Ghaggar-Hakra River

Not to be confused with Ghaghara River.
Ghaggar-Hakra River

Ghaggar river in Panchkula

Ghaggar-Hakra Sarasvati rivers and tributaries
Native name घग्गर-हाकरा नदी
Country India, Pakistan
Basin
Main source Shivalik Hills, Himachal Pradesh
River mouth Ottu, Haryana
Physical characteristics
Discharge


Features
Tributaries
Waterbodies Kaushalya Dam, Ottu barrage

The Ghaggar-Hakra River is an intermittent, endorheic river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu barrage and as the Hakra downstream of the barrage.[2]

The basin is classified in two parts, Khadir and Bangar, the higher area that is not flooded in rainy season is called Bangar and the lower flood-prone area is called Khadar.[3]

Nineteenth and early 20th century scholars, but also more recent authors, have suggested that the Ghaggar-Hakra might be the defunct remains of the mythological Sarasvati of the Rig Veda. Recent geophysical research does not support this idea. It shows that the Ghaggar-Hakra system was not sourced by the glaciers and snows of the Himalayas, but rather by a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers. Late Holocene aridification subsequently reduced the Ghaggar-Hakra to the seasonal river it is today.

Ghaggar River

Ghaggar in Haryana
Ghaggar river, near Anoopgarh, Rajasthan in the month of September

The Ghaggar is an intermittent river in India, flowing during the monsoon rains. It originates in the village of Dagshai in the Shivalik Hills of Himachal Pradesh at an elevation of 1,927 metres (6,322 ft) above mean sea level[4] and flows through Punjab and Haryana states into Rajasthan;[5] just southwest of Sirsa, Haryana and by the side of Talwara Lake in Rajasthan.

Dammed at Ottu barrage near Sirsa, Ghaggar feeds two irrigation canals that extend into Rajasthan.

Tributaries

The main tributaries of the Ghaggar are the Kaushalya river, Markanda, Sarsuti, Tangri and Chautang.[4]

The Kaushalya river is a tributary of Ghaggar river on the left side of Ghahhar-Hakra, it flows in the Panchkula district of Haryana state of India and confluences with Ghaggar river near Pinjore just downstream of Kaushalya Dam.[6][7]

The present-day Sarsuti (Saraswati) river originates in a submontane region in the Ambala district and joins the Ghaggar near Shatrana in Punjab.[8]

A dried out channel of the Sutlej known as the Naiwal channel joins it near Sadulgarh (Hanumangarh district).[8]

Finally, near Suratgarh, the Ghaggar is joined by the dried up Chautang river (identified with vedic Drishadvati).[8]

Hakra River

The Hakra is the dried-out channel of a river near Fort Abbas City in Pakistan that is the continuation of the Ghaggar River in India. Several times, but not continuously, it carried the water of the Sutlej and Ghaggar during the Bronze Age period.[9] Many settlements of the Indus Valley Civilisation have been found along and inside the river beds of the Ghaggar and Hakra rivers. Hakra or Hakro Darya streamed through Sindh and its sign can be found in Sindh areas such as Khairpur, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Tharparkar.

Along the course of the Ghaggar-Hakra river are many archaeological sites of the Indus Valley Civilization; but not further south than the middle of Bahawalpur district. It has been assumed that the Sarasvati ended there in a series of terminal lakes, and some think that its water only reached the Indus or the sea in very wet rainy seasons. However, satellite images contradict this: they do not show subterranean water in reservoirs in the dunes between the Indus and the end of the Hakra west of Fort Derawar/Marot.[10]

Palaeogeography

Course of the Ghaggar-Hakra (Sarasvati) river in the fourth millennium BCE[11]

