26 Issues in the Protohistory of India and Pakistan II :The Sarasvati

Michel Danino

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 1. Introduction 

 

When in the early 1920s, archaeologists discovered at Harappa and Mohenjo Daro the first urban growth of the Indian subcontinent, they named it ―Indus Valley‖ or ―Indus‖ Civilization, as it was thought to extend no farther than the Indus basin, with a few minor sites in Baluchistan. The name stuck, although with an alternative: the ―Harappan‖ Civilization, in accordance with the archaeological tradition of naming a culture after the first type site to come to light.

 

John Marshall, who then directed the Archaeological Survey of India (and later the excavations at Mohenjo Daro), suspected that the Harappan Civilization extended eastward beyond the Indus river and its tributaries. However, the task of proving this conjecture was left to the famous and indefatigable explorer, Mark Aurel Stein. In 1940, at the age of 78, he led an expedition to the States of Bikaner and Bahawalpur (the former now part of Rajasthan, the latter now part of Pakistan‘s Cholistan desert). Stein‘s fascination for inhospitable regions is probably what drew him to the Great Indian Desert‘s desolate landscape of endless sand dunes, and to the wide valley of the Ghaggar (and its continuation, generally known as ―Hakra‖ from Cholistan to the Rann of Kachchh). But as a Sanskritist, he was also intrigued by the legend of the lost Sarasvatī; the title of his 1942 paper, which gave a brief account of his findings, makes that clear: ―A Survey of Ancient Sites along the ‗Lost‘ Sarasvatī River‖.1 (He wrote a more detailed report the next year, which remained unpublished until 1989.2).

 

Like most nineteenth-century explorers of the region, Stein was struck by ―the width of its dry bed within Bikaner territory [i.e., downstream of Hanumangarh]; over more than 100 miles [160 km], it is nowhere less than 2 miles [3.2 km] and in places 4 miles [6.4 km] or more.‖ He also recorded numerous mounds along the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra: ―The large number of these ancient sites contrasts strikingly with the very few small villages still on the same ground.‖3 The region had clearly supported a much larger population in the past, an observation already made a century earlier by British topographers and geologists.

 

It is along the Hakra‘s dry course in Bahawalpur that Aurel Stein established for the first time the existence of sites related to Harappan culture. Taking all periods together, he identified some eighty new sites—a rich harvest, and the last of his considerable contributions to the archaeology of the subcontinent.

 

2.The Sarasvatī Riddle

 

Before we proceed with archaeological discoveries in the region, we must pause and ask why, in the first place, geographers, explorers, Indologists and archaeologists had come to identify the Ghaggar-Hakra‘s dry bed with the Sarasvatī. There are two simple reasons for this, perfectly summarized by Aurel Stein himself:

 

In at least three passages of the Rigveda mentioning the Sarasvatī, a river corresponding to the present Sarsuti and Ghaggar is meant. For this we have conclusive evidence in the famous hymn, the ―Praise of the rivers‖ (Nadistuti [10.75) which, with a precision unfortunately quite exceptional in Vedic texts, enumerates the Sarasvati correctly between the Yamuna (Jumna) in the east and the Sutudri or Sutlej in the west.4

 

This mention of a ―mighty‖ Sarasvatī between the Yamunā and the Sutlej is what convinced nineteenth-century Indologists—long before the discovery of Harappan sites—that the Ghaggar-Hakra, which had been explored by several British surveyors, topographers and military agents, was a relic of the Vedic Sarasvatī. Many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maps reflect the consensus among scholars like H.H. Wilson (1840), Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin (1855), F. Max Müller (1859), C.F. Oldham (1874), M. Monier Williams (1875), A. Weber (1878), Julius Eggeling (1882), R.D. Oldham (1886), among many others.

 

The second reason is a persistent traditional memory of the ―lost river‖ in Haryana and Punjab. A small stream flowing down from the Shivalik Hills (the ―present Sarsuti,‖ as Stein referred to it), numerous holy sites connected to Sarasvatī in the Kurukshetra region, the mention of the river in this same location across much ancient Sanskrit literature—from the Brāhmanas to the Mahābhārata and several Purānas—all concur to establish its existence there in some bygone age. (The tradition of an invisible Sarasvatī at the Trivenī Sangam of Allahabad is a much later one.) The Mahābhārata, for instance, not only locates the Sarasvatī between the Yamunā and the Sutlej, but also describes the river as getting ―lost in the desert,‖ which matches its gradual desiccation.

