(Redirected from Ghaggar-Hakra River)The 'Ghaggar-Hakra River' is an intermittent river in
India and
Pakistan that flows only during the
monsoon season.
It is often identified with the
Vedic Sarasvati River, but it is disputed whether all
Rigvedic references to the Sarasvati should be taken to refer to this river.
Ghaggar River
The 'Ghaggar' is an intermittent
river in
India, flowing during the
monsoon rains. It originates in the
Shivalik Hills of
Himachal Pradesh and flows through
Punjab and
Haryana to
Rajasthan; just southwest of Sirsa in
Haryana and by the side of 'Tibi' in
Rajasthan, this seasonal river feeds two irrigation canals that extend into
Rajasthan.
The present-day
Sarasvati River originates in a submontane region (
Ambala district) and joins the Ghaggar near Shatrana in
PEPSU. Near Sadulgarh (Hanumangarh) the Naiwal channel, a dried out channel of the
Sutlej, joins the Ghaggar. Near Suratgarh the Ghaggar is then joined by the dried up
Drishadvati (Chautang) river.
The wide river bed of the Ghaggar river suggest that the river once flowed full of water, and that it formerly continued through the entire region, in the presently dry channel of the
Hakra River, possibly emptying into the
Rann of Kutch. It supposedly dried up due to the capture of its tributaries by the
Indus and
Yamuna rivers, and the loss of rainfall in much of its catchment area due to deforestation and overgrazing. This is supposed to have happened at the latest in
1900 BCE, but perhaps much earlier.
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.
[1] A recent study shows that Bronze Age sediments from the glaciers of the Himalayas are missing along the Gagghar-Hakra, indicating that it did not have its sources in the high mountains.
[2]
In India there are also various small or middle-sized rivers called Sarasvati or Saraswati. One of them flows from the west end of the
Aravalli Range into the east end of the
Rann of Kutch.
Hakra River
The 'Hakra' is the dried-out channel of a
river in
Pakistan that is the continuation of the
Ghaggar River in
India. Several times, but not continuously, it carried the water of the Sutlej during the Bronze Age period
[3]
Many settlements of the
Indus Valley Civilisation have been found along the Ghaggar and Hakra rivers.
Palaeogeography
Many hymns in all ten Books of the Rig Veda (except the 4th) extol or mention a divine and very large river named the Sarasvati[3], which flows mightily "from the mountains to 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". However these three goddesses (Bharati, etc.) are missing in RV books 4, 6, 8, indicating an equally uneven range of data in the RV.
According to palaeoenvironmental scientists the desiccation of Sarasvati came about as a result of the diversion of at least two rivers that fed it, the Satluj and the Yamuna. "The chain of tectonic events … diverted the Satluj westward (into the Indus) and the Palaeo Yamuna eastward (into the Ganga) … This explains the ‘death’ of such a mighty river (the Sarasvati) … because its main feeders, the Satluj and Palaeo Yamuna were weaned away from it by the Indus and the Gangaa respectively”. This ended at c 1750, but it started much earlier, perhaps with the upheavals and the large flood of 1900, or more probably 2100 [11][12]. P H Francfort, utilizing images from the French satellite SPOT, finds that the large river Sarasvati is pre-Harappan altogether and started drying up in the middle of the 4th millennium BC; during Harappan times only a complex irrigation-canal network was being used in the southern region of the Indus Valley. With this the date should be pushed back to c 3800 BC. R. Mughal (1997), summing up the evidence, concludes that the Bronze Age Gagghar-Hakra sometimes carried more, sometimes less water (for example from the Sutlej).