The wide river bed (paleo-channel) of the Ghaggar river suggests that the river once flowed full of water during the great meltdown of the Himalayan Ice Age glaciers, some 10,000 years ago, and that it then continued through the entire region, in the presently dry channel of the Hakra River, possibly emptying into the Rann of Kutch.[12] It is supposed to have dried up due to the capture of its tributaries by the Indus system and the Yamuna river, and later on, additionally, the loss of water in much of its catchment area due to deforestation and overgrazing.[13] According to M. R. Mughal, this happened at the latest in 1900 BCE, but other scholars state that it took place much earlier [14][15]

Puri and Verma (1998) have argued that the present-day Tons River was the ancient upper-part of the Sarasvati River, which would then had been fed with Himalayan glaciers. The terrain of this river contains pebbles of quartzite and metamorphic rocks, while the lower terraces in these valleys do not contain such rocks.[16] However, recent studies show that Bronze Age sediments from the glaciers of the Himalayas are missing along the Ghaggar-Hakra, indicating that the river did not or no longer have its sources in the high mountains.[17]

According to some paleo-environmental scientists and Archaeologists, between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE some tectonic disturbances caused a tilt in topography of Northwest India resulting in the migration of river. The Sutlej moved westward and became a tributary of the Indus River while the Yamuna moved eastward and became a tributary of the Ganges. The Yamuna shifted its course eastwards, supposedly in the early 2nd millennium BCE, allegedly reaching its current bed by 1st millennium BCE, while the Drishadvati bed retained only a small seasonal flow. The Sutlej shifted its channel northwards repeatedly, and was eventually captured by the Indus system. The water loss due to these movements caused the Sarasvati river to dry up in the Thar Desert.[18][19]

However, Henri-Paul Francfort, utilizing images from the French satellite SPOT two decades ago, found that the large river Sarasvati is pre-Harappan altogether and started drying up already in the middle of the 4th millennium BC; during Harappan times only a complex irrigation-canal network was being used. The date should therefore be pushed back to c 3800 BC. R. Mughal (1997), summing up the evidence, concludes that the Bronze Age Ghaggar-Hakra sometimes carried more, sometimes less water (for example derived from the Sutlej). The latter point agrees with a recent isotope study.[20][21] Painted Grey Ware sites (ca. 1000 BCE) have been found in the river bed and not on the banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra river, which suggests that river was certainly dried up by this period.[22][23]

The many archeological sites along the bed of Sarasvati (variously given as 414 or even 600) dwarf the number of sites so far recorded along the Indus River, which number less (about three dozen). However, most of the Harappan sites along the Sarasvati are found in desert country, and have remained undisturbed since the end of the Indus Civilization. This contrasts with the heavy alluvium of the Indus and other large Panjab rivers that have obscured Harappan sites, including part of Mohenjo Daro. About 80 percent of the Sarasvati sites are datable to the fourth or third millennium BCE, suggesting that the river was flowing during (part of) this period, which is also indicated by the fact that some Indus sites are found inside the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra.

Ancient tributaries

Satellite photography has shown that the Ghaggar-Hakra was indeed a large river that dried up several times (see Mughal 1997). The dried out Hakra river bed is between three and ten kilometers wide. Recent research indicates that the Sutlej and possibly also the Yamuna once flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed. The Sutlej and Yamuna Rivers have changed their courses several times.[24]

Paleobotanical information also documents the aridity that developed after the drying up of the river. (Gadgil and Thapar 1990 and references therein). The disappearance of the river may additionally have been caused by earthquakes which may have led to the redirection of its tributaries.[25] It has also been suggested that the loss of rainfall in much of its catchment area as well as deforestation and overgrazing may have also contributed to the drying up of the river. However, a similar phenomenon, caused by climate change, is also seen at about the same period north of the Hindu Kush, in the area of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.

Sutlej

There are no Harappan sites on the Sutlej in its present lower course, only in its upper course near the Siwaliks, and along the dried up channel of the ancient Sutlej,[26] which indicates the Sutlej did flow into the Ghaggar-Hakra at that time.