 

3. Further Explorations

 

World War II and India‘s Partition delayed further the search for Harappan sites in what we can now call the Sarasvatī Valley, or, more appropriately, the Sarasvatī basin. It was only in 1950-52 that the archaeologist Amalananda Ghosh followed in Stein‘s footsteps, exploring what was now the Indian side of the Ghaggar-Hakra‘s bed. Ghosh identified 25 sites displaying a ―true Harappa culture‖—the easternmost being Kalibangan. He rightly suspected that more sites would come to light further east, and concluded in the meantime that ―the valleys of the Sarasvatī and the Drishadvatī must be regarded as very rich indeed in archaeological remains.‖5 (The Vedic Drishadvatī river has been identified by most scholars with the Chautang, which flowed south of the Ghaggar, joining it downstream of Kalibangan, near today‘s Suratgarh in northern Rajasthan).

 

While Marc Aurel Stein will be remembered for being the first to identify Harappan sites in what is now Cholistan in Pakistan, Amalananda Ghosh will earn the same honour in northern Rajasthan.

 

Since the 1960s, further explorations of the region (including India‘s portion of the Punjab and the Chautang‘s course in Haryana) by Katy F. Dalal, K.N. Dikshit, J.P. Joshi, Madhu Bala, Jassu Ram, Suraj Bhan, Jim Shaffer, R.S. Bisht, Manmohan Kumar, Vivek Dangi, Parveen Kumar, R.N. Singh, Vasant Shinde, among other archaeologists, have brought to light hundreds of sites related to various phases of Harappan culture, the best known of which include Kalibangan, Mitathal, Banawali, Rakhigarhi and Bhirrana.

 

From the 1950s, parallel surveys have been taking place in Gujarat by S.R. Rao (who discovered the famous port town of Lothal in 1954), followed by J.P. Joshi (who in 1966 discovered the major site of Dholavira in the Rann of Kachchh) and many others. Harappan sites were later identified as far south as the Tapti in Maharashtra.

 

On the Pakistani side of the Ghaggar-Hakra valley, Mohammad Rafique Mughal retraced Aurel Stein‘s explorations and in the 1970s surveyed 363 pre-urban, urban and post-urban sites of the Harappan tradition in Cholistan alone, a rich harvest that changed forever our understanding of this civilization.6

 

4.Sarasvatī vs. Indus

 

As a result of those explorations, its total extent is now thought to be over one million square kilometres. In 1999, archaeologist Gregory L. Possehl listed some 2,600 sites7 covering distinct phases, generally called ―Early‖ (or pre-urban), ―Mature‖ (or urban) and ―Late‖ (or post-urban),8 which correspond roughly to the epochs 3500-2700, 2600-1900 and 1900-1300 BCE.

 

Table 1 summarizes a more recent count in the Sarasvatī basin; we should keep in mind that many sites have two or all three phases, so that the actual geographical count will be less than the total shown in the last column—probably between 1,500 and 2,000.

Table 1. Distribution of Harappan sites in the Sarasvatī basin, adapted from a list compiled by S.P. Gupta (by Michel Danino, 2010, with inputs from G.L. Possehl and M. Rafique Mughal).9

 

Let us now look at Table 2, which covers all regions of the now extended Harappan civilization:

Table 2. Overall distribution of Harappan sites (by Michel Danino, 2010).

 

The same caveat applies: the grand total of 3,781 sites (which in 2015 may need to be updated to some 4,000) may translate to between 2,000 and 2,500 actual settlements. Be that as it may, we notice that the 360 ―Sarasvatī sites‖ of the Mature (i.e., urban) phase account for 32 per cent or nearly a third of all sites belonging to that phase: the region was plainly another heartland of the Harappan civilization. The proportion rises to 62 per cent for the Early Phase and 86 per cent for the Late Phase, before and after the collapse of the urban order.

 

(It should be added that Possehl‘s gazetteer of Harappan sites or the above tables conflate sites of cultures showing sufficient Harappan contact, but which may not be full-fledged Harappan, such as the Sorath domain (in today‘s Saurashtra) or the Kulli domain (today‘s Baluchistan); archaeologists are still debating the extent to which those regional cultures may be regarded as an integral part of the Harappan civilization.)