The Rig Vedic hymn X, however, gives a list of names of rivers where Sarasvati is merely mentioned while Sindhu receives all the praise. It is agreed that the tenth Book of the Rig Veda is later than the others. This may well indicate that the Rig Veda could be dated to a period after the first drying up of Sarasvati (c 3500) when the river lost its preeminence.[6] This assumption is contradicted by the appearance of horses and chariots all over the RV, which was possible only after their introduction after 2000 BCE
The 414 archeological sites along the bed of Sarasvati dwarf the number of sites so far recorded along the entire stretch of the Indus River, which number only about three dozen. However most of the Harappan sites along the Sarasvati are found in desert country, 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 Saravati sites are datable to the fourth or third millennium B.C.E., suggesting that the river was flowing during this period.
The ancient Ghaggar-Hakra and the Harappan civilization
Estimated 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
Indus Valley Civilization (2800 to 1800 BC) it makes all the difference whether the river dried up in 2500 (its early phase) or 2000 (its late phase). Similarly, for the
Gandhara grave culture, often identified with the early influx of Indo-Aryans from ca. 1600 BC, it makes a great difference whether the river dried up a millennium earlier, or only a few generations ago, so that by contact with remnants of the IVC like the
Cemetery H culture, legendary knowledge of the event may have been acquired.
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 could be that the permanent Sarasvati ended there in a series of terminal lakes, and 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.
[4] It may also have been affected by much of its water being taken for irrigation.
In a survey conducted by M.R. Mughal between 1974 and 1977, over 400 sites were mapped along 300 miles of the Hakra river.
[3] The majority of these sites were dated to the fourth or third millennium BCE.
[3]
S. P. Gupta counts over 600 sites of the Indus civilization on the
Hakra-
Ghaggar river and its tributaries.
[7][3] In contrast to this, only 90 to 96 Indus Valley sites have been discovered on the
Indus and its tributaries (about 36 sites on the Indus river itself.)
[9][3][11] V.N. Misra
[3] states that over 530 Harappan sites (of the more than 800 known sites, not including Degenerate Harappan or OCP) are located on the Hakra-Ghaggar.
[13] 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).
Early Harappan sites are mostly situated on the middle Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, and some in the Indus Valley. 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 Hakra channel and in the Indus valley diminishes, while it expands in the upper Ghaggar-Sutlej channels and in Saurashtra. The abandonement of many sites on the Hakra-Ghaggar between the Harappan and the Late Harappan phase was probably due to the drying up of the Hakra-Ghaggar river.
Painted Grey Ware sites (ca. 1000 BCE) have been found on the bed and not on the banks of the Ghaggar-Hakra river.
[3][15]
Because most of the Indus Valley sites are actually located on the Hakra-Ghaggar river and its tributaries and not on the Indus river, some 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.
The Ghaggar-Hakra and its ancient tributaries
Satellite photography has shown that the Ghaggar-Hakra was indeed a large river that dried up several times (see Mughal 1997), probably between ca. 2500 to 2000 B.C. 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 Sarasvati river bed. The Sutlej and Yamuna Rivers have changed their courses over the time.
[16]
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 have been caused by
earthquakes which may have led to the redirection of its tributaries.
[3] It has also been suggested that the loss of rainfall in much of its catchment area due to deforestation and overgrazing in what is now Pakistan may have also contributed to the drying up of the river. However, a similar phenomenon, caused by climate change, is seen in the contemporary
BMAC.
The Ghaggar-Hakra and the 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,
which indicates the Sutlej did flow into the Sarasvati at that period of time.
It has been shown by satellite imagery that at
Ropar the Sutlej river suddenly flows away from the Ghaggar in a sharp turn. The beforehand narrow Ghaggar river bed itself is becoming suddenly wider at the conjunction where the Sutlej should have met the Ghaggar river. And there is a major
paleochannel between the point where the Sutlej takes a sharp turn and where the Ghaggar river bed widens.
[3][19]
In later texts like the
Mahabharata, the Rigvedic Sutudri (of unknown, non-Sanskrit etymology
[20] is called Shatudri (Shatadru/Shatadhara), which means a river with 100 flows.
[21] The Sutlej (and the Beas and Ravi) have frequently changed their courses.