At Ropar the Sutlej river suddenly turns sharply away from the Ghaggar. The narrow Ghaggar river bed itself is becoming suddenly wider at the conjunction where the Sutlej should have met the Ghaggar river. There also is a major paleochannel between the turning point of the Sutlej and where the Ghaggar river bed widens.[27][28]

In later texts like the Mahabharata, the Rigvedic Sutudri (of unknown, non-Sanskrit etymology)[29] is called Shatudri (Shatadru/Shatadhara), which means a river with 100 flows. As mentioned, the Sutlej (and the Beas and Ravi) have frequently changed their courses. The Beas probably joined the Sutlej (as in Rgveda 3.33) further downstream from where it joins that river today. Before that time, the Sutlej is said to have flowed into Ghaggar.[9]

Yamuna

There are no Harappan sites on the present Yamuna river. There are however Painted Gray Ware (1000 - 600 BC) sites along the Yamuna channel, showing that the river must have then flowed in the present channel.[30] The sparse distribution of the Painted Gray Ware sites in the Ghaggar river valley indicates that during this period the Ghaggar river had already dried up.

Scholars like Raikes (1968) and Suraj Bhan (1972, 1973, 1975, 1977) have shown that based on archaeological, geomorphic and sedimentological research the Yamuna may have flowed into the Sarasvati during Harappan times.[31] There are several dried out river beds (paleochannels) between the Sutlej and the Yamuna, some of them two to ten kilometres wide. They are not always visible on the ground because of excessive silting and encroachment by sand of the dried out river channels.[32] The Yamuna may have flowed into the Sarasvati river through the Chautang or the Drishadvati channel, since many Harappan sites have been discovered on these dried out river beds.[33]

Association with the Harappan civilization

Some estimate that the period at which the river dried up range, very roughly, from 2500 to 2000 BC, with a further margin of error at either end of the date-range. This may be precise in geological terms, but for the mature Indus Valley Civilization (2600 to 1900 BC) it makes all the difference whether the river dried up in 2500 (its early phase) or 2000 (its late phase). By contact with remnants of the IVC like the Cemetery H culture, legendary knowledge of the event may have been acquired.

In a survey conducted by M.R. Mughal between 1974 and 1977, over 400 sites were mapped along 300 miles of the Hakra river.[34] The majority of these sites were dated to the fourth or third millennium BCE.[27]

S. P. Gupta however counts over 600 sites of the Indus civilization on the Ghaggar-Hakra river and its tributaries.[26][35] For ereason stated above, only 90 to 96 Indus Valley sites have been discovered on the Indus and its tributaries (about 36 sites on the Indus river itself.)[36][37][38] V.N. Misra[39] states that over 530 Harappan sites (of the more than 800 known sites, not including Late Harappan or OCP) are located on the Ghaggar-Hakra.[40] The other sites are mainly in Kutch-Saurashtra (nearly 200 sites), Yamuna Valley (nearly 70 Late Harappan sites) and in the Indus Valley, in Baluchistan, and in the NW Frontier Province (less than 100 sites).

Most of the Mature Harappan sites are located in the middle Ghaggar-Hakra river valley, and some on the Indus and in Kutch-Saurashtra. However, just as in other contemporary cultures, such as the BMAC, settlements move up-river due to climate changes around 2000 BCE. In the late Harappan period the number of late Harappan sites in the middle Ghaggar-Hakra channel and in the Indus valley diminishes, while it expands in the upper Ghaggar-Sutlej channels and in Saurashtra. The abandonment of many sites on the Ghaggar-Hakra between the Harappan and the Late Harappan phase was probably due to the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra river.

Painted Grey Ware sites (ca. 1000 BCE) have been found in the bed and not on the banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra river.[22][23]

Because most of the Indus Valley sites known so far are actually located on the Ghaggar-Hakra river and its tributaries and not on the Indus river, some Indian archaeologists, such as S.P. Gupta, have proposed to use the term "Indus Sarasvati Civilization" to refer to the Harappan culture which is named, as is common in archaeology, after the first place where the culture was discovered.

