Saraswati River Was Lost Over 4,000 Years Ago, But Now Haryana Government Is Reviving It. 100 Cusecs At A Time!

The 'lost' Saraswati river, which mythologically dried up some 4000 years ago, was brought back to life, or rather put on life support this Friday when the Haryana government pumped 100 cusecs of water (1 cusec = 28.317 litres per second) into it.

The water was pushed into a dug-up channel, from tubewells at Uncha Chandna village in Yamunanagar.

Officials expect that the water will reach Kurukshetra, 40 kilometres away

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Anil Kumar Gupta, Engineer-in-Chief, Haryana Irrigation Department, told The Indian Express: ¡°We have released water into the river at Uncha Chandna on Thursday. Initially, 100 cusecs of water has been released. It is likely to go up to Kurukshetra. It is yet to be seen how much further the water goes. Once we see that there are no obstructions in the flow of water then another 100 cusecs will be released. This could be done in another fortnight.¡±

The government plans to build three dams on the river route to keep it flowing throughout the river, after claiming to have found the river during digging at Yamunanagar.

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The river is considered the personification of Goddess Saraswati - it is believed that it was on the banks of the Saraswati that parts of the Rig Veda were written.

Somewhere close to 4,000 years ago, Saraswati dried up and was forgotten, till earlier this year when it's route was traced and a board set up to bring it back to life. As many as 80 people who were digging the course of the Saraswati in Mugalwali village of Yamunanagar district when they noticed water coming out at a shallow depth of just eight feet.

It was for the first time since the project to trace the original route of River Saraswati was launched in April the excavation team discovered water. The Saraswati Heritage Development Board which is in charge of the operations say the monsoon will sustain the river as of now, for a later stage they are planning to build a dam at Adi Badri, considered the origin of the Vedic era river to ensure the water flow. The Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana had allocated Rs. 50 crores to the project aimed at discovering the river considered sacred by Hindus.

Even the central government and especially Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharati had in 2014 made "finding the missing river" a priority of the Modi government

Wikipedia

"There is enough scientific evidence on the presence of the river Saraswati in some parts of the country through which it flowed about five to six thousand years ago. Saraswati is not a myth", Bharati had said in August 2014. Extensively referred to in the Vedas and Hindu epics, mythical Saraswati river, according to the historians, had dried up 4,000 years ago. In Rig Veda, the river is mentioned as flowing between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west. The Mahabharata, mentions that the Saraswati dried up in a desert. According to beliefs the river passed through areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and parts of Pakistan.

Even though modern science never acknowledged the existence of the river post-independence a number of efforts have been undertaken to prove its existence.