 

If, then, 360 Mature sites were located in the basin of the Sarasvatī, should the Harappan civilization not be renamed ―Indus-Sarasvatī civilization‖? Such was the designation proposed by the archaeologist S.P. Gupta in 1989. Although it is imperfect—since it still leaves out most of Gujarat‘s 310 Mature Harappan sites, a third heartland—it is nevertheless more inclusive than the limitative ―Indus civilization.‖

 

Recently, British archaeologist Jane McIntosh commented on the discoveries of Mughal and others in these words:

 

This work revealed an incredibly dense concentration of sites, along the dried-up course of a river that could be identified as the ―Saraswati‖ … Suddenly it became apparent that the ―Indus‖ Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the rise and development of the civilization, the ―lost Saraswati‖ River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity.

 

Which led her to the following conclusion on the issue of terminology:

 

Many people today refer to this Early state as the ―Indus-Saraswati Civilization‖ and continuing references [in her book] to the ―Indus Civilization‖ should be seen as an abbreviation in which the ―Saraswati‖ is implied.10

 

Whatever name we may choose to give it—other proposals include ―Sindhu-Sarasvatī‖ and ―Sarasvatī-Sindhu‖—its debt to the vanished river is now archaeologically established. As the archaeologist V.N. Misra put it in 1993, ―The large number of protohistoric settlements, dating from c. 4000 BC to 1500 BC, could have flourished along this river only if it was flowing perennially.‖11

 

Let us clarify that highlighting the Sarasvatī‘s contribution to the Harappan civilization by no means belittles the Indus. It simply points to a civilization with two major lifelines rather than one, and several heartlands, which has led archaeologists to view this civilization more and more as some sort of confederation of regional powers rather than a centralized empire as was once thought.

 

5. Sarasvatī and the Aryan Issue

 

While the identification of the bygone Sarasvatī with the Ghaggar-Hakra has been a matter of consensus among scholars, as we saw above, Romila Thapar, Shereen Ratnagar, Suraj Bhan, Irfan Habib, Rajesh Kochhar, among other scholars, started raising doubts from the 1980s on the identification of the Vedic river.12 Their ground for doing so was that since archaeological evidence showed that the river broke up and dried up in its central basin around 1900 BCE, this date raises the following problem: If Indo-Aryan speakers, popularly known as ―Aryans‖, entered India about 1500 BCE, as is often proposed, they could not have composed hymns praising the Sarasvatī as a mighty river ―flowing from the mountain to the sea‖ when the river had largely dried up by that time. An ―unbroken‖ Sarasvatī would point to a date before 2000 BCE — in fact before 2600 BCE, as M. Rafique Mughal, surveying the Cholistan Desert (on the Pakistani side of the international border), showed that the river had suffered a first break in that region before the Mature phase (this is confirmed by isotopic dating of underground water body in the same area13). To date the Rig-Vedic period before the Harappan Mature phase was seen as unacceptable, yet this is what the hydrographic evidence suggests (see further discussion in Module on the Aryan Issue).

 

To solve this apparent chronological paradox, the above-mentioned scholars attempted two different lines of argument:

  • Some (such as Habib) claimed that the Rig-Vedic river was purely ―abstract‖ or mythical — but this does not square with the text‘s vivid descriptions and its precise location between the Yamunā and the Sutlej. Besides, except for the river‘s break-up, mentions and descriptions of the Sarasvatī in the Late Vedic literature are consistent with those in the Rig-Veda and certainly refer to a real river.
  • Others (such as Thapar or Kochhar) tried to locate the ―original‖ Sarasvatī in Afghanistan, with the Sarasvatī mentioned in the Nadīstuti Sūkta being a ―later‖ Sarasvatī. The argument however remains unconvincing, as the Rig-Veda never mentions an ―original‖ Sarasvatī. And if incoming Aryans (in c. 1500 BCE) had wanted to ―remember‖ their original Afghan Sarasvatī by transferring its name to a newly found river, why should they have chosen a dried-up one to do so? It stands to reason that they would have chosen the Indus or one of its tributaries for the purpose.