Identification with the Rigvedic Sarasvati

Rig Veda

Main article: Sarasvati River

The Rig Vedic hymn X 75, however, gives a list of names of rivers where Sarasvati is merely mentioned while Sindhu receives praise. It is commonly agreed that the tenth Book of the Rig Veda is later than the others. Some revisionists think, ahistorically, that this may indicate that the Rig Veda could be dated to a period after the first drying up of Sarasvati (c. 3500 BCE) when the river lost its preeminence.[41][42]

The identification with the Sarasvati River is based on the mentionings in Vedic texts (e.g. in the enumeration of the rivers in Rigveda 10.75.05 - the order is Ganges, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutudri Sutlej), Parusni, etc. - and other geological and paleobotanical findings. This however, is disputed. The Victorian era scholar C.F. Oldham (1886) was the first to suggest that geological events had redirected the river, and to connect it to the lost Sarasvati: "[it] was formerly the Sarasvati; that name is still known amongst the people, and the famous fortress of Sarsuti or Sarasvati was built upon its banks, nearly 100 miles below the present junction with the Ghaggar."[43]

The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all books of the Rigveda except the fourth. It is the only river with hymns entirely dedicated to it: RV 6.61, RV 7.95 and RV 7.96.It is mentioned as a divine and large river,which flows "from the mountains to the samudra," which some take as the Indian Ocean. Talageri states that "the references to the Sarasvati far outnumber the references to the Indus" and "The Sarasvati is so important in the whole of the Rigveda that it is worshipped as one of the Three Great Goddesses".[41] However, the reason for the predominance of the Sarasvati in the Rigveda is the late Harappan (1900-1300 BCE) population shift eastwards to Haryana;[53] the latter part of the period corresponds to the common scholarly opinion of the date of this text.

Another reference to the Sarasvati is in the geographical enumeration of the rivers in the late Rigvedic Nadistuti sukta (10.75.5, this verse enumerates all important rivers from the Ganges in the east up to the Indus in the west in a strict geographical order), as "Ganges, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Shutudri", the Sarasvati is placed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, consistent with the Ghaggar identification. It is clear, therefore, that even if the river had unmistakably lost much of her former prominence, the Sarasvati remained characterized as a river goddess almost throughout the Rigveda.

In 2012 hydrologists dug a number of bores holes to attempt to ascertain the ancient course of the Sarasvati River.[54]

According to proto-historian Michel Danino, in ancient times a mature river flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley and into the Rann of Kutch, which he identifies as the Rig Vedic Sarasvati river.[55]

Identification with Vedic rivers in recent scholarship

Nineteenth and early 20th century scholars, such as orientalist Christian Lassen (1800–1876),[56] philologist and Indologist Max Müller (1823–1900),[57] archaeologist Aurel Stein (1862–1943), and geologist R. D. Oldham (1858–1936),[58] had considered that the Ghaggar-Hakra might be the defunct remains of a river, the Sarasvati, invoked in the orally transmitted collection of ancient Sanskrit hymns, the Rig Veda composed circa 1500 BCE to 1200 BCE. More recently, anthropologists Gregory Possehl (1942–2011),[59] J. M. Kenoyer,[60] and professional archaeological writer, Jane McIntosh, have suggested that many religious and literary invocations to Sarasvati in the Rig Veda were to a real Himalayan river, whose waters, on account of seismic events, were diverted, leaving only a seasonal river, the Ghaggar-Hakra, in the original river bed.[61]

Several modern scholars identify the old Ghaggar-Hakra river with the Vedic Sarasvati river and the Chautang with the Drishadvati river. Such scholars include Gregory Possehl,[59] J. M. Kenoyer,[60] Bridget and Raymond Allchin,[62] Michael Witzel,[63] Kenneth Kennedy,[64] Franklin Southworth,[65] and numerous Indian archaeologists. Gregory Possehl states:

"Linguistic, archaeological, and historical data show that the Sarasvati of the Vedas is the modern Ghaggar or Hakra."[66]

He and Jane McIntosh refer to the Ghaggar-Hakra river as "Sarasvati" throughout their respective 2002 and 2008 books on the Indus Civilisation.[61][66]

Geophysicist Rajesh Kocchar, after a thorough analysis of the Vedic texts and geological environments of the rivers, concludes that there are two Sarasvati rivers mentioned in the Rigveda. The older one described in the family books of the Rigveda, which he calls Naditama Sarasvati, drains into a samudra. The newer one described in the tenth book of Rigveda as well as later Vedic texts, which he calls Vinasana Sarasvati, disappears in the sands. The Vinasana Sarasvati has been "accepted by all" to be the same as the Ghaggar-Hakra river. On the other hand, the description of the Naditama Sarasvati in the Rigveda matches the physical features of the Helmand River in Afghanistan, more precisely its tributary the Harut River, whose older name was Haraxvatī in Avestan. Ganga and Yamuna, he takes to be small streams in its vicinity. When the Vedic people moved east into Punjab, they named the new rivers they encountered after the old rivers they knew from Helmand.[67][68]

These views, however, have been contradicted by recent geophysical research, which suggests that the Ghaggar-Hakra system, although having greater discharge in Harappan times which was enough to sustain human habitation, was not sourced by the glaciers and snows of the Himalayas—but rather by a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers. Geologist Liviu Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and his team showed that in contrast to all Himalayan rivers in the region that dug out wide valleys in their own sediments as the monsoon declined, no such valley exists between the Sutlej and the Yamuna, demonstrating that neither the Ghaggar-Hakra nor any other Sarasvati candidate in that region had a Himalayan source.[69][70] Late Holocene aridification subsequently reduced the Ghaggar-Hakra to the seasonal river it is today.[71][72][73]