The Beas has also probably sometimes flown into the Sutlej further downstream from where it joins that river today. Before that Sutlej is said to have flown into Ghaggar
[3] The Ghaggar-Hakra and the Yamuna
There are also no Harappan sites on the present Yamuna river. There are however
Painted Gray Ware (1000 - 600 BC) sites on the Yamuna channel, showing that the river must have flown in the present channel during this period.
[3] The distribution of the Painted Gray Ware sites in the Ghaggar river valley indicates that during this period the Ghaggar river was already partly 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 flown into the Sarasvati during Harappan times.
[3] There are several often 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.
[3] The
Yamuna may have flown into the Sarasvati river through the
Chautang or the
Drishadvati channel, since many Harappan sites have been discovered on these dried out river beds.
[3]
Identification with the Rigvedic Sarasvati
Main articles: Sarasvati River
The identification with the
Sarasvati River is based the descriptions in Vedic texts (''e.g.'' in the enumeration of the rivers in Rigveda
10.75.05, the order is
Ganga,
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 Saraswati: "[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."
[3][28]
References
1. Glaciological and Geological Source of Vedic Saraswati in the Himalayas, , V. M. K., Puri, Itihas Darpan, 1998
2. Is River Ghaggar, Saraswati? Geochemical constraints, , J. K., Tripathi, Current Science, 2004
3.
4. Saraswati, the River that Disappeared, , K. S., Valdiya, , 2003,
5.
6.
7. The dawn of Indian civilization, , S. P., Gupta, Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 1999,
8.
9. Indus Civilization, a special Number of the Eastern Anthropologist, , Virendra Nath, Misra, , 1992,
10.
11. 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. South Asian Archaeology 1993, , , , , 1994,
12.
13. An earlier survey ( Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, , , Joshi, , 1984, ) found 137 Early and 109 Mature sites in the valleys of the GHR and its tributaries.
14.
15. Excavations at Atranjikhera, Early Civilization of the Upper Ganga Basin, , R. C., Gaur, , 1983,
16. (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-spectoral scanner) and Landsat satellite photography. Note MLBD NEWSLETTER (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass), Nov. 1989.)
17.
18.
19. Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, Yash Pal, , , , 1984,
20. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, , Manfred, Mayrhofer, , ,
21. A Reply to Michael Witzel's ‘Ein Fremdling im Rgveda’, , Vishal, Agarwal, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2003
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28. A Reply to Michael Witzel's ‘Ein Fremdling im Rgveda’, , Vishal, Agarwal, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2003
Bibliography
★
The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, , Edwin, Bryant, Oxford University Press, 2001,
★
The Rig Veda and the History of India, , David, Frawley, Aditya Prakashan, 2001,
★
The lost Sarasvati and the Indus Civilisation, , S. P. (ed.), Gupta, Kusumanjali Prakashan, 1995,
★
The Rgveda and Indo-Europeans, , Nicholas, Kazanas, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1999
★
Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, , Arthur Anthony, Macdonell, , 1912,
★
Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and architecture, , Mohammed Rafique, Mughal, , 1997,
★
The Sarasvati flows on: the Continuity of Indian Culture, , B. B., Lal, Aryan Books International, 2002,
★
The Saraswati and the Lost River of the Indian Desert, , R. D., Oldham, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1893
★
Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, , Jim G., Shaffer, , 1995,
★
Bartholomae's Law Revisited, , Hartmut, Scharfe, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik, 1996
See also
★
Sarasvati River
★
Sutlej
★
Yamuna
★
Ganga
★
Indus
★
Samudra
External links
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Saraswati – the ancient river lost in the desert by A. V. Sankaran
★
Articles on the Saraswati
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Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization and Sarasvati River
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Recent Research on the Sarasvati River
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How old is the Rig Veda?
★
The Saraswati: Where lies the mystery by Saswati Paik
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The rediscovery of the Sarasvati River
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The Sarasvati in the Rig Veda by D. Frawley
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