Book Summary: "The Sarasvati Civilization: A New Paradigm in Ancient Indian History" by Maj. Gen. GD Bakshi

Happy Sunday,

About the Book:

The Sarasvati Civilization: A New Paradigm in Ancient Indian History brings together evidence from satellite imagery, geology, hydrodynamics, archaeology, epigraphy, textual hermeneutics and DNA research to place together ancient Indian history in the light of discoveries and facts which were not available to colonial historians of the 19th century and have been overlooked after that.

At the heart of the ancient Indian Civilization was the mighty Sarasvati river which was in full flow 5000-6000 years ago. 60-80 % of the so-called Indus Valley _ Civilisation sites which have been discovered are not on the banks of the Indus but on the course of the Sarasvati. The drying-out of the river is the most significant factor in the history and migrations of the ancient Indians. With new evidence, the time has come for a significant paradigm shift in Indology. This book breaks new ground to establish an authentic Indian history.

Book publication date: January 2019.

About the Author:

Major General Gagan Deep Bakshi SM VSM is a retired Indian Army officer.

Bakshi was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal for commanding a battalion in the Kargil War. Later, he was awarded the Sena Medal for distinguished service in commanding a battalion during counter-insurgency drives.

He has served two tenures at the Directorate General of Military Operations and was the first BGS (IW) at HQ Northern Command (India), where he dealt with Information Warfare and Psychological Operations.

1. Introduction; A Lost River, A Lost History: The Rig Veda clearly describes the Sarasvati as a mighty river in full and torrential ?ow. By 1,900 B.C., Geologists tell us that the Sarasvati had dried out entirely. It had been reduced to a string of pools in the North, and South of Jaisalmer it had gone underground. The desiccation of this mighty river had led to the total deserti?cation of Rajasthan and the lower portions of Haryana and Punjab. Why would migrants come to an area that was facing an ecocatastrophe of such a magnitude- given that a once mighty river which sustained a great civilisation had dried out completely? Deprived of water, the inhabitants of the Sarasvati civilisation had no option but to migrate— outwards.

2. Satellite Imager Evidence; Rediscovery of a Lost River: The most signi?cant of all ?ndings however, come from the discipline of archaeology. I have examined the archaeological studies in considerable detail to understand the true nature and identity of the Indus-Sarasvati Valley civilisation. Even though the Indus Valley script has not so far been deciphered, the vast assortment of terracotta ?gurines, dolls and pictures on tablets and seals provide a graphic visual language, providing deep insights into that ancient civilisation. What stands out is the sheer level of cultural continuity between the ancient past and present-day Hindu society. The evidence of cultural continuity is so overwhelming that it is astonishing to see how deliberately it has been sidelined so far by the Leftist academia.

3. Geological Evidence: The remote sensing data provided by satellite imagery empirically con?rm the existence of a once mighty river that ?owed from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea and was the source river and cradle of the Indian civilisation per se. I have next examined the voluminous evidence provided by the discipline of geology to record the vicissitudes in the life and ?ow of this mighty river and establish the chronology of events that led to its desiccation and demise. I have then superimposed this geological chronology about the death of the Sarasvati River onto the historical chronology of events in ancient India. This exercise provides us with new insights.

4. Archaeological Evidence; Quest for the Cradle River of the Indian Civilisation: The Indus Valley Civilisation was accidentally discovered when the Lahore-Multan Railway was being constructed by the British. Loads of well-moulded bricks were discovered in the area and used as ballast. It was thought these bricks were of fairly recent origin. Then the archaeologists discovered Mohenjo-Daro—the mound of the dead and unearthed a major city. The urban planning, the paved streets, and the drainage system were remarkable. So was the standardization of the bricks (1:2:4 ratios) and also the weights and measures. A whole new civilisation was unearthed on the banks of the Indus and was then accordingly termed the Indus Valley Civilisation. It was a copper-age civilisation and worked with bronze. It was a trading civilisation and carried out long-range trading activities both by land and by sea. Mehrgarh.

