The River has ever been the cradle of civilisations. To search for the conglomeration and interactions of the ancient civilisations and culture since the time immemorial, and to search for the human history  yet thriving among the culture and traditions, INDUS is on a journey along the tracks of the rivers, especially, the two very ancient rivers that actually cradled a major portion of human civilisation. INDUS is out to sing the saga of these two rivers that told the story of same period, of the similar people, of the similar cultural notes, of the similar hopes and, and of similar despair. They are Volga, the longest river of Europe, and the river Saraswati, the Vedic river. Volga, the river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea, and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia, being an important river for mainly SlavicTurkic people, Iranian cultures such as Scythians and SarmatiansFinno-Ugric, and Germanic people such as Vikings and GothsGreeks, and cultures of Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. As a result of its geographical situation the Volga played an important role in the movement of people between east and west, i.e., from Asia to Europe, as well as south and north.

The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda  mentions about the river Saraswati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west. Later Vedic texts like the Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas, as well as the Mahabharata, mention that the Saraswati dried up in a desert.

Since the late 19th-century, the Vedic Saraswati river has been identified as the Ghaggar-Hakra River system, which flows through north-western India and eastern Pakistan, between the Yamuna and the Sutlej. Satellite images have pointed to the more significant river once following the course of the present day Ghaggar River. It has been observed that major Indus Valley Civilization sites at Kalibangan in RajasthanBanawali and Rakhigarhi in HaryanaDholavira and Lothal in Gujarat also lay along this course.

However, identification of the Vedic Saraswati with the Ghaggar-Hakra system germinates one more  issue since the Saraswati is not only mentioned separately in the Rig Veda, but is described as having dried up by the time of the composition of the later Vedas and in the epics like Mahabharata. The Saraswati had been reduced to a ‘small, sorry trickle in the desert’, as described by Annette Wilke, by the time that the Vedic people migrated into north-west India. Recent geophysical research suggests that the Ghaggar-Hakra system was a system of monsoon-fed rivers and that the Indus Valley Civilisation may have declined as a result of climatic change, when the monsoons that fed the rivers diminished at around the time civilisation diminished some 4,000 years ago. 

River Saraswati may also be identified with Helmand or Haraxvati river in southern Afghanistan. The identification with the Ghaggar-Hakra system took on new significance in the early 21st century, with some suggesting an earlier dating of the Rig Veda; renaming the Indus Valley Civilisation as the Saraswati culture, the Saraswati Civilization, the Indus-Saraswati Civilization or the Sindhu-Saraswati Civilization.

Now, migration of people from the ancient period till now, especially since the time while Alexander the great came to this part of the world with his entire panorama of Hellenic culture, and subsequently, however, laid the foundation of the huge Hellenistic civilisation, finally make us stand in front of a stretch of land that actually can be traced along the Silk Route, or a vast area that can connect Africa, Europe and Middle East and Asia with élan.

Indus is dedicated to sing this saga of humanity that includes European civilisation, Persian intricacy and Asian wisdom of ancient time and follows.

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