Алексей Виноградов – Holy waters of the ancestral homeland of mankind (страница 10)

Seated on his throne and once again in the sky, exercising sovereignty over the gods, Shakra praised the goddess who holds a lotus in her hand: “I bow to Sri, the mother of all beings, seated on her lotus throne, with eyes like blossoming lotuses, reclining on the chest of Vishnu. You are Siddhi (superhuman power). You are Svadha and Svaha. You are Suda (ambrosia), the purifier of the universe. You are evening, night and dawn. You are strength, faith, intelligence. You are Saraswati. You, beautiful goddess, are the knowledge of devotion, great knowledge, mystic knowledge and spiritual knowledge that grants eternal liberation. You are the science of reasoning, the three Vedas, the arts and sciences. You are moral and political science. The world is peopled by You with pleasant or unpleasant forms. Who, if not you, O goddess, sits on that face of the god of gods, the mace-wielder, which is composed of the sacrifice and contemplated by holy ascetics? Abandoned by you, the three worlds were on the brink of destruction, but they were revived by you. Through our gaze, O mighty goddess, men gain wives, children, homes, friends, harvests, and wealth. Health and strength, power, victory, and happiness are easily attained by those upon whom you smile.

3. Sarasvati. River. Modern interpretation.

1.

The Vedas contain hymns composed in the immeasurable depths of time. They provide information about the natural environment of the lands where the hymn-writers lived, the beliefs and rituals of the Aryan ancestors, their customs, way of life, and economic practices.

Sarasvati is revered as both a river and a goddess. The lost Vedas were found on its banks. The hymns mention rituals performed on the banks of this river. Sarasvati was associated with the image of sanctity ascribed to the region called "Brahmavarta" (the abode of Brahma), located between the Sarasvati and Drishadvati streams. The river acquired a divine character. Thus, Sarasvati was for early Indians what the Ganges (mentioned only twice in the Rig Veda) is for their descendants. It is only natural that the blessing of its holy waters was invoked as a necessary element for the proper conduct and successful completion of rites and rituals.

"Mahabharata. Shalva-parva." Book 9.53. In the presence of the Brahmins, he, the everlasting, sang this laudatory shloka:

"Where is there such pleasure as that which comes from dwelling on the Sarasvati?

Where is there such religious merit as that which comes from dwelling on the Sarasvati?

Having reached the Sarasvati, people were able to ascend to heaven!

Everyone should always remember the Sarasvati River!

The Sarasvati is the most sacred of all rivers!

The Sarasvati always brings great happiness to people!

Having reached the Sarasvati, people involved in sins do not grieve for them either here or in the next world!"

According to M. Witzel, the Vedic Sarasvati River is superimposed on the "heavenly river" of the "Milky Way," which is seen as "the path to immortality and a heavenly afterlife." The Sarasvati River descends into this world from Plaksha Prasarvana, the world tree at the center of heaven and earth, and flows through the earth "Kura," the center of this world.

The Sarasvati is the sacred river of the Aryans of the Vedic era. Its name is translated as "rich in water." The Sanskrit "saras" means "lake, pond," and "sara" means "flow." "Sarasvati" may originally have been an adjective meaning "filled with water." It could have been a river that connected many lakes due to its abundant flow.

Another meaning could have been "Sara-Svati," meaning "Stream of Holiness," and applied to the holy river.

Sarasvati is considered related to the Avestan Harakhvati. In later times, Harakhvati was identified with Harauvati or with Arachosia, a region rich in rivers.

Many believe that the Vedic Sarasvati once flowed east of the Indus (Sindhu) River. Scientists, geologists, and explorers have identified the Sarasvati with many modern or now-defunct rivers. It is believed that the Sarasvati is the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in India and Pakistan. It is also believed that Sarasvati was the sacred name of the Indus, and Sindhu the secular name. Alternatively, the Sarasvati is the Arghandab, a river in Afghanistan.

Several modern Indian rivers are also named Sarasvati, in honor of the Vedic goddess Sarasvati:

The Sarasvati is a river originating in the mountainous Ambala district and flowing into the Ghaggar near Shatrana.

