Saraswati: The lost river

The river Saraswati once drained the northwest region of India. There are extensive references to Saraswati in the Vedas, Puranas and epics.

The river Saraswati (also spelled Sarasvati) originated in the Himalayas and drained the northwest region of India. Though the river has no physical existence today there is ample evidence that it gave birth to a civilization that is at least 8000 years old.

The source of the river was the Har-ki-Dun glacier in the Bandarpunch massif in West Garhwal in the Himalayas. It was close to Yamnotri the source of the river Yamuna. In fact at one time the Yamuna joined the Saraswati. The other major tributary of the Saraswati was the Sutlej. The Saraswati took a course parallel to the Indus River and emptied into the Arabian Sea at the Rann of Kutch. Through Geographical Information systems (GIS) the course of the erstwhile river has been traced. The river ran a length of 1600 km, was 8 km wide at its maximum and is said to have supported 16,000 settlements along its course.

The Riga Veda refers frequently to both Saraswati and the Saptasindhu, a region watered by seven rivers. The Sindhu (Indus) formed the western boundary of this region and the Saraswati the eastern boundary. Both Sindhu and Saraswati are Sanskrit words for river. The other rivers were Satadru (Sutlej), Vipasa (Beas), Asikni (Chenab), Parosni (Ravi) and Vitasta (Jhelum). The importance of this river can be gauged from the fact that it is referred to as Ambitame, the best of the mothers, Naditame, the best of the rivers and Devitame, the best of the goddesses in The Riga Veda, Book 2, Hymn XLI.

Later texts like the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana also refer to the River Saraswati. Kurukshetra, where the Mahabharata War took place, was bounded on the north by Saraswati. During the Mahabharata period the River Saraswati was already drying up. In Section CXXX of the Vana Parva Lomasa points out that the Saraswati goers underground at Vinasana and remerges at Chamshodbheda. In Section VI of the Bhishma Parva, Sanjay the narrator of the war tells Dhritarashtra the blind king “As regards the Saraswati, in some parts (of her course) she becometh visible and in some parts not so”. [1]

There is also a view that after going underground the Saraswati merged with the Ganga and Yamuna at Prayag. Hence Prayag is the confluence of not two but three holy rivers. In Section LXXXIV of the Vana Parva there is a reference to bathing at the confluence of the Ganga and the Saraswati results in ascent to heaven.

Brahma’s consort, the Goddess Saraswati, is the Goddess of learning. The river had been deified as the Goddess of learning because of the wisdom that was accumulated along its banks thousands of years ago.

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[1] The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli [published between 1883 and 1896] and available online at Internet Sacred Text Archive.