Sarasvati River

The Sarasvati River (Sanskrit: सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī) is one of the main Rigvedic rivers mentioned in the scripture Rig Veda and later Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It plays an important role in Hinduism, since Vedic Sanskrit and the first part of the Rig Veda are regarded to have originated when the Vedic people lived on its banks, during the 2nd millennium BCE. The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west. Later Vedic texts like the Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas, as well as the Mahabharata, mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert. The Sarasvati is also considered by Hindus to exist in a metaphysical form, in which it formed a confluence with the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna, at the Triveni Sangam. The name Sarasvati was also given to a formation in the Milky Way.

Since the late 19th-century, scholars have conjectured that the Vedic Saraswati river is the Ghaggar-Hakra River system, which flows through northwestern India and Eastern Pakistan. Satellite images have pointed to a more significant river once following the course of the present day Ghaggar River. Using Indian Remote Sensing satellite data, digital elevation models, historical maps, hydro-geological and drilling data, scholars observed that major Indus Valley Civilization sites at Kalibangan (Rajasthan), Banawali and Rakhigarhi (Haryana), Dholavira and Lothal (Gujarat) also lay along this course. Another theory suggests that the Helmand River of southern Afghanistan corresponds to the Sarasvati River.

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