Sarasvati (texts & arch.II)

[Sn. Subrahmanya]

At 12:40 PM 5/22/98 -0400, Michael Witze wrote:
>Part II:
>RV 3 and 10 have the smaller Sarasvati of today. RV 3 and 7 are
>contemporary (king Sudas). RV 7.95.2 thus is anormal, with its great
>Sarasvati. How to explain that?
>
>Now, RV 7.95 is supposed to be composed by Vasistha (in Anukramani).
>Indeed, the hymn seems to be solid, of one piece (no trca-s here) and thus
>is not thought to be late (Oldenberg, Prolegomena, 1888!).
>
>If we thus take Vasistha's authorship (contemporary of Sudas) seriously,
>we are faced with the abnormal "great Sarasvati" at the time Sudas crosses
>the confluence of the Beas & Sutlej (necessitating a small Sarasvati).
>
>Now, Vasistha is a suspicious figure. He does not belong to the well known
>RV gotras, but is mentioned in RV 7.33.3 to have come from across the
>Indus.  He also has the typical Iranian idea of Yama being 'our' ancestor,
>not Manu (RV 7.33.9). All of this opens the *possibility* of Iranian (and
>thus Hamum-lake)  conections. And thus a remmebrance of the other
>(Iranian, Haraxvaiti; note other Iranian recollections, below).  If this
>should not be the case (and it is of course just a possibility for the
>moment), then:
>

You say that 7.95.2 is old and then proced to connect its supposed
author to Iranian ideas. If Vasishta came from across the Indus,
why connect him all the way to Iran?.
You also tend to presume that the Iranian ideas were probably contemporary
to Rgvedic times!!. This need not be, we just dont know.
The Iranian ideas could be from a later date.

Also, what you have suggested is only a *possibility* as you say and does
not conclusively prove that the 'mountain to the sea'Sarasvati  is
deifferent from the Indian Sarasvati river. Infact it neither proves
nor disproves anything.
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>> Again, If 7.95.2 is a remembering of the Sarasvati (and not the
>Haraxvaiti)  then does it not mean that the Aryans were already in the
>SIVC when the Sarasvati was bigger ???
>
>Why the "Aryans"? There is continuity at of *certain* cultural traits (NOT
>RV religion etc, of course) between the Indus civ. and the Vedic civ.
>Anybody living there could have heard of a great Sarasvati in the distant
>past. But, such people must have had a very long memory, see above!
>
Exactly, there is continuity of cultural traits in the SIVC from before and
after the "supposed migration of Aryans". Also:
1. We dont know what the actual religion of SIVC people was.
2. We dont really know much about the culture of the Aryans either.
   There is zilch archeological/textual evidence of migration
   from central asia into India.
3. The little that we do know about religion is just what
   we have from the Rgveda
4. We also know that there is a cultural continuity in the SIVC.

So how can one postulate a migration ???
The only evidence that is claimed to show a migration into India
is the so called "Linguistic evidence".

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>Don't get that. Of course the Indus civ. had copper (copper/bronze).So
>does the RV.  But a "pre-Indus RV" of the Aryan homeland theory cannot
>have copper since it was not used .. yet.
>
>(To be clear, not to be misunderstood again. *Incidentally*, copper and
>even <meteroic> iron have always been used, for example there is  an
>"exotic" copper bead in a neolithic Mehrgarh grave (c. 6500 BC). )

There is evidence of wide usage (not just minimal)
of copper in "Pre-Harappan times" as well.
This is what R.C.Agrawala has to say "...most scholars suggest that copper
was scarcely made us during the pre-Harappan period at Kalibangan. But
this is far from true. The excavators have told us that the pre-Harappan
levels of Kalibangan have yielded a rich variety of 56 copper objects
which included...."

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Regards,
Subrahmanya