Saraswati-Sindhu Culture

Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization

Beautiful article Written by Dr. S. Kalyanaraman

The recent discovery of the courses of ancient River Saraswati_ from the Himalayas to
Gujarat presents a new perspective on indigenous evolution of and the continuing cultural
traditions of India. The earthquake (8.1 on the Richter scale) in Rann of Kutch which
occurred on January 26, 2001 is a reminder of historical tectonic events recorded during
quaternary periods in North-west India, in the region abutting the Deccan and Tibetan
continental plates. The plate formations are parallel to the ancient courses of Rivers
Sindhu and Saraswati. The secular sequence of desiccation of River Saraswati and the
dates of the tectonic events correspond with the carbon-14 dates of the Harappan
civilization.

The Rigvedacontains a number of references to River Saraswati attesting to
the composition of the hymns mostly on this River Basin. We thus have an
apparent concordance of the locus of Vedic culture and the locus of the Harappan
civilization. (Out of 2,600 archaeological sites of the civilization listed in a Gazetter –
Gregory L. Possehl, 2000, Indus Age: the Beginnings, over 1600 (many of Pre- and
Mature-Harappan periods in the 3rd millennium BCE) are located on the Saraswati_ River
Basin, making the basin the substratum of the Harappan civilization).
The river is the high-way of communication between the Vedic and Harappan cultures.

The Basin is rich in copper resources (Khetri mines of marusthali_ or the Great Indian
Desert in Rajasthan) and together with the mineral resources available in Rann of Kutch
and Saurashtra (Gujarat), and the forest resources of the Punjab and Haryana, the
indigenous evolution of the urban cultures of the civilization can be explained. The
desiccation of River Saraswati_ also explains the internal migrations into the Ganga-
Yamuna doab and towards Saurashtra and southwards to the Godavari valley along the
Sindhu sa_gara (Arabian ocean) as attested by Late and Post-Harappan megalithic
cultural sites of Central and South India. in the 2nd millennium BCE