Other research using dating of zircon sand grains has shown that subsurface river channels near the Indus Valley Civilisation sites in Cholistan immediately below the dry Ghaggar-Hakra bed show sediment affinity not with the Ghagger-Hakra, but instead with the Beas River in the western sites and the Sutlej and the Yamuna in the eastern ones, further weakening the hypothesis that the Ghaggar-Hakra was once a large river, but suggesting that the Yamuna itself, or a channel of the Yamuna, along with a channel of the Sutlej may have flowed west some time between 47,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE, well before the beginnings of Indus civilization.[74]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Political Economy of the Punjab: An Insider's Account". MD Publications, New Delhi. ISBN 81-7533-031-7.
  2. ↑ Britannica, Dale Hoiberg, Indu Ramchandani. Students' Britannica India, Volumes 1-5. Popular Prakashan, 2000. ISBN 978-0-85229-760-5. ... The Ghaggar River rises in the Shiwalik Range, northwestern Himachal Pradesh State, and flows about 320 km southwest through Haryana State, where it receives the Saraswati River. Beyond the Otu Barrage, the Ghaggar River is known as the Hakra River which loses itself in the Thar Desert. Just southwest of Sirsa it feeds two irrigation canals that extend into Rajasthan. ...
  3. ↑ HaryanaOnline - Geography of Haryana Archived 1 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. 1 2 Shanker Sharma, Hari; Kalwar, S. C. (2005). Geomorphology and Environmental Sustainability: Felicitation Volume in Honour of Professor H.S. Sharma. Concept Publishing Company. p. 61. ISBN 978-81-8069-028-0.
  5. ↑ "Sarasvati: Tracing the death of a river". Retrieved 12 June 2010.
  6. ↑ Hillsofmorni.com - Kaushalya dam
  7. ↑ Dailymail - Scam worth Rs-217 crore failed Kaushalya Dam says CAG
  8. 1 2 3 Sarasvati River Map, mapsofindia.com, retrieved 2016-02-22.
  9. 1 2 Mughal 1997
  10. ↑ Valdiya, K. S. (2003). Saraswati, the River that Disappeared. Hyderabad. pp. late 4.
  11. ↑ Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark (December 1991), "The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India", Journal of World Prehistory, 5 (4): 331–385, doi:10.1007/bf00978474, JSTOR 25800603
  12. ↑ Erdosy 1995, p. 215.
  13. ↑ http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/ad526e/ad526e09.htm
  14. ↑ Mughal, M. R. Ancient Cholistan. Archaeology and Architecture. Rawalpindi-Lahore-Karachi: Ferozsons 1997, 2004
  15. ↑ J. K. Tripathi et al., “Is River Ghaggar, Saraswati? Geochemical Constraints,” Current Science, Vol. 87, No. 8, 25 October 2004
  16. ↑ Puri, V. M. K.; Verma, B.C. (1998). "Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas". Itihas Darpan. IV (2): 7–36.
  17. ↑ Tripathi, J. K.; Bock, Barbara; Rajamani, V.; Eisenhauer, A. (October 2004). "Is River Ghaggar, Saraswati? Geochemical constraints". Current Science. 87 (8): 1141–1145.
  18. 1 2 Hydrology and Water Resources of India By Sharad K. Jain, Pushpendra K. Agarwal, Vijay P. Singh
  19. 1 2 The ancient Indus Valley: new perspectives By Jane McIntosh
  20. ↑ Tripathi et al. 2004
  21. ↑ http://hakra.totallyexplained.com/
  22. 1 2 Bryant 2001, p. 168
  23. 1 2 Gaur, R. C. (1983). Excavations at Atranjikhera, Early Civilization of the Upper Ganga Basin. Delhi.
  24. ↑ (see for example Studies from the Post-Graduate Research Institute of Deccan College, Pune, and the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhpur. Confirmed by use of MSS (multi-spectral scanner) and Landsat satellite photography. Note MLBD NEWSLETTER (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass), Nov. 1989.)
  25. ↑ Lal 2002, p.24
  26. 1 2 Gupta, S. P. (1999). Pande G. C. (ed.), ed. The dawn of Indian civilization. D.P. Chattophadhyaya (ed.): History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, I (1). New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations.
  27. 1 2 Bryant 2001
  28. ↑ Yash Pal; et al. (1984). "Remote Sensing of the "Lost" Sarasvati River.". In Lal, B. B.; et al. Frontiers of the Indus Civilization. p. 494. Our studies thus show that the Satluj periodically was the main tributary of the Ghaggar and that subsequently the tectonic movements may have forced the Satluj westward and the Ghaggar dried.
  29. ↑ Mayrhofer, Manfred. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen. p. 646.
  30. ↑ V. N. Misra in Gupta 1995, p. 153
  31. ↑ V. N. Misra in Gupta 1995, p. 149
