Sarasvati/dating

[Edwin Bryant]

I have all these articles, but I have found no reports of thorough dating
attempts of the various stages of the drying up of this river
Ghose, quoted below, gives no grounds for his opinion (but Mughal's dates
seem more reliable and likely to be of interest).  As N. Ganesham notes,
such dates are crucial for the Indig. Aryan position. In any event, I
think professor Witzel might have some comments to make from the
philological side; I  will have to wait till I return to pursue this
discussion further.  Best, Edwin

On Mon, 18 May 1998, Sn. Subrahmanya wrote:

> S.P.Gupta in "The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, Origins, Problems
> and Issues" 1996, writes:
>  "The Saraswati before 10,000BC, may be still earlier
>  by a few thousand years, however appears to have flowed not
>  through Kurukshetra but through the Panchabhadra region in the
>  Aravalis, following the path of the Luni and and ending up in the
>  great Rann of Kutch (Ghose, et al 1990). The landsat imagery and
>  the geological changes now recorded show that tectonic movements
>  which took place in Rajasthan and Haryana shifted
>  the course of the Saraswati to its present position in the
>  north-west."
>
> SP.Gupta doesnt give more details on the paper by Ghose (1990) but
> there is an older paper which is given below.
> Here are some of the references given by SP.Gupta.
>
>  Ghose, B et al 1979
>  "The lost courses of the Saraswati River in the Great Indian desert.
>  New Evidence from Landsat Imagery".
>  The Geopgraphic Journal  Vol 145 (3) pages 446-451
>
>  Yashpal, et all 1984
>  Remote Sensing of the lost Sarasvati river. In "Frontiers of the Indus
>  civilization"
>
>  Bharadwaj, O.P 1988
>  The Vedic Saraswati, Harayana Sahitya Akademi,
>  Journal of Indological Studies, Vol II, nos1-2, Chandigarh
>
> In addition There are  other papers by Raikes and Gurdip Singh
> which deals with the geographical/environmental conditions.
>
> On superficial comparision of a not very detailed map given by
> SP.Gupta(fig 9,pg15) with a map of pre-harappan sites in Frontiers
> of the Indus  civilization(1984) where the oldest course of the
> Sarasvati is not marked, it appears that there is greater concentration
> of pre-harappan sites on the oldest course of the Sarasvati!,
> (I would appreciate any feedback on this observation,as I havent been able
>  to get the references by ILL yet ).
>
> Subrahmanya
> Houston, TX
>