5. Cultural Continuities; Establishing the True Identity of the Harrapan Civilisation: It was an actual river of mighty proportions that rivalled the Brahmaputra in sheer size and length. It was 4600 km long and 6-8 km in width. It ?owed from the Himalayas to the sea. Major tectonic plate shifts, some 4,700 and 2,600 years before the present, caused its ice-melt water-bearing tributaries— the Yamuna and the Satluj respectively—to change courses and be captured by the Ganga and Indus rivers. These tectonic events caused this mighty river to dry out entirely. Its northern portions were reduced to a disconnected string of lakes and pools and its southern portions around Jaisalmer, Rajasthan went underground—where well borings today have shown the potential of bringing up millions of litres of sweet water to the surface. The most signi?cant ?nding however comes from the discipline of Archeology. Over 60% of the so-called Indus Valley sites (especially 80% of the mature urban phase) have been found not on the course of the Indus but along the dried-out course of a once mighty Sarasvati.

6. The Clue of Soma; The Divine Mushroom? The divine mushroom of Soma in the headdress of Harrapan terracotta ?gurines is a bright Red Mushroom with white specks that have psychotropic properties. It was a hallucinogen that was widely used in Central Asia, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan and Northern India. It was also extensively used in the Mayan or Aztec civilisation of South America (Guatemala). Gordon Wasson had speculated that this Brilliant Red Fly Agaric Mushroom is the mythical Soma of the Vedas. It was a psychotropic plant that induced ecstasy, longevity and clarity of mind.

7. Scriptural Evidence; Sarasvati in the Vedas, Brahmans and Epics: “To know the Hindus, to know their past and present condition, to reach their very heart and soul, we must study Sanskrit literature.” The Sanskrit word Veda means knowledge or wisdom. There are four ancient collections of hymns called the Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva Vedas. Classically the Vedas were considered to be just three or Trayi Vidya (Rig, Sama and Yajur); the Atharva Veda is a later composition, often referred to as the Soma Veda. This is the largest body of sacred literature surviving from the ancient world. For literally thousands of years, they were committed to memory and passed down orally from father to son in Brahmin families, especially charged with their memorization and preservation. It is a monumental feat of racial memory, quite unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The four Vedas comprise of some 20,358 verses amounting to approximately 2,000 printed pages.

8. Linguistic Evidence: The commonalities of the Indo-European group of language and the quest for an Aryan Homeland led them to postulate the racial construct of an Aryan invasion from Central Asia that destroyed the original Dravidian civilisation of racially different, “snub-nosed, dark-skinned” Dasas or original inhabitants. The construct of Indra, the Vedic war God, as the destroyer of hundred fort cities was grafted onto the AIT Theory. The colonial historiographers were clutching at unrelated cues. Their subtle intent was to prove that if the Indo-Aryans themselves were invaders, what right did they have to whine about British invasion and colonization of native lands? They were as much foreigners to India as the British colonizers were Also, very subtly, the construct established an Aryan kinship between the ruler and the ruled and served to mitigate the stark foreignness and illegitimacy of British rule in India. The usurpers needed to justify themselves as rulers and make themselves acceptable to the vast Indian masses.

9. Aryan Mythology in the Vedas and Zend Avesta: Carbon dating remains a powerful, dependable and widely applicable technique that is invaluable not just to archaeologists but also to other branches of science. Bhirrana: Luminescence Dating In what could revolutionise our understanding of ancient Indian history, scientists from IIT Kharagpur and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have uncovered evidence that the Harappan civilisation is not just 5,500 years old as thought earlier, but at least 8,000 years to 9,500 years BP. This means it is far older than the Egyptian (7,000 B.P. to 3,000 B.P.) and Mesopotamian civilisation (6,500 B.P. to 3,100 B.P.). In an interview, Anindya Sarkar, Head of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at IIT Kharagpur stated that they had recovered perhaps the oldest pottery shards from the Harappan civilisation at a site called Bhirrana (on the dried-out course of the Sarasvati River). Using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) they dated these pottery shards to nearly 6,000 years ago and the cultural levels of pre-Harappan-Hakra phase to as far back as 8,000 years.

