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Only on History Hunter.
In today's episode,
we'll discuss how the greatest river of India disappeared.
Do you know the history of India?
Do you believe what happened in the past is true?
Do you consider the many unsolved mysteries as lies?
Do you know the real India?
If not, worry not.
MP is here.
I have found some fascinating facts, some experts,
and some evidence that will present the truth before you,
and help give you a clear picture of our history,
on History Hunter with me, Maniesh Paul.
A river which has been described as the greatest river in the Vedas.
If you look at the Rigveda,
there are mentions of Saraswati about 60 times.
Rigveda describes that her waves were so high
that they looked like peaks of mountains.
The river on whose banks the Mahabharata war was fought.
Today, there is no trace of the river.
All that remains is its skeletons.
These multiple paleochannels were the major findings
to recognise the paleo course of the Saraswati River.
But some say it still flows in a hidden manner.
The Saraswati River is still flowing.
It can be seen in a place called Bhimpula.
What caused the Saraswati to dry up?
We have got some of the information,
but we are yet to go further.
How did the existence of India's greatest river in history disappear?
This cannot happen unless there is a catastrophic global phenomenon
which triggered such a collapse.
India!
The Vedas refer to India as "Sapt Sindhu,"
which means, "The land of seven rivers."
There is one such river which is mentioned in our Vedic texts,
but it does not exist today.
The Saraswati River.
What happened to this great river?
Did it dry up?
Or did it change its course?
Some say, it still flows today, underground, in a hidden manner.
What is the truth about Saraswati?
This question still perplexes many experts, geologists, and scholars.
But you don't need to be troubled.
Don't fear when MP is here.
(LAUGHS)
Let's begin the search for Saraswati,
only on History Hunter.
(BLOWS CONCH SHELL)
Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.
Every twelve years, the world's largest gathering takes place here
at the Mahakumbh Mela.
"Prayag" or "Sangam" means the confluence of two rivers.
And in Prayagraj,
we see the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna.
I'm on the banks of the Ganga
and it's said that a third river merges
at the confluence of Ganga-Yamuna in Prayagraj.
An invisible river.
A river that flows underground and joins Ganga and Yamuna.
But which river is this?
The Ganga Stotra and Saraswati Stotra
by renowned philosopher, Shankaracharya,
quotes the term "Prayagraj,"
which means a confluence of rivers
which is a very holy place.
The Saraswati, as a revered and sacred river
is so much in our religious and cultural psyche
that people started naming various rivers as Saraswati
in different parts of India.
As of now,
there is no evidence of any such river flowing in Prayagraj,
nor is there any scientific evidence.
Even in ancient times
it would come down from the Himalayas,
and then take a sharp bend towards the east.
Saraswati is a river that comes down from the Himalayas,
and flowing slightly westward, following a near parallel
to the Indus Channel.
It then flows towards the northern fringes of Rann,
debouching into the extended Kori Creek.
Coming out of the Himalayas and heading towards the east,
then turning towards the west.
Man, I hope I don't end up going north-south in this east-west loop.
But I've heard that the same thing has been said about the Saraswati
in the Vedas and Mahabharata.
It is said that after Lord Parshuram
annihilated oppressors from the Earth,
he took a bath in the sacred Saraswati River.
Moreover, even the great war of Mahabharata
was fought along the banks of Saraswati.
And then, when the Pandavas set out for heaven after winning the war,
they encountered the mighty Saraswati River.
So Bhima makes a request to Saraswati to make way.
But Saraswati does not oblige.
So Bhima throws a big block of stone on the river
and Draupadi crosses on that stone bridge,
and then they ascend the Swargarohini.
The Rigveda also mentions Saraswati in three distinct forms.
The very first mandala of Rigveda 1.3
mentions her both as a physical river
and with a personality of an illuminator.
Saraswati is described as a bright and mighty river.
Then she was a monsoon-fed river.
She flowed very forcefully, and she is called Ritabhari.
How could a river that bears so many historical imprints
disappear from India's sacred land?
Rivers like Indus, Beas, Satluj, Ravi, Chenab,
and Jhelum are still present today,
so why couldn't a grand river like Saraswati survive?
Before we solve this mystery,
let's first understand the route of the Vedic Saraswati River
as per scientific research.
In 1893, Oldham, a geologist
at the Geological Survey of India published a paper
where he defined for the first time the course of river Saraswati.
And what did he define?
He defined precisely the Nara-Hakra-Ghaggar River channel
which was the course of the Saraswati.
