Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, soma, language and script

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Old Sarasvati River has been found !

So what..?
What next..?
What can I do to help..?

A number of visitors to the website and those who have participated in conferences, discussions and lectures on the subject, have asked questions on how they can get involved and have also offered to help in a number of ways…

A number of questions have been raised :
 

• " How is learning about a dried-up river or its bank going to help us now ? "
• " Is the river dried or disappeared ? "
• " Is it in `hearts' of people ? "
• " Are people motivated to carry vigorously the life-long learning process Goddess Sarasvati signifies ? "

 
The answers to these tough questions are not easy.

The river has dried up in stretches; it has not disappeared; it flows round the year at Pehoa. The river is in the hearts of many people in India; even in places where only two rivers join, the place is called a triveni sangamam; when asked, ''where is the third river?" the answer is: "It is underground; it is Sarasvati, the underground river."

We need all the help from as many people as we can get together to find satisfactory answers. A lot of work has to be done to answer the 'relevance' or 'significance' question:
 

" What do all these Research Studies meanto the citizens of Modern India ? "

Let us attempt tentative answers, which can be refined after further research work :

• A grand river seems to have existed prior to 1500 B.C. in NW India. The river seems to have been flowing for at least 1500 years before this date. The river seems to have bequeathed a lot of alluvial soil in a 300 km. stretch on her banks. According to the BARC research findings, the river also seems to have left for us a number of groundwater sanctuaries.
• Today’s technological advances can be harnessed to make the marusthali and marshy lands of kutch bloom and to keep the river flowing for stretches from adi badri to pehoa and beyond offering irrigation canal facilities to the farmers who are now dependent upon groundwater for irrigating the crops.
• Geologists and hydrologists have suggested that it is possible to sustain one million groundwater wells in the central part of the Sarasvati River Basin in Rajasthan alone. Even if one percent of this potential is harnessed, it could change the lives of the people by providing easily accessible drinking water.
• Archaeologists have discovered hundreds of archaeological sites on the banks of the river; these ancient, 5000 years’ old sites need to be protected and preserved as national, world heritage monuments. We have to do more work in understanding the language spoken by the people of these times.

Please do help by getting involved; your help doesn't have to be monetary, you can help in any of the following tasks . .

• Suggest how to decipher the language and meaning of the script and pictures on the seals ? Is it linked with the Brahmi script ?
• Visit the archaeological, ancient sites on the banks of the Sarasvati River ( listed in the next section ).
• Collect photographs of sites.
• Gather verses and information about Sarasvati referenced in different texts. Please pass them on for inclusion in the Sarasvati website --
• 
       [ email: dchand@concentric.net | kalyan97@yahoo.com ]
• Prepare booklets to inform about Sarasvati and circulate them to your friends.
• Feel free to ask questions. We will try our best to find answers to the questions.

Some have offered ideas for making a video presentation and some have suggested that our cable TVs and Doordarshan, and BBC should present video features. . " I would like to have, if possible, a list of the archeological sites associated with Harappa and the Saraswati River which I could visit. I plan to show the slides and vedio recordings to other interested people to evoke their interest."
 

The complete list of archaeological sites are listed in the annexure to the pdf document kept at the website:
 

 http://www.probys.com/sarasvati

Among these ancient sites, the more well-known ones are:
 

Dwaraka, Prabhas Patan, Somnath, Kotda (Dholavira), Lothal, Surkotada, Shiv (Pokaran), Pushkar (Ajmer), Kalibangan/Pilibangan, Banawali, Kurukshetra (also Brahmasar, Thaneswar, BaaN Ganga, Jyotisar, Pehoa, nearby; the museum in the Kurukshetra University), Kunal, PaontaSahib, Harkidun glacier (trek) beyond Yamunotri, Rakhigarhi, Mathura. At Pehoa, Sarasvati River is perennial; there are brahmayoni and sarasvati ghats. En route, you will find beautiful white lotus ponds. Also, stop by Bibipur lake (10kms. dia.) en route to Pehoa from Kurukshetra (half-an-hour journey by road).

" We are a language news paper published from Bombay.  we are providing readers staying abroad a complete news paper through Internet Web Site. . please let us know if we can be of some help to you in your mission. "
 

• Please add a link to http://www.probys.com/sarasvati.
• Please absorb the information provided at the site and have a writeup in Gujarati and English articles with selected images, explaining the importance of the findings and proposed projects.Please do include my and your http/email/mail/phone address so that interested persons can feel free to contact for further info.
• Request your readers to pass on the info. to others.
• Let me list some small projects people can undertake:
• a ) Provide us more information on Rann of Kutch and the Nall lake.
• b ) Give us more details of the demonstration farm project being undertaken by Ballarpur Industries in Luni, Kutch ( reported in Gujarati journal Chitralekha, March 1996 ) and provide guidance on how the salicornia brachiata can be grown in larger areas.
• c ) Give us names of NGOs, voluntary agencies and institutions who can help initiate microwatershed projects at village panchayat/district levels for groundwater resource management and trying out new farming  systems using high-income yielding tree crops.
• d ) Give us a list of scholars, institutions in Gujarat and their contacts so that we can formulate more projects precisely to preserve and protect our archaeological sites, to try out solar- and wind-power based energization of bore pump sets, to conduct further tests on samples of water taken from deep wells in the Gujarat sites ( on the banks of the Sarasvati River ).
• Visit as many places as your can in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, HP, UP and make presentations. Meet with NRIs and other interested people and make a presentation on the subject and discuss further on how best to progress the work done so far. Obviously, this has to grow into a movement to recognize our true heritage and also to collectively get involved with technical professionals and the people of the region, in progressing the development projects. As you know, Israel made the Ngev desert bloom using Jordan river waters and currently available technologies. We can do better and make the much larger area of the Marusthalii and the Kutch bloom. We can use the palaeo-channels of Sarasvati River to improve the drainage system of NW India and stem the ongoing man-made desertification. After all, these areas supported the most extensive, cooperative civilization about 5000 to 3500 years ago, exemplified by the arts and crafts which began and flourished on the river banks of Sarasvati and the Nadii Maataa is therefore adored as the Mother Goddess of Learning and the Arts.
• We should re-enact Balarama's pilgrimage by organizing pilgrimage tours along the banks of the Sarasvati from Dwaraka/Somnath right up to Har-ki-dun in the Himalayas.
• New editions of our history/geography textbooks should reflect the new evidence. How should this be achieved? Maybe, there should be a campaign to write letters to the authors and publishers of the textbooks in all languages in our country?
• 8.If possible, kindly give publicity in the local language and English press/cable TV, doordarshan etc. and also in the press in Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, U.P.

We are sure you will be able to come up with more ideas and ways to spread the word around on how privileged we are to be the inheritors of our glorious traditions starting with the Vedas written by very dedicated people who lived on the banks of the Sacred Sarasvati River . .

Dr. S. Kalyanaraman

19 Temple Avenue

Srinagar

Colony Saidapet

Chennai 600015

India

Tel. +91 44 2354640

<kalyan99@netscape.net>

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