india

Updated: Nov 02, 2019 03:05 IST

For the fourth year in a row, India will look for the fabled Saraswati River, which many believe flows underground and meets the Ganga and Yamuna at Prayagraj.

It has approved a project of the Chandigarh circle of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to search for the river along a stretch from Kaithal to Sirsa in Haryana.

According to an internal note of ASI, which has been seen by HT,the site lies “along the dried-up bed of the river Saraswati up to a distance of 5km on both sides of river from District Kaithal to District Sirsa” till the Haryana-Rajasthan border. The project is one of the nine projects of the ASI that the standing committee of the Central Advisory Board of Archeology (CABA) has approved for the 2019-20 season.

An officer of the Chandigarh circle said on condition of anonymity that the exploration is part of the circle’s mandate and will be carried out along its routine activities. “We have explored from Banawali to the Adibadri regions in previous field season periods. We are looking at going downstream this season.”

Another excavation project, in Kalibangan in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh district will continue to look for traces of the river. Kalibangan has been excavated earlier.

Every year, the standing committee of CABA decides which exploration or excavation projects will be carried out. The list of nine projects is of those which will be carried out by various offices of ASI.

BR Mani, former director general of the National Museum, and a member of the standing committee of CABA, said that all the evidence that the Centre has gathered till now suggests that the Saraswati sites far outnumber the Indus sites. “The Indus Valley civilisation should be renamed Saraswati Valley civilisation because of the 3,000 sites along the area, only 1,200 have been found to be along the Indus. The rest are on the Saraswati river,” said Mani.

As DG of the National Museum, Mani spearheaded a year-long excavation along the river bed in Haryana’s Fatehabad. “Our findings were of potteries, which were proven to belong to as far back as 6000 BC,”said Mani. The ASI first started looking for the river in 2003 under the Vajpayee government.

In the last five years, excavations and explorations have been carried out at Kunal in Haryana’s Fatehabad district, Lohari Ragho and Masudpur in Haryana’s Hisar, on the Chautang basin (considered a tributary of the Saraswati) in Haryana, Kalibangan in Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh district as well as Binjore in Rajasthan’s Ganganagar.

However, noted historian DN Jha said that the government is chasing a myth. “In four years, the findings have been inconclusive. And the efforts go against what the scriptures say,” said Jha.

References in the scriptures to the river state that the river flows from Haryana to Allahabad in UP underneath the ground. “The scriptures say the river joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at Triveni Sangam and ends in the Indian Ocean. But these findings would land the river in Arabian Sea instead,” he said.