All scientific evidence coupled with archaeological evidence suggests,
Saraswati was actually flowing west of the Thar desert
from the Ghaggar-Hakra through Hakra-Nara,
and eventually debouching into the Rann of Kutch.
When we discuss the paleochannels of the River Saraswati,
they are mostly buried across the Thar desert,
and the alluvial plains of Punjab and Haryana.
"Paleo" means past,
"channel" is river channel.
So paleochannels simply means past river channels.
We really can't see them from the surface.
But, but, but, my question is,
even if we found the skeleton of a large river--
I mean its paleochannel,
how can we be sure that this was indeed the route of the Saraswati?
Is it possible that this could be another river?
And if this was indeed Saraswati, then where did it disappear?
All these Harappan civilisation settlements.
They have grown along the river banks
because these settlements were essentially agrarian societies,
so they needed floodplains for agriculture.
What you see today in the present-day Haryana
through Rajasthan up to the Rann of Kutch,
they were growing along the river banks of the buried channel
of the Saraswati.
And these settlements
are far more in numbers than previously considered.
Therefore, many archaeologists and Indologists
are inclined to refer to these civilisations
as Indus-Saraswati civilisation,
rather than only Indus Valley civilisation.
There is mention in the Vedas
about how civilisations around this great river
were being affected by it.
Rigveda describes that her waves were so high,
that they looked like peaks of mountains.
And then she disturbed the habitation.
In the seal, the habitation is depicted with an X like mark,
like, where four roads meet.
It is called "Chatushpatha" in the Veda.
Chatushpatha means where civilisation existed
and where the four roads meet.
The waves of Saraswati surged so forcefully over Chatushpatha that
the habitation was destroyed.
So the Indus seal also indicates a river with powerful waves.
In the Rigveda, Sukta requested the Saraswati to flow peacefully,
but I need to find evidence of the north-west civilisation
that settled along the banks of the river.
Was it really the Himalayan-fed Saraswati?
And if it was indeed Saraswati,
then we need to prove that it is an ancient river
dating back 4-5 thousand years.
A consortium of scientists from the United States, UK,
and some other countries had actually attempted to explore
the course of the ancient River Saraswati.
What they did was they began drilling along the paleochannels
which are now buried from Pakistan through India.
The most surprising thing they discovered is that
that these paleochannels have remnants of glacial bone sediments.
That means these paleochannels were receiving water
from the glaciated higher Himalayas.
The scientists found that this mighty river
which originated from glaciers and dated back to about 5,000 years,
it continued to flow until nearly 3,000 years ago,
before it completely dried up.
So what happened was that,
scientists dated the sand grains found in the river channels,
and they also connected these river channels
to around 5,000 years ago.
This was one of the very solid pieces of evidence
which suggests that the river was really, really, active and present
during the Harappan time.
In fact, this was a...
path-breaking finding of this consortium of scientists.
This groundbreaking finding by the scientists
could have been record-breaking,
if they had included me in their team.
Actually, they tried to contact me but I changed my phone number.
So they couldn't contact me.
Now, that I received a call from Discovery,
I'm fully focused on the assignment.
It's clear that this mighty river
was indeed active during the time of the Harappan civilisation.
This means that the lives of the people of that civilisation
must have been greatly influenced by this great river.
To know more about this
we've come to one of Harappa's most magnificent cities, Dholavira.
Dholavira was built around the Rivers Manhar and Manzar.
If you go to Pakistan,
you'll find cities built along the Indus Valley civilisation.
And if you come to the Indian part,
around the Nara-Hakra-Ghaggar-Hakra Saraswati River channels,
on either sides, you'll find enormous number of settlements.
Likewise, many of Mesopotamia's artefacts have also been found
in Dholavira and many other Harappan settlements.
So that only indicates that there was a very strong trade
and material exchange between these cities.
And that could only happen if there was a definitive trade route.
For example, the river route.
Was it the River Saraswati that connected Dholavira to Harappa,
Mohenjo-daro, and other civilisations?
Apart from Dholavira, experts found other interesting evidence
on the banks of this mighty river.
Like in Anupgarh, Rajasthan.
We started looking for further evidence.
This took us to the district town of Hanumangarh,
the township of Anupgarh,
and all these places which are situated
on the banks of the present-day Ghaggar
and the paleochannels associated with it.
We found that wherever there are borewells,
wherever there are dug wells,
and when people dug probably for ten meters,
they kept on finding beautiful, fine, greyish micaceous sand,
which cannot be part of the present-day Ghaggar system.
Hold on a minute.
If the Ghaggar system itself is
the channel of this ancient mighty river,
then why do we need more evidence?
Isn't the problem "hence proved"?