6.   The River’s Break-up and Disappearance

 

The end of the urban or Mature Harappan phase remains a mystery: what could have caused the disintegration of this well-organized extensive urban phenomenon that had been in existence for some seven centuries? Numerous factors have been discussed, ranging from economic decline or political turmoil to drought and ecological degradation.

 

There is no consensus among archaeologists, but among other environmental changes, the decline of the Sarasvatī river system is now widely accepted as a major contributory factor. Maps of settlement patterns in the three Harappan phases show a dramatic abandonment of the river‘s central basin between the Mature and the Late phases, i.e., around 1900 BCE. The Sarasvatī‘s break-up could not but have had a huge impact on urban settlements of the region, with a ripple effect elsewhere. As the archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti put it, ―To a considerable extent the process [of weakening of the political fabric of the Indus civilization] must have been linked to the hydrographic changes in the Sarasvatī-Drishadvatī system.‖14Or in the words of Marco Madella and Dorian Fuller:

 

Archaeological research in Cholistan has led to the discovery of a large number of sites along the dry channels of the Ghaggar-Hakra river (often identified with the lost Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers of Sanskrit traditions). …

 

The final desiccation of some of these channels may have had major repercussions for the Harappan Civilisation and is considered a major factor in the de-centralisation and de-urbanisation of the Late Harappan period.15

 

Moreover, perhaps because the Sutlej‘s contributions to the Sarasvatī system ceased at that time and switched to the Indus system (through the Beas), it is suspected that floods in Sind increased in severity, possibly causing the Indus to shift its course away from Mohenjo-daro in a process of avulsion, as was suggested by H.T. Lambrick: ―The surrounding country, starved of water, immediately began to deteriorate.‖16 Also, the river-based communication that Mohenjo-daro vitally depended on, in Michael Jansen‘s opinion,17 would have been seriously disrupted. However, much more research is needed to be certain of the precise chain of hydrographic disruption.

 

7. Recent Research on the Sarasvatī

 

Since the 1970s, satellite imagery has proved to be a very useful tool, although by itself it cannot date the numerous buried palaeochannels (ancient waterways) it has brought to light; today, satellite images available on websites such as National Geographic or Google Earth enable anyone to view the well-marked bed of the Ghaggar. Many satellite studies have been published in recent years and point to a complex evolution, especially in the stretch between Cholistan and the Rann of Kachchh, where the river‘s bed seems to have often shifted.18

 

Several recent geological and river studies have also thrown new light on the ancient river. In 2009, Peter Clift had noted that ―between 2000 and 3000 BCE, flow along a presently driedup 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.‖19 In 2012, Clift‘s multi-national team dated zircon sand grains from trenches and drilled cores at four sites in Cholistan (the U-Pb dating method they used is a standard one that measures variations in the ratios of isotopes of uranium and lead to date the formation of rocks over millions of years). By comparing the zircon grains with those from other regions, the geologists concluded that the Yamunā once flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra, as had often been suggested since the late nineteenth century, 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. As a result, any drainage capture affecting the Ghaggar system ―appears to have occurred prior to human settlement and not to have directly caused the Harappan collapse.‖20 Being limited to samples from Cholistan, the paper remained non-committal about the time when the Ghaggar itself dried up.

 

The same year, a study by a team of geoscientists under the direction of Liviu Giosan reached slightly more precise conclusions. It rejected the view that ―large glacier-fed Himalayan river watered the Harappan heartland on the interfluve between the Indus and Ganges basins‖; rather, in its view, ―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 [in Cholistan], and recent work on the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4,300 [years] old.‖21 In a later comment on the paper, Giosan clarified, ―Our research points to a perennial monsoonal-fed Sarasvati river system with benign floods along its course.‖22 The Ghaggar-Hakra was thus active during the urban Harappan period, although apparently not (or no longer) 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‖.23

 

The last point remains an object of debate among experts, with several geologists, such as V.M.K. Puri and K.S. Valdiya, maintaining that the Ghaggar system did have contributions from Himalayan glaciers.24 We must leave it to experts—or, more likely, to the accumulation of new data—to settle the issue. Even if the Sarasvatī did not have (or no longer had) glacial sources, with its nearly ten tributaries, it could still have been a perennial river of respectable size until the monsoon weakened. Tectonics and seismic events (earthquakes) may also have played a part in its break-up. What is more important 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 a 2009 study by H.S. Saini et al., which studied buried channels in the northwestern Haryana Plains and documented ―the existence of channel activity during the mid-Holocene … in a part of the Haryana plains‖; by mid-Holocene is meant a ―second fluvial phase … represented by a palaeochannel segment whose signatures are dated between ~ 6.0 and ~ 2.9 Ka‖,25 after which a depleted Ghaggar was left. The dates do bracket the Indus civilization.

