Vedicist Kalyanraman and the Sarasvati!

Kalyanraman is the dumbest writer I ever came across. He believes that the Sarasvati River was one among Sapta Sindhu, i.e. seven rivers that flowed through northwestern India. He states that this region belonged to the Panchajana, five people, and that about 80% of the Indus civilisation sites are located on the banks of the Sarasvati river (which has been known to the Indians as Ghaggar since time unknown.) He has shifted the complete geography of the River Sarasvati, highly revered by the Vedic Aryans, to stake a huge claim on the authorship of the Indus-Ghaggar civilisation. To do this he recklessly neglects geological proofs, and geography appearing in the Rig Veda and makes out a theory that is flimsy and misguiding.

Geologically it has been proven beyond doubt that the Ghaggar River never ever had a glacial source. It also has been proven with new geochemical and geomorphological studies that Yamuna and Sutlej stopped flowing into the Ghaggar /Saraswati thousands of years before the Harappan civilisation. Ghaggar is fed from Shivaliks and not Himalayan glaciers. No Drushadvati river belongs to the Indian soil that is said to be a tributary to Vedic Sarasvati.

It is a fact that the River Ghaggar was a perennial river before 1800 BC because of the wetter monsoon. It also is a fact that there are over a thousand Indus-Ghaggar sites along the channel of old Ghaggar. But as the climate changed, gradually the Ghaggar shrunk and just became a seasonal river. Not only India but from Mesopotamia to China, a vast track suffered from this climatic change. However, though seasonal, Ghaggar was never a lost river. How come the most revered river of the Vedics changed its name from Sarasvati to Ghaggar? Vedic has no answer to this vital question.

“Since this work, no new data challenging these results have appeared. Scientists, as evidenced by this paper, appear to now accept that the Ghaggar was a monsoonal river right through the Holocene. This result has annoyed not only geologists who had proposed the glacial river theory but also supporters of the indigenous Aryan Theory. They had used the glacial river theory to time the presence of the Vedic people in the plains of Haryana and Punjab before 2000 B.C.” States Sedimentary Geologist Suvrat Kher.

Linking the Ghaggar with the Rig Vedic Sarasvati is insanity because the geography and the people they inhabited do not match at all with the indigenous Aryan theory. There has surfaced no evidence that can link the Ghaggar civilisation with the Vedic. There is no semblance in the residential patterns of the Vedics and Indus people. They didn’t know even the bricks and granaries. They didn’t know the great baths and brick-paved streets.

The Rig Veda nowhere mentions the famous Kurukshetra through which the Saraswati is supposed to have flowed. Had the Ghaggar been the lost Saraswati and the Bharata clan of Sudasa ruled on the banks of the most revered river Saraswati and in whose reign, the most sacred scriptures had been composed, one would expect his mention in Mahabharata. But that is not the case.

We are aware of the tribes frequently mentioned in the Rig Veda with which the Vedics had constant relations as friends or foes. Rig Veda mentions that Turvasa, Pakhta, Bhalanasa, Parshu, Bhrigu, etc. are the tribes that were settled from northwest bordering regions of the Indian subcontinent to Phrygia. The geography of Avesta suggests it was close to the Vedic geography. The wars fought on the Iranian plateau among them and Vedics find a place in both the scriptures, i.e. Avesta and Rig Veda. Both religions possess so much close affinity that without geographical closeness it is impossible to happen

Had they been in India while they composed Vedas, there would be ample mention of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers because they were the rivers that flowed in close vicinity with the vast channels. The Yamuna had stopped flowing into the Ghaggar channel millenniums before the Indus civilisation As rivers, Yamuna and Ganga, with few others, find mention only once in Nadistuty Hymn, the creation of the later period, and nowhere else, we can clearly see that the Vedic Aryans came across these rivers in the late era. Vedic Sarasvati, which flowed through Afghanistan was lost to them by that time except for the wonderful memories of the bygone days.

Apart from the river Sarasvati, the most frequently mentioned river is Rasa which is equated with Avestan Ranha, now identified with the River Tigris. After Rasa, there comes Sarayu which is alternatively called Haroyu or Hari-rud. The rivers Gomati (Gomal), Kubha (Kabul), Krumu (Kurram), Suvastu (Swat), Arjikiya (Haro), etc. are the rivers that flow from Afghanistan and its western regions. Many other rivers mentioned belong to the western tributaries of the Indus. The lack of mention of the eastern rivers just suggests that the Vedic people never knew those regions. Had the composers of the Rig Veda been inhabitants of the Ghaggar basin, there wouldn’t be frequent mention of such faraway rivers. Rather we would find the mentions of Ganga, Yamuna, and other eastern rivers and their tributaries. Surprisingly we find mention of Ganga, Yamuna, and Indian rivers only once in the late mandala, in Nadisukta. Still, the Vedic people want to forward their unfounded theory on indigenous Aryans, i.e. Vedic people.  

Let us not forget that the nearest distance of the river Swat from Ghaggar is not less than 800 kilometers. All other rivers mentioned are beyond that location. Indus is the common synonym for the river in Vedic vocabulary, hence it always cannot be equated with the Indus river! So, Vedic being residents of the Ghaggar basin is just an imaginary hypothesis that doesn’t stand on the grounds of any proof.

So, no matter how Vedicist scholars want to twist the geological history of the Ghaggar River to make their point, no matter how back they want to stretch the time of the Rig Veda, they simply cannot prove the composers of the Vedas were residents of the Ghaggar basin. Thus Kalyanraman and his colleagues want to prove unprovable, but alas, none of his statements gets support from either geological findings or Rig Veda! They now should know this is the end of the Vedicism!

-Sanjay Sonawani