Sarasvati river at Hemkund Saheb

The Sarasvati River is one of the chief Rigvedic Rivers mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later Vedic texts like Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas as well as the Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert. The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity and gained meaning. The identification of the Vedic Sarasvati River with the Ghaggar-Hakra River was accepted by Christian Lassen, Max Müller, Marc Aurel Stein, C.F. Oldham and Jane Macintosh, while some Vedic scholars believe the Helmand River of southern Afghanistan corresponds to the Sarasvati River.

Course of Saraswati Palaeo-drainage network formed by several palaeochannels has been worked out by different researchers in western Rajasthan and neighbouring states, which is mainly buried under sand cover of the Thar Desert and parallel to the Aravalli Hills 6--8. In the last couple of years with the advancement in satellite and remote sensing technology, palaeochannels have been mapped systematically. Different workers have different opinions about the number of courses of Saraswati River. On the basis of aerial photographs and Landsat imagery, faults/lineaments and palaeo-drainage system in North West India have been delineated. Several authors have opined that upliftment of the Aravallis led to the westward migration of Saraswati River system due to fault-controlled movements. The faults have been and continue to be active, registering various sideways and up--down movements in the geological past. As a consequence, there was uplift and sinking or horizontal (lateral) displacement of the ground. Under such tectonophysiographic upheavals, the rivers and streams were frequently forced to change their courses, sometimes gradually, sometimes abruptly, as seen on satellite images. As per Hindu beliefs, Saraswati river flows underground and meets Yamuna and Ganga at their confluence in Prayag, Allahabad.

Source: Wikipedia

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