 

Finally, a 2013 study directed by the geologist Rajiv Sinha used electrical resistivity soundings to ―map the large-scale geometry and architecture of the palaeochannel system,‖ since ―water-bearing sediments having a lower resistivity than dry ones.‖ It found ―a thick and extensive sand body present in the subsurface in parts of north-western Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab‖ and offered ―the first stratigraphic evidence that a palaeochannel exists in the sub-surface alluvium in the Ghaggar valley.‖ It also observed, ―These resistivity results represent the first stratigraphic evidence that a palaeochannel exists in the sub-surface alluvium both 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. … The dimensions of the palaeochannel complex suggest a large, long-lived fluvial system existed in this region, however, the timing and provenance of this system remains to be resolved.‖26

 

Such a conclusion had been reached by archaeologists much earlier, since Kalibangan, for instance, shows no evidence of independent water supply; unlike Mohenjo-daro, 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 Sarasvatī, on whose left bank it lay, with entries into its fortified enclosures facing the riverbed. Banawali and Bhirrana, too, were built right on the river‘s bank. Why should the technology-savvy Harappans have taken so much trouble to build cities right on the edge of dried-up rivers?

 

On current data, archaeology and geological studies thus appear to converge in depicting an already depleted Ghaggar or Sarasvatī during the Mature Harappan phase. Besides, palaeoclimatic studies have in recent years pointed to a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon from 2200 BCE onward.27 It seems clear that the long drought that followed contributed to the final break-up of the Sarasvatī, although other causes such as river dynamics and tectonics cannot, at this stage, be ruled out.

 

As regards the ―controversy‖ surrounding the Vedic 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 recorded 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 Yamunā 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. The paradox remains.

 

8.   Gangā’s Turn?

 

The Indus-Sarasvati civilization left a considerable technological and cultural legacy for the Gangetic civilization of the first millennium BCE (see Module on the Aryan Issue). The Sarasvatī River‘s disappearance led some of the Late Harappans to migrate eastward and may have acted as a bridge between those two early civilizations of India. This is also reflected at a cultural level: In the Rig-Veda, her flow is a symbol of inspiration and she is invoked for the purification or illumination of the mind. She grows into a goddess of Speech (vāch or vāk) in the Yajur-Veda a few centuries later, thus a vehicle of the Veda or inspired knowledge. In later texts, she becomes a goddess of arts and education. Indological studies have shown that in the process, some of her attributes were transferred to Gangā, a river of little or no cultural importance in the Rig-Veda.

 

History often holds lessons for the present; so does protohistory. Four millennia later, the loss of the Sarasvatī may soon find an echo in the drastic dwindling of the Himalayan glaciers and the Gangetic river system. But while the former was a natural cataclysm (possibly compounded by human overexploitation of natural resources), the latter is largely man-made and may lead to the decline of the 3,000-year-old Ganges civilization in its mother-region.

 

The scattered Late Harappans were able to adapt themselves to the new situation, fall back on rural settlements or create new ones, relocate themselves when necessary and continue their existence, although in a non-urban context; but how will the crores of people dependent on the Gangetic system survive when Prayag‘s Trivenī Sangam consists of three invisible, ―mythical‖ rivers? Let us learn from the past before it is too late.

 

Note :

