From: cas111jd@...
Message: 9172
Date: 2001-09-07
--- In cybalist@..., VAgarwalV@... wrote:
> In the passing, let me consider Piotr's views on Sarasvati as
contained in
> Message 8963 on September 2, 2001
>
> [Piotr:] This is circular logic. First, references to the Sarasvati
in the
> Rigveda are identified with the (full length of) the palaeo-
Ghaggar/Hakra
> channel, and the name Sarasvati is applied to the latter. Then the
fact that
> the Vedic literature speaks of Sarasvati and its disappearance in
the desert
> is taken as proof that the Vedic people were familiar with a still
functional
> Ghaggar/Hakra river, and that the authors of the Brahmanas must
have
> witnessed its drying up. Finally, an arbitrary date of the drying-
up event is
> assumed based on the belief that it was _the_ disaster that marked
the
> decline of the Indus Valley civilisation, and that, consequently,
the
> relevant Vedic literature must be dated so far back. However, as
Witzel
> points out in his `Autochthonous Aryans?', the channel dried up
gradually and
> a perennial river ending in an inland delta and a cluster of marshy
lakes may
> have existed well into post-Harappan times. The river-names of
Panjab echo
> those of Afghanistan, as if the early Indo-Aryans had moved to a
new home
> transplanting their traditional `river map' to it, as their Iranian
cousins
> took over and Iranised the original river-names. The prototypical
Sarasvati
> -- the one that provided the mythological and metaphorical aspects
of the
> river, can be identified with the Helmand. The striking similarity
of even
> the modern Helmand (and of its Avestan descriptions) to the
Rigvedic
> descriptions of Sarasvati, and the location of Arachosia/Haraxvaiti
in the
> Helmand system can hardly be a matter of coincidence.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Vishal