Ghaggar River

The Ghaggar River ggar-Hakra, It is a seasonal Asian river that only flows during the monsoon rainy season and runs through India and Pakistan. The river is known as Ghaggar before the Ottu Dam and as Hakra downstream of the dam.

Geography

The river rises in the Shivalik Hills in the state of Himachal Pradesh and passes through the states of Punjab, Jaryana and Rajasthan. A few kilometers southwest of the town of Sirsa in Jariana, the Ghaggar feeds two irrigation canals that stretch across Rajasthan. The river disappears at its entrance into the Thar Desert in Rajasthan.

It is believed that this river flowed abundantly in ancient times and that its course ran through eastern Pakistan in the currently dry channel of the Hakra River. The river dried up because most of its tributaries were diverted to irrigate the Ganges and Indus. In addition, deforestation caused much of the rainwater to be lost. These changes are believed to have happened around 1900 BC. c.

History

The Ghaggar-Hakra is generally identified by most scholars and archaeologists with the Sarasvati River cited in the Vedas, although there is controversy over whether all Rigvedic references to the Sarasvati should refer to this river, since claims that it was about the same river are based on a series of highly controversial geological and paleobotanical interpretations. The identification is accepted by Christian Lassen, Max Müller, Marc Aurel Stein, C.F. Oldham, and Jane Macintosh.

What is certain is that numerous archaeological remains of the ancient Indus Valley civilization have been found on the banks of the Ghaggar.