  1. Aurel Stein, ―A Survey of Ancient Sites along the ‗Lost‘ Sarasvatī River,‖ The Geographical Journal, vol. 99 (1942), pp. 173-182.
  2. Marc Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Tour along the Ghaggar-Hakra River, ed. S.P. Gupta, Meerut:Kusumanjali Prakashan, 1989).Aurel Stein, ―A Survey of Ancient Sites along the ‗Lost‘ Sarasvatī River,‖ op. cit., p. 178.Ibid., p. 176.
  3. A. Ghosh, ―The Rajputana desert: its archaeological aspect‖ in Bulletin of the National Institute of Sciences in India (1952), vol. I, pp. 37-42, reproduced in An Archaeological Tour along the Ghaggar-Hakra River, op. cit., p. 101.
  4. Mohammad   Rafique   Mughal,    Ancient   Cholistan:    Archaeology    and   Architecture,  Lahore:Ferozsons, 1997, pp. 40 & 47-48.Gregory L. Possehl, Indus Age: The Beginnings, New Delhi: Oxford & IBH, 1999, p. 26.
  5. The ―American school,‖ represented notably by Jim Shaffer, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer and Gregory Possehl, prefers a more descriptive terminology and speaks, respectively, of ―Regionalization Era,‖ ―Integration Era‖ and ―Localization Era‖.
  6. See a detailed explanation and references for Tables 1 & 2 in Michel Danino, The Lost River: Onthe Trail of the Sarasvati, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2010, Chapter 6.
  7. Jane R. McIntosh, A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of The Indus Civilization, Boulder: Westview Press, 2002, p. 24.
  8. V.N. Misra, ―Indus Civilization and the Rgvedic Sarasvati,‖ in Asko Parpola & Petteri Koskikallio, (eds), South Asian Archaeology 1993, Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1994, vol. II, p. 515.
  9. See a detailed discussion in Michel Danino, The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati, op. cit., particularly in Chapter 11.
  10. M.A. Geyh, & D. Ploethner, ―An Applied Palaeohydrological Study of Cholistan, Thar Desert, Pakistan‖, in E.M. Adar & C. Leibundgut, (eds),
  11. Applications of Tracers in Arid Zone Hydrology, International Association of Hydrological Sciences, publ. no. 232, Vienna, 1995, pp. 119–27;
  12. ―Origins of a Freshwater Body in Cholistan, Thar Desert, Pakistan‖, in W. Dragoni & B.S. Sukhija, (eds), Climate Change and Groundwater, Geological Society special publication, vol. 288, London, 2008, pp. 99–109.
  13. Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 140.
  14. Marco Madella & Dorian Q. Fuller, ―Palaeoecology and the Harappan Civilisation of South Asia: a reconsideration,‖ Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006), pp. 1285-86.
  15. T. Lambrick, ―The Indus Flood Plain and the ‗Indus‘ Civilization,‖ Geographical Journal, 1967, 133/4: 483-95, reproduced in Nayanjot Lahiri, (ed.),
  16. The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2000, p. 182.
  17.  Michael Jansen argues that the location of Mohenjo-daro is explainable only through boat transport. See his ―Settlement Networks of the Indus civilization‖ in S. Settar & Ravi Korisettar,(eds), Indian Archaeology in Retrospect, vol. 2: Protohistory, Archaeology of the Harappan Civilization, Manohar & Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi, 2000, p. 118.
  18. 18 For instance, B.K. Bhadra, A.K. Gupta & J.R. Sharma, ―Saraswati Nadi in Haryana and its Linkage with the Vedic Saraswati River: Integrated Study Based on Satellite Images and Ground Based Information‖, Journal Geological Society of India, vol. 73, February 2009, pp. 273-288; A.K. Gupta, J.R. Sharma & G. Sreenivasan, ―Using satellite imagery to reveal the course of an extinct river below the Thar Desert in the Indo-Pak region‖, International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 32, no. 18, 2011, pp. 5197–5216; M.B. Rajani & A.S. Rajawat, ―Potential of satellite based sensors for studying distribution of archaeological sites along palaeo channels: Harappan sites a case study‖, Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011), pp. 2010–2016.
  19. Peter Clift, ―Harappan Collapse‖, Geoscientist, vol. 19, no. 9, September 2009, pp. 18–22.
  20. Peter D. Clift, A. Carter, L. Giosan, J. Durcan, G.A.T. Duller, M.G. Macklin, A. Alizai, A.R. Tabrez, M. Danish, S. VanLaningham, & D.Q. Fuller, ―U-Pb zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati River and capture of the Yamuna River‖, Geology, 40(3), 02/2012, pp. 212-215.
  21. Liviu Giosan, P.D. Clift, M.G. Macklinc, D.Q. Fuller, S. Constantinescu, J.A. Durcan, T. Stevens, G.A.T. Duller, A.R. Tabrez, K. Gangal, R. Adhikari, A. Alizai, F. Filip, S. VanLaningham, & J.P.M. Syvitski, ―Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilization‖, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 26, E1688–E1694, published online May 29, 2012.
  22. Liviu Giosan, Peter D. Clift, Mark G. Macklin, Dorian Q. Fuller. 2013. ―Sarasvati II‖, Current Science, 105(7), pp. 888–810.
  23. Liviu Giosan et al., ―Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilization‖, op. cit.
  24.  M.K. Puri & B.C. Varma, ―Glaciological and geological source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas‖, Itihas Darpan, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, pp. 7–36; V.M.K. Puri, ―Origin and course of Vedic Saraswati river in Himalaya – its secular desiccation episodes as deciphered from palaeo-glaciation and geomorphological signatures‖, Geological Survey of India, Special Publication, 2001, no. 53, pp. 175–191; K.S. Valdiya, Saraswati, The River That Disappeared, Hyderabad: Indian Space Research Organization & Universities Press, 2002); K.S. Valdiya, ―The River Saraswati was a Himalayan-born river‖, Current Science, 104(1), 10 January 2013, pp. 42–54.
  25. S. Saini, S.K. Tandon, S.A.I. Mujtaba, N.C. Pant and R. K. Khorana. 2009. ―Reconstruction of buried channel-floodplain systems of the northwestern Haryana Plains and their relation to the ‗Vedic‘ Saraswati,‖ Current Science, 97(11), pp. 1634–43.
  26.  Rajiv Sinha, G.S. Yadav, Sanjeev Gupta, Ajit Singh, S.K. Lahiri, ―Geo-electric resistivity evidence for subsurface palaeochannel systems adjacent to Harappan sites in northwest India‖, Quaternary International, vols 308–309, 2 October 2013, pp. 66–75.
  27.  For instance, M. Berkelhammer, A. Sinha, L. Stott, H. Cheng, F. S. R. Pausata, & K. Yoshimura, ―An Abrupt Shift in the Indian Monsoon 4000 Years Ago‖, in Liviu Giosan et al., (eds), Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, Geophysical Monograph Series 198, American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, 2012, pp. 75–87; Yama Dixit, D.A. Hodell & C.A. Petrie, ―Abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon in northwest India ~ 4100 yr ago,‖ Geology, 42(4), 2014, pp. 339-342. See also a general survey of climatic studies in Michel Danino, ―Climate and Environment in the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization‖, in Arundhati Banerji, (ed.), Ratnaśrī: Gleanings from Indian Archaeology, Art History and Indology, Papers Presented in Memory of Dr. N.R. Banerji, New Delhi: Kaveri Books, 2015, pp. 39–47.

