Aryan Invasion Theory - Publication - Vivekananda Kendra

VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKA
The river Saraswathi has been an
enchanting mythological memory
and a thrilling historical mystery
and of late an unnecessary political
controversy. However can this river be
rescued from such unwanted
controversies and returned to its rightful
place as an eye-opened for the depth and
extent of our civilizational past, our
knowledge of it or our ignorance?
The book ‘The Lost River: On the trail of
the Saraswathi’ by Michel Danino, does
exactly that and much more. The book is
a scientific odyssey into the past that still
flows in our veins as our culture and
whose deep wellsprings may be running
down under the desert beds and paleochannels
that extend from the Himalayan
valleys to the north-western coastline of
India.
The part one of the book has some very
interesting maps belonging to the
colonial period painstakingly collected by
Danino. For example there is the 1862
British map of India where a tributary to
Ghaggar is labeled ‘Soorsutty’ i.e.
Sarsuti. (p.20) Contrary to the popular
misconception that the modern day
discovery of Saraswathi starts with the
satellite photography, Danino documents
how Saraswathi was a vivid memory in
localized oral traditions of rural
160
ARYAN INVASION THEORY
Here we provide three book-reviews that deal with the issues dealt here:
Sara s wathi River: A Scientific Study: Book
R eview by Yuva Bharathi
Rajasthan and how colonial British
cartographers traced a dried river bed
which they invariably considered as the
lost river Saraswathi. Thus Danino
quotes C.F.Oldham who claimed that the
course of the ‘lost river’ had now been
traced from the Himalayas to the Rann
of Kutch and the accounts given by
Mahabharatha and Vedas “were
probably both of them correct at the
periods to which they referred” (p.34)
Then Danino moves through the Vedic
literature to the maze of mythological
lore searching for clues on the geological
history as well as geographical spread
of the river. Vishnu Purana curiously
does not mention her; Makeandeya
Purana does and in the same way as the
famous Vedic river hymn does. Padma
Purana mentions an all consuming fire
in connection with Saraswathi. Danino
speculates aloud if this all consuming fire
could actually be the mythologized
memory of an actual drought that
engulfed the whole area (p 44) Danino
also ploughs through epigraphic data
and even quoted an Islamic source, as
late as fifteenth century Tarijh-i-Mubarak
Shahi which testifies to the existence of
Saraswathi (p.46)
He then seamlessly moves to the modern
research that is being done in search of
the river. In this exciting phase of the book