  32. ↑ V. N. Misra in Gupta 1995, pp. 149–50
  33. ↑ V. N. Misra in Gupta 1995, p.155
  34. ↑ M. R. Mughal in Gupta 1995
  35. ↑ Gupta 1995, p. 183
  36. ↑ Misra, Virendra Nath (1992). Indus Civilization, a special Number of the Eastern Anthropologist. pp. 1–19.
  37. ↑ Gupta 1995
  38. ↑ V.N. Misra has noted that in the Indus Valley and the valleys of its main tributaries 50 Early and Mature IVC sites were found. And 40 Early and 174 Mature IVC sites were found at Cholistan (in Pakistan) in the Hakra valley. Parpola Asko (eds.); et al., eds. (1994). "Indus Civilization and the Rigvedic Sarasvati". South Asian Archaeology 1993. Helsinki. Cited from Lal 2002
  39. ↑ in Gupta 1995, p. 144
  40. ↑ An earlier survey (Joshi; et al. (1984). "The Indus Civilization". In Lal, B. B.; et al. Frontiers of the Indus Civilization.) found 137 Early and 109 Mature sites in the valleys of the GHR and its tributaries.
  41. 1 2 http://www.hindubooks.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1474&page=2
  42. ↑ http://www.dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1343030
  43. ↑ Oldham 1893, pp.51–52
  44. ↑ Mhb 1.90.26
  45. ↑ Section XCV Archived 16 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine.; English translation,page-203,1st paragraph
  46. ↑ Lal, BB (2002). [The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture: Some Thoughts The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture: Some Thoughts] Check |chapter-url= value (help) |chapter-url= missing title (help). Puratattva. Indian Archaeological Society. pp. 1–5.
  47. ↑ http://asi.nic.in/asi_exca_imp_rajasthan.asp; First paragraph
  48. 1 2 Lal, BB (1984). Frontiers of the Indus civilization. Sir Mortimer Wheeler commemoration volume. pp. 57–58.
  49. 1 2 http://asi.nic.in/asi_exca_imp_rajasthan.asp; Last paragraph
  50. ↑ http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/harappa-mohenjodaro.html; Second last paragraph
  51. ↑ Mhb. 3.82.111; 3.130.3; 6.7.47; 6.37.1-4., 9.34.81; 9.37.1-2
  52. ↑ Mhb 3.130.3-5; 9.37.1-2
  53. ↑ J. Shaffer, in: J. Bronkhorst & M. Deshpande (eds.), Aryans and Non-Non-Aryans, Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Cambridge (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 3) 1999
  54. ↑ "Experts to trace roots of Saraswati River". Times of India. 23 May 2012.
  55. ↑ Michel Danino: The Lost River - On the trail of the Sarasvati (Penguin Books, 2010). ISBN 978-0-14-306864-8.
  56. ↑ Indische Alterthumskunde Christian Lassen: Geographie und die älteste Geschichte, H. B. Koenig, 1847, p. 91
  57. ↑ Sacred Books of the East, 32, 60
  58. ↑ Oldham 1893 pp.51–52
  59. 1 2 Possehl, Gregory L. (December 1997), "The Transformation of the Indus Civilization", Journal of World Prehistory, 11 (4): 425–472, doi:10.1007/bf02220556, JSTOR 25801118
  60. 1 2 Kenoyer, J. M. (1997), "Early City-states in South Asia: Comparing the Harappan Phase and the Early Historic Period", in D. L. Nichols; T. H. Charlton, The Archaeology of City States: Cross Cultural Approaches, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 52–70, ISBN 1560987227
  61. 1 2 McIntosh, Jane (2008). The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-907-2.
  62. ↑ Allchin, Bridget; Allchin, Raymond (1982), The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, p. 160, ISBN 978-0-521-28550-6
  63. ↑ Erdosy 1995, pp. 105, 318.
  64. ↑ Erdosy 1995, p. 44.
  65. ↑ Erdosy 1995, p. 266.
  66. 1 2 Gregory L. Possehl (2002). The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Rowman Altamira. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7591-0172-2.
  67. ↑ Kochhar, Rajesh (1999), "On the identity and chronology of the Ṛgvedic river Sarasvatī", in Roger Blench; Matthew Spriggs, Archaeology and Language III; Artefacts, languages and texts, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-10054-2
  68. ↑ Rajesh Kocchar, The rivers Sarasvati: Reconciling the sacred texts, blog post based on The Vedic People: Their History and Geography.
