Mohenjodaro was on the banks of the Sarasvati river

[Dr. S. Kalyanaraman]

Hi,
Re: Mohenjo-daro was on the banks of the Sarasvati river

Marshall's report (1931, pp.1-6) which includes a 
superb map, reads thus: "(Mohenjo-daro) stands on what is known 
locally as "The Island"-- a long, narrow strip of land 
between the main river bed and the Western Nara loop, 
its precise position being 27.19N by 68.8E, some 7 miles
by road from Dokri on NW Railway, and 25 from
Larkana town... Twelve centuries ago, when the
Arabs first came to Sind, there were two great 
rivers flowing through the land: to the west, the
Indus; to the east, the Great Mihran, also known
as the Hakra or Wahindah. Of these two rivers the
eastern one seems to have been the more important...
Major Raverty, the foremost authority on the subject,
concluded that at the time of the Arab invasion the 
main channel of the Great Mihran flowed a line roughly
coincident with the existing Eastern Nara canal,
which was once an important river bed (i.e. it
passed close by the city of Alor...flowed...west of
Umarkot, and so the Rann of Cutch (then an estuary
of the sea) and by the Kori creek to the Arabian Sea.
cf. Raverty, 'The Mihran of Sind and its tributaries'
JASB, Vol. LXI, 1892, pp. 156-508). According to him,
the terminal course of the Indus, which flows by
Mohenjo-daro, was then a subsidiary branch of the
Mihran, but its course was not the same as at present...
the existence of two important Chalcolithic sites of
Mohenjo-daro and Jhukar, the one in the near vicinity
of the Indus, the other of the Western Nara loop..."

Griffin Vyse (Geological notes on the river Indus, JRAS,
Vol.X, 1878) recalls Pottinger's observations that
Alexander the Great had also sailed to the great
lake and to the sea by this 'eastern branch of 
the Indus'..."the eastern or greater arm of the
Mikran described by Rashid-ud-deen as branching
off from above Mansura to the east, to the borders
of Kach, and known by the name of sindh Sagara
(Elliot, vol. i, p. 49). This ancient river 
is also identical with the Sankra Nala which
was constituted by Nadir Shah the boundary between
his dominions and those of the Emperor of Delhi."

It has elsewhere been concluded that the Sarasvati
river had flown from the Har-ki-dun glacier
(Bandarpunch massif, WGarhwal) to the Rann of Kutch
through the Ghaggar-Hakra channels and flowed
into the Arabian sea near Lothal (Gulf of Khambat),
nourishing over 1200 ancient settlements on the
banks of the river, along the edges of the Great
Indian desert (combined Marusthali and Cholistan). 

Now it can be seen that Mohenjo-daro was also on 
the banks of one of the channels of Sarasvati, what
is now called the Western Nara loop. With Harappa
located on Ravi, accessible to Kalibangan (on the
banks of the Sarasvati in Ganganagar, Rajasthan), the
locus of the civilization shifts to the banks of the
Sarasvati river.

Regards,
Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, Sarasvati Sindhu Research Centre, 19 Temple Avenue #4,
Srinagar Colony Saidapet, Chennai 600015, India
Tel. +91 44 2354640; Fax. 4996380 
email:mdsaaa48 at giasmd01.VSNL.net.in Website:http://www.investindia.com