The Saraswati is a river originating in the Aravalli Mountains in Rajasthan and flowing into the Rann of Kutch.

The Saraswati River in Uttarakhand is a tributary of the Alaknanda River.

The Saraswati River in West Bengal, formerly a branch of the Hooghly River, dried up in the 17th century.

The kingdoms located in northern Rajasthan also bore names associated with the Saraswati River.

2.

Beginning in the late 19th century, many scholars, such as K. Lassen (1800-1876), M. Müller (1823-1900), and M. A. Stein (1862-1943), proposed identifying the Sarasvati River with the Ghaggar-Hakra river system, which flows through northwestern India and eastern Pakistan, between the Yamuna and Sutlej, and ends in the Thar Desert.

Identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system acquired new significance in the early 21st century.

In 2015, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government proposed that archaeologists search for evidence of the physical existence of the Vedic river, thereby reinforcing the concept of a "Golden Age" of the Hindu Indian subcontinent. The government established the "Sarasvati River Heritage Development Board in Haryana." On October 19, 2016, the commission established by the BJP government concluded that the Sarasvati River did indeed exist.

In 2021, the Chief Minister of Haryana stated that more than 70 organizations were involved in researching the Sarasvati River's heritage and that the river "still flows underground from Adi Badri to Kutch in Gujarat."

The Sarasvati River Revival Project aims to develop it as a tourist and pilgrimage route. This joint effort by several states aims to create religious tourism facilities. The annual five-day International Saraswati Festival, organized by the Haryana Saraswati Heritage Development Council, is held in the last week of January to honor the Saraswati River as a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Saraswati. During the festival, pilgrimages are organized through various ghats at religious tirthas and sites of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Hindutva proponents propose an early date for the Rig Veda, renaming the Indus Valley civilization the "Sarasvati culture," suggesting that the Indus Valley and Vedas are comparable. They reject the Late Indo-Aryan Migration Theory, which postulates a long period of Indo-European migrations to the Indian subcontinent between 1900 and 1400 BCE. This, given the beginning of the Pandava Yuga (the era of the Pandavas) in 2449 BCE and the mention of the Battle of Harappa in the Rig Veda, is quite plausible. However, the fact that Hindutva proponents date most Vedic texts to the 7th-4th millennia BCE does not transfer the events they describe to Hindustan.

Satellite images of the region have confirmed the discovery of the lost river. The great river originated in the Himalayas, flowed into the plains of Haryana, and flowed through the Thar Desert in Rajasthan and eastern Sindh (parallel to the Indus River), before reaching the sea at the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat.

The strange, marshy landscape of the Rann of Kutch is explained by the fact that it was once the mouth of the great river. However, until the early 20th century, it was a shallow sea strait. During the summer monsoons, it is flooded by seawater, as well as the waters of the Banas and Luna rivers.

Contrary to assumptions that a large Himalayan river, fed by glaciers and identified with the Saraswati, irrigated the central part of the Harappan civilization in the interfluve of the Indus and Ganges basins, only rivers fed by monsoon rains operated there during the Holocene. Although there is general agreement that river courses in the Indus basin frequently changed direction, the exact sequence of these changes and their dating remain problematic.

3. Ghaggar-Hakra river system

Modern archaeologists and geologists, such as Virdi (2006) and Valdia (2013), have also attempted to identify the Sarasvati with Ghaggar.

According to Valdia, "it can be concluded that Ghaggar was once known as 'Sarsuti,' which is a 'corruption of the word Sarasvati,'" because "in Sirsa, on the banks of the Ghaggar, stands a fort called 'Sarsuti.' Now abandoned, this medieval fort celebrates and honors the Sarsuti River."

There are numerous suggestions that the Ghaggar-Hakra river system was a major glacial river in the Himalayas. However, the absence of large-scale incisions in the interfluve suggests that no major glacial rivers flowed through the Ghaggar-Hakra region during the Holocene.

The modern Ghaggar-Hakra Valley and its tributaries are now dry or have seasonal flows. However, rivers were active in this region between 3400 and 2300 BC. In the upper interfluve, fine-grained floodplain sediments continued until 900 BC. This suggests that rainfall may have supported permanent rivers.