  69. ↑ Giosan, L.; et al. (2012). "Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan Civilization". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 109 (26). Quote: "Numerous speculations have advanced the idea that the Ghaggar-Hakra fluvial system, at times identified with the lost mythical river of Sarasvati (e.g., 4, 5, 7, 19), was a large glacier fed Himalayan river. Potential sources for this river include the Yamuna River, the Sutlej River, or both rivers. However, the lack of large-scale incision on the interfluve demonstrates that large, glacier-fed rivers did not flow across the Ghaggar-Hakra region during the Holocene. .... The present Ghaggar-Hakra valley and its tributary rivers are currently dry or have seasonal flows. Yet rivers were undoubtedly active in this region during the Urban Harappan Phase. We recovered sandy fluvial deposits approximately 5;400 y old at Fort Abbas in Pakistan (SI Text), and recent work (33) on the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4;300 y old. On the upper interfluve, fine-grained floodplain deposition continued until the end of the Late Harappan Phase, as recent as 2,900 y ago (33) (Fig. 2B). This widespread fluvial redistribution of sediment suggests that reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene and explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river."
  70. ↑ Maemoku, Hideaki; Shitaoka, Yorinao; Nagatomo, Tsuneto; Yagi, Hiroshi (2013), "Geomorphological Constraints on the Ghaggar River Regime During the Mature Harappan Period", in Giosan,Liviu; Fuller, Dorian Q.; Nicoll, Kathleen, Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, American Geophysical Union Monograph Series 198, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-1-118-70443-1
  71. ↑ Madella, Marco; Fuller, Dorian (2006). "Palaeoecology and the Harappan Civilisation of South Asia: a reconsideration". Quaternary Science Reviews. 25 (11–12): 1283–1301. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2005.10.012.
  72. ↑ MacDonald, Glen (2011). "Potential influence of the Pacific Ocean on the Indian summer monsoon and Harappan decline". Quaternary International. 229: 140–148. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2009.11.012.
  73. ↑ Brooke, John L. (2014), Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, Cambridge University Press, p. 296, ISBN 978-0-521-87164-8 Quote: "The story in Harappan India was somewhat different (see Figure 111.3). The Bronze Age village and urban societies of the Indus Valley are some-thing of an anomaly, in that archaeologists have found little indication of local defense and regional warfare. It would seem that the bountiful mon-soon rainfall of the Early to Mid-Holocene had forged a condition of plenty for all, and that competitive energies were channeled into commerce rather than conflict. Scholars have long argued that these rains shaped the origins of the urban Harappan societies, which emerged from Neolithic villages around 2600 BC. It now appears that this rainfall began to slowly taper off in the third millennium, at just the point that the Harappan cities began to develop. Thus it seems that this "first urbanization" in South Asia was the initial response of the Indus Valley peoples to the beginning of Late Holocene aridification. These cities were maintained for 30o to 400 years and then gradually abandoned as the Harappan peoples resettled in scat-tered villages in the eastern range of their territories, into the Punjab and the Ganges Valley....' 17 (footnote) a)Liviu Giosan et al., "Fluvial Landscapes of the Harappan Civilization," PNAS, 102 (2012), E1688—E1694; (b) Camilo Ponton, "Holocene Aridification of India," GRL 39 (2012), L03704; (c) Harunur Rashid et al., "Late Glacial to Holocene Indian Summer Monsoon Variability Based upon Sediment Records Taken from the Bay of Bengal," Terrestrial, Atmospheric, and Oceanic Sciences 22 (2011), 215-28; (d) Marco Madella and Dorian Q. Fuller, "Paleoecology and the Harappan Civilization of South Asia: A Reconsideration," Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006), 1283-301. Compare with the very different interpretations in Gregory L. PossehlPossehl, Gregory L. (2002), The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, Rowman Altamira, pp. 237–245, ISBN 978-0-7591-0172-2, and Michael Staubwasser et al., "Climate Change at the 4.2 ka BP Termination of the Indus Valley Civilization and Holocene South Asian Monsoon Variability," GRL 30 (2003), 1425. Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon, "Mid-Holocene Climate Variations."
  74. ↑ Clift, Peter D.; Carter, Andrew; Giosan, Liviu; Durcan, Julie (2012). "U-Pb zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati River and capture of the Yamuna River" (PDF). Geology. 40 (3): 211–214. doi:10.1130/g32840.1.

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Coordinates: 29°35′46″N 75°01′03″E / 29.5961°N 75.0176°E / 29.5961; 75.0176

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