On Arguing of the Mighty Saraswati River

Nowadays the most popular argument advanced in favour of indigenist
views - in debates on the emergence of Vedic Aryan language and
culture in Indian subcontinent – is surely the Saraswati-argument. I
am not going to take stand here on whether it is just to call
Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannels and their contemporary remains
as "Saraswati river" in any sense of that expression. Whether
that is legitimate or not depends much on the context and the way
one gives "Saraswati river" its identity. Instead, I am going to
criticize here the way "Mighty Saraswati River" has been used
as a very peculiar dating scheme. This dating scheme is the major
premise for an argument for the existence of a "Vedic culture" in
the Greater Indus Valley no later than the Harappan culture.

Here is how the argument (distilled from many articles) goes:

1.Any river can be identical with the legendary "Mighty Saraswati
River" if and only if that river was (a) a perennial river that
flowed from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea in an area that is
limited from the west by the perennial Indus river and from the east
by the perennial Ganges river and if (b) the Vedic Aryan
civilization flourished along the banks of that river. (Premise)

2.(a) A perennial river flowed from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea
through the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannels and (b) the
majority of the Harappan cities and sites were located along the
banks of that river. (Premise)

There is a temptation to infer from these premises a conclusion:

3.There existed a river, flowing through the present-day Ghaggar-
Hakra paleochannels, which was identical with the legendary
"Mighty Saraswati River". (from 1 & 2)

But that is not all that is desired. Once one adds the further
premise

4.No perennial river has flowed from the Himalayas to the Arabian
Sea in an area that is limited from the west by the perennial Indus
River and from the east by the perennial Ganges River since the
decline of the Harappan civilization. (Premise)

one can easily get:

5.The legendary "Mighty Saraswati River", flowing through the
present-day Ghaggar-Hakra paleochannels, ceased to exist after the
decline of the Harappan civilization. (Conclusion; from 3 & 4)


But is the argument sound? We surely remember that an argument is
sound if and only if (i) all its premises are true and (ii) all its
inferential steps are valid. Hence, to challenge the conclusion of
an argument, all you have to do is to challenge successfully one of
its premises or one of the inferences.


A brief analysis of the argument:

Premise 1: This premise is interpretative and hence open to dispute.
It would be absurd to think that any river whatsoever could carry
the exciting indigenist message: some particular identity must be
provided for the legendary river. The presumably perennial nature of
the river and its presumed role as the cradle of the Vedic Aryan
civilization seem to be minimum conditions. Morover, it is necessary
for the indigenist case that the legendary "Mighty Saraswati
River" flowed within the confines of the Greater Indus Valley, not
in Afganistan or in somewhere else.


Premise 2: There is dispute over both subpremises. However, just for
the sake of the argument, I will concede 2(b). But is 2(a) true?
–
Well, true or not, it is certainly not obvious, not even among
Saraswati-minded scientists and geologists. To see the point, I ask
my readers to think what A.B. Roy and S.R.Jakhar write in "Late
Quaternary drainage disorganization, and migration and extinction of
the Vedic Saraswati" (REVIEW ARTICLES, CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 81,
NO. 9, 10 NOVEMBER 2001 1193):

"The idea that the Ghaggar–Hakra–Nara course represents
the Vedic Saraswati channel, although attracted attention of a large
number of workers, is not in conformity with the fact that the
mythical river has been conceived as the greatest river of ancient
India. In the Rig Vedic hymns the river has been referred to as
naditamé saraswati, meaning the `best of rivers' (Rv.7.95.2), which
surpasses `in majesty and might all other river' (Rv.7.95.2
and `swifter than other rapid streams'. `It comes onward
with tempestuous roar (Rv. 6.61.8) bursting ridges and hills with
its strong waves (Rv. 6.61.2). These descriptions of Saraswati do
not appear compatible in any way with any of the dry ephemeral beds
of Ghaggar, Hakra and Nara. Even if we assume that the mighty
Himalayan river flowed through Rajasthan only during the Middle and
Late Holocene times, and was later shifted westward or
northwestward, the flow of the river must have been reduced
drastically when its course merged with those now followed by the
Ghaggar, Hakra and Nara. None of the tributaries of the
present-day Ghaggar River system has any headwater source connection
with the Himalayan glaciers, and survives only on monsoon rains.

The Ghaggar, according to Rajaguru and Badam35, was never a mighty
river during the Harappan times. There is also no proof to suggest
that Ghaggar ever had a flow pattern matching with that of the Vedic
Saraswati. The present width of the Ghaggar has been
overemphasized36.It is a common phenomenon that the ephemeral beds
are generally wider, as these have to compensate the lack of depth
in river-beds to carry huge volume of flood waters. Even the delta
that now occurs at the mouth of the River Nara is relatively small
compared to that which occurs further east in the Great Rann of
Kachchh, and assigned to the River Saraswati27,28."


So much for the premise 2.

But we must now also assess the inference from premises 1 and 2 to
conclusion 3.

The First Inference (from 1 & 2 to 3): Even accepting 2(a), the
inference is fallacious. If you want to prove that Harappans were
really Vedic Aryans, it is going in circles to simply assume that
they were Vedic Aryans. The inference is acceptable only if we add a
new premise that identifies Vedic Aryan culture with the Harappan
culture, but that was the very thesis to be proved! In fact, the
indigenist argument takes recourse to an archaeological variant of
the Indian Rope Trick: use first the Harappan sites to show that as
Ghaggar-Hakra was presumably the cradle of Harappan civilization,
then use a selective interpretation of RigVeda passages and the
presumed geological facts to give the RigVeda an appropriately
impressive dating - and you will have the Harappan sites descending
from the clouds as Vedic Aryan sites! All this may impress the
gullible, but it is nothing but a magician´s illusion…

The premise contained in the statement 4: Let us accept it for the
sake of the argument…

The Second Inference (from 3 & 4 to 5): We can accept this
inference…

But the "Mighty Saraswati River" has been lost already. The
premise 2 is unwarranted and the usual inference to statement 3 is
fallacious. Hence the argument, in the version I have presented, is
not sound. Does anyone know a sound argument in favour of the
"Vedic Aryan Mighty Saraswati River" being the cradle of all Indian
civilization?


Best regards, Juha Savolainen