10. Caarbon Dating and other Empirical Evidence; The war Chariot of Bhaghpat: The Story of our Ancestors and Where we came from”. He is the prophet, the populariser of the new wisdom and science, the New Holy Grail of civilisational studies and issues of identity. He speaks with authority. Harvard has spoken—and that has to be the last word. The entire learned discourse in his book has that stamp of ?nality and certitude that brooks no contra opinions/ alternative interpretations. It is that air of triumphant ?nality that is a bit disconcerting and uncomfortable. Especially when the new science of Population Genetics has several inherent constraints and limitations that must be understood before we use it to make oracular pronouncements. The Tony Joseph narrative, however, is remarkable.

11. DNA Mapping of Migrations; The Quest for an Original Aryan Homeland: Brahminic and royal hegemony that encodes oppressive views of shudras, women, Muslims and all those who can be construed as ‘others’. They see the Ramayana and other epics as politically motivated literature designed to perpetuate Brahmanical hegemony and the suppression of women. Earlier Thomas Macaulay had argued for defunding Sanskrit studies in India and shifting them entirely to Oxford (This was the best method of shutting the Indians off from their ancient past and heritage). Macaulay had then funded instead the study of English and vernacular languages in India to foster feelings of diversity and separateness.

12. Transition from Neolithic to Chalcolithic Societies in India; Indigenous Origins of Agriculture: Establishment-oriented academics who go for studies in the USA are the new foot-soldiers and thought-coolies of the former empire. That is how we saw strenuous attempts being made at Harvard to reestablish the AIT theory long after it was discredited. DNA research done a decade earlier that threw AIT out of court was questioned and debunked in 2016. How could the colonial masters be wrong and the natives be right? There is a rather marked Hindu-phobia and a concerted attack on the Hindu culture and way of life.

13. Need for Multidisciplinary Approach to Problems of Indology: In its prime, the Sarasvati River had sustained the highly sophisticated Harappan civilisation that was spread over an astonishing two million sq. km. It then was the largest civilisational area anywhere in the world. What was remarkable was the degree of uniformity over the vast Harappan civilisational area. What is perhaps even more remarkable is the amazing degree of cultural continuity between this ancient civilisation and the present-day Indian culture in North India. We may not have deciphered the Indus language script. However, its plastic arts, its terracotta ?gurines and steatite statues and seals, provide us a clear visual language. A host of terracotta ?gurines speak an eloquent story about the life and times of those ancient people.

14. Revival of the Saraswati Culture; Reclaiming Indian Identity and the Quest for a Grand Narrative: They were the original—the indigenous Indians—and the Colonial historians described them in racial terms as “snub-nosed and dark-skinned Dasas” as opposed to the Aryans who were very fair and with sharply chiselled features. The Aryans had burst upon the Indian plains with their war chariots and horsed cavalry and routed the local inhabitants who had never seen horses. Recent genetic studies have shown this Aryan-Dravidian binary in India to be a myth. The Indian DNA is fairly mixed and common, north and south of the Vindhyas. However, perpetuating the concept of Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines is central to the project of Breaking India. The Gene Haplogroup R1a1a is special. It is spread over North India, Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and Europe. A study dated 2015( Lucette G. 2015) has established that the oldest examples of this haplogroup were found in India and not in Europe or Central Asia.

Conclusion: We live in an age when most millennials suffer from an identity crisis and the Indic society is in greater need of consolidation and leadership than ever before. Research and dialogues on the Saraswati River, I believe, will prove fruitful in addressing these issues in our quest for civilizational identity- a quest to find our history.

Learning: To quote from the book “… as the pieces of the jigsaw were pieced together, the Indians began to uncover a part of a lost civilizational glory; of great antiquity, sophistication and above all an astonishing degree of cultural continuity and persistence over time and space. India has a heritage that comes unbroken from the remote past to the current era. India is beginning to discover its lost sense of self”

Gagandeep Bakshi

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