Showing posts with label saraswati river. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saraswati river. Show all posts

Friday, September 25, 2015

Saraswati River (Sanskrit: सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī

Saraswati (Sanskrit: सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī) is the only Indian River of ancient times, which was referred to many times in Vedas,Upanishads and Puranas.

It was called Ambitame, Naditame, Devitame – the Best of mothers, Best of rivers and Best of goddesses in the Rig Veda.There are many vedic, puranic and historical events connected to this river, yet it is non-existant today.Entire hymns are dedicated to it in Rigveda, verses [6.61], [7.95] and [7.96 ].This river has seen prosperity of the most ancient language on earth (Sanskrit), birth of a great civilization, end of an era with Mahabharata war.The Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization is now found to be a collection of nearly 2,500 settlements of various periods along the Saraswati and other rivers, some of which date earlier than 6000 BC.

Today, every Indian knows that the River Saraswati is ‘gupt’ – meaning ‘invisible’ – but definitely present in the waters of the Yamuna and joins the Ganga to make the holy Triveni Sangam in Prayag.Infact, the annual 12 days festival of Pushkara.

The Ghaggar-Hakra River (Devnagri: घग्गर हकरा, Gurmukhi: ਘੱਗਰ ਹਕਰਾ, Shahmukhi: گهگـر هکره) is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season.
It is identified as the Vedic Sarasvati River, as its riverbed is 3 to 10 kilometers wide at places proving that it had indeed been a mighty river once.Advanced imagery from the Satellites have also been used to trace the dried river route and its beds.Saraswati River satellite mapAbout 5000 years ago, the flow of Saraswati was supplemented by the waters of Yamuna and Satluj both of which are perennial rivers from Himalayan glaciers.

Saraswati originated from the Har-ki-Dun glacier in West Garhwal, Bandarpunch massif in the Himalayas, along with the river Yamuna.The two rivers flowed parallel for some distance and later joined, proceeding south as the Vedic Saraswati.The seasonal rivers and rivulets, including Ghaggar, joined Saraswati as it followed the course of the present river through Punjab and Haryana. River Sutlej (Shatadru in Sanskrit), joined Saraswati as a tributary at Shatrana, approximately 25 km south of the modern city of Patiala.Saraswati then followed the course of Ghaggar through Rajasthan and Hakra in Bhawalpur before emptying into the Rann of Kutch via Nara in Sindh province, running parallel to the Indus River.

In the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan, even with very little rainfall (less that 150 mm) and extreme weather conditions, groundwater is available at a depth of 50-60 meters and wells in the vicinity do not dry up throughout the year. Groundwater samples exhibit negligible Tritium content indicating absence of modern recharge.
Independent Isotope analyses have also corroborated this fresh water stored under the sand dunes and Radiocarbon data suggests the groundwater is at least a few thousand years old.These locations are on the dry river bed of Saraswati.