Ghaggar River

The Sarasvati River, though long lost, has kept ink flowing on the front page of our dailies or in the electronic media, but generally for the wrong reasons: Was it a “mythical” river? Are communal forces behind the assertion that there was once a mighty river flowing through Haryana, Punjab, northern Rajasthan and on to the Rann of Kachchh? In reality, those issues were well settled way back in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth, the discovery of the Indus or Harappan civilization did not immediately affect the Vedic river’s status, and most archaeologists readily associated the name of “Sarasvati” with the Ghaggar–Hakra bed. The first part of this paper sums up some basic data on the river and explains why, in the 1980s, the river’s accepted identification suddenly became “controversial.”
The second part briefly surveys ten of the most recent scientific investigations in the Ghaggar’s basin and the issues they have tried to address, such as the existence of a mega-river, contributions to it from the Sutlej and the Yamuna, the chronology of the mega-river’s decline and disappearance, the Ghaggar system’s fluvial condition during the Mature Harappan period, and the impact of its decline on the Harappan settlements in its basin. The resulting picture holds some elements of answer, but remains incomplete in view of the complexity of the issues involved: the Holocene’s hydrology, climate, environment have their say, besides local tectonics. Nevertheless, a few of the old theories can now be revised.

Abstract:
This paper discusses the characteristics of stone beads of the Urban Indus period from the Ghaggar plain based on the evidence from Farmana and Mitathal. Our understanding of the stone beads of the Indus period have been so far limited to the samples from Harappa in Punjab, Pakistan, on which tremendous studies have been made by J. M. Kenoyer (Kenoyer 1991a, 1997, 2005). Needless to say, the site of Harappa is one of the most important urban centres of the Indus Valley Civilization and the evidence from this site have provided significant information for our understanding of the stone beads of the civilization. However, the holistic understanding of the stone beads of the urban society must include more evidence from other sites including minor urban centres and villages as well. The lack of basic information such as how many beads of what kind of forms and materials have been found at each site in the present state of our knowledge on stone beads still makes it difficult to understand the production and distribution system of stone beads during the Indus period and the stylistic and technological aspects of stone beads through time and across space.

The Sarasvati River, though long lost, has kept ink flowing on the front page of our dailies or in the electronic media, but generally for the wrong reasons: Was it a “mythical” river? Are communal forces behind the assertion that there was once a mighty river flowing through Haryana, Punjab, northern Rajasthan and on to the Rann of Kachchh? In reality, those issues were well settled way back in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth, the discovery of the Indus or Harappan civilization did not immediately affect the Vedic river’s status, and most archaeologists readily associated the name of “Sarasvati” with the Ghaggar–Hakra bed. The first part of this paper sums up some basic data on the river and explains why, in the 1980s, the river’s accepted identification suddenly became “controversial.” The second part briefly surveys ten of the most recent scientific investigations in the Ghaggar’s basin and the issues they have tried to address, such as the existence of a mega-river, contributions to it from the Sutlej and the Yamuna, the chronology of the mega-river’s decline and disappearance, the Ghaggar system’s fluvial condition during the Mature Harappan period, and the impact of its decline on the Harappan settlements in its basin. The resulting picture holds some elements of answer, but remains incomplete in view of the complexity of the issues involved: the Holocene’s hydrology, climate, environment have their say, besides local tectonics. Nevertheless, a few of the old theories can now be revised.