 

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Bibliography (For papers, see above and references in Quadrant 1, E-text)

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  • Chakrabarti, Dilip K., & Saini, Sukhdev, The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Panjab, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2009
  • Danino, Michel, The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2010
  • Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, Oxford University Press & American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Karachi & Islamabad, 1998
  • Lahiri, Nayanjot, (ed.), The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2000
  • Lahiri, Nayanjot, Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2005
  • Lal, B.B. & Gupta, S.P., (eds), Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, Books and Books, New Delhi, 1984 Lal, B.B., The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 1997
  • Lal, B.B., The Sarasvatī Flows On: the Continuity of Indian Culture, Aryan Books International, New Delhi, 2002
  • Ludvik, Catherine, Sarasvatī Riverine Goddess of Knowledge, Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2007 McIntosh, Jane R., The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives, ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, 2008
  • Mughal, Mohammad Rafique, Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and Architecture, Ferozsons, Lahore, 1997
  • Possehl, Gregory L., Indus Age: The Beginnings, Oxford & IBH, New Delhi, 1999
  • Possehl, Gregory L., The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, Altamira Press, Oxford, 2002; Indian edn, Vistaar, New Delhi, 2003
  • Radhakrishna, B.P., & Merh, S.S., (eds), Vedic Sarasvatī: Evolutionary History of a Lost River of Northwestern India, Geological Society of India, Bangalore, 1999
  • Stein, Marc Aurel, An Archaeological Tour along the Ghaggar–Hakra River, Gupta, S.P., (ed.), Kusumanjali Prakashan, Meerut, 1989
  • Valdiya, K.S., Saraswati, The River That Disappeared, Indian Space Research Organization & Universities Press, Hyderabad, 2002