Is this Saraswati?
So Ghaggar is a rain-fed river. It carries clay.
So it really can't carry this kind of sand.
So buried ten meters below the Ghaggar mud is
a thick deposition of white-greyish micaceous sand.
How old are these sands?
The youngest age
we found for this sand was around 4500 years.
So we tried doing geochemical analysis of this sand,
and what was surprising and remarkable is that
the river which carried this sand up to Hanumangarh and Anupgarh
was flowing or had sources in up higher Himalayas.
Wow, man.
It became evident that this river was Himalayan-fed
from the findings in Hanumangarh and Anupgarh.
We found similar evidence a bit further down
at the Dholavira site in Gujarat.
Looking at the early layers of Dholavira,
we found different kinds of shells.
We found some freshwater bivalves or freshwater shells,
and we also found some mangrove shells in Dholavira.
Those were estuarine mangrove shells.
Now, what was particularly interesting was,
how could we find fresh water shells and mangrove shells in this area?
Because the only mangroves that could be found near this region
are a 100 km away near the fringes of Kori Creek.
Another interesting observation is that these shells show
typical human-cut features,
so they were probably being used to extract meat,
and this is an indication that they were used for food purposes.
It's unlikely that anyone would travel such a large distance
just to collect this food.
So probably mangroves were near Dholavira.
When we brought these shells into the lab,
we conducted some oxygen isotopic investigations on them.
What we found was that the oxygen isotopic composition of the river
from which these shells came was very distinct.
It did not resemble monsoon water, but rather like Indus,
which is actually a glacial-fed river.
First in Rajasthan's Hanumangarh, and then in Gujarat's Dholavira.
We have found evidence on the banks of this mighty river that indicated
the river was possibly originating from the Himalayan glaciers.
And maybe, this was River Saraswati.
In fact, the paleochannel routes seen in ISRO's research
through optical satellite data and microwave data,
align with many historical maps.
If we look closely, some of these old maps
depict this very route of the Saraswati River.
How could the greatest river in the history of India
disappear from its map?
Was this linked with the collapse of a civilisation?
Dholavira collapsed somewhere around 4,000 years ago.
When we were doing our research,
it was very fascinating to see
that it wasn't just Dholavira that collapsed,
but all other contemporary settlements like, Juni Guran,
Kuntasi, Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan,
the Mesopotamian civilisation, and the Egyptian civilisation.
All of them collapsed exactly at the same time.
Now, this cannot happen unless there is
a catastrophic global phenomenon which triggers such a collapse.
What calamity did nature unleash that along with these civilisations
it erased all traces of existence of such a mighty river?
In the 10th mandala of Rigveda
we see Saraswati described as a goddess of knowledge.
She was flowing before, but she is not to be seen now.
She was full of waves, and now she is without any sound.
That means she is not flowing.
All the scientific data suggests that there was a major drought
which definitely affected the tropics and subtropics
and likely even beyond constituting a global phenomenon
known as the Meghalayan drought.
This Meghalayan drought wiped-out
the civilisations across, as I said, Suez and Dholavira.
All the river channels like the Nara-Hakra,
Saraswati River channels dried,
and the cultivation or agricultural practices had to be ceased.
So in the end, all the dots connect to the Meghalayan drought.
This wasn't a drought lasting for a month or two
in a specific area or region.
It persisted for 200 years,
erasing all traces of civilisations worldwide.
It is said that the Meghalayan Age began after this period.
And even today, we continue to live in the same era.
The Meghalayan name comes from its type section
or where this drought has been extensively recorded
from a site known as Mawmluh Cave in Meghalaya.
This extreme global drought might be one of the main culprits
behind the loss of water in Saraswati or its drying up.
The route of Saraswati has been validated
based on numerous ground data.
It originated from the higher Himalayas
and flowed towards the western part.
It traversed through Himachal Pradesh
Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan,
and finally reached the Rann of Kachchh in Gujarat.
The Vedic Saraswati River had a river system
similar to the present-day Indus River system.
And it flowed quite substantially until around 6,000 BC.
However, it gradually began to dry up,
and due to a global drought around 2,000 BC
it completely dried up.
An incredible river that eased the lives of our ancestors,
a river which was revered as a goddess,
a river which sustained civilisations for centuries.
Though Saraswati may not be visible today,
she continues to flow as knowledge and wisdom
in our hearts.
I'll be back soon to unravel another mystery of history.
Only on History Hunter.
This is Maniesh Paul signing off.
And remember,
don't be a troublemaker, be a History Hunter.
Subtitle Caption by ZestCorp