilisation. As regards the Saraswati river, allowing for some metaphorical inflation in the Vedic hymns, nothing in the recent research contradicts the river’s break-up and gradual extinction as depicted in India’s ancient literature. We are thus back to the original problem: If we accept the Vedic hymns’ description of a river flowing from the mountain to the sea and located between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, the Ghaggar remains the sole candidate; but as we now know, this description can only apply to the third millennium BCE or earlier, an epoch that does not fit with the conventional scenario of a second millennium Aryan migration into India. We still have to wait for the last word on India’s protohistory.

Look at how a demented patently wrong theory of Aryan BS is tying up the entire World Knowledge effort for India's past into knots. Just because some dude had brain farts we are constantly trying to hold this nonsense as some virtuous paradigm of human thought/knowledge/intelligence.

Tis time for both Britain/Germany to tender an unconditional apology for causing untold horrors to the world at large for their BS concoction of Aryan Third Reich which usurped the Swastika of Hindu origin as their beloved symbol. Both these nations need to pay reparation to India for the damages caused.