Hindu quest for holy water (Washington post)

February 16, 2003

Washington Post published an article on the IVC:

A Hindu Quest for Some Holy Water

(or)

[begin quote]

The BJP-led government already has taken steps to make these

findings official. In October, it ordered several significant

changes in the history textbooks, one of which was to change the

name of the Indus Valley civilization to the Saraswati River

civilization.

[End quote]

The mature Harappan civilization existed on the cities

on the banks of the Indus river: Harappa, Mohenjadaro.

The IVC archaeologist J. M. Kenoyer's work is mostly from the

Indus river sites. How can we name it as just "Saraswati"

civilization leaving out the Indus/Sindhu.

Siindhu is the name of date-palm trees in Tamil, and in

south India and Ceylon, places and rivers are commonly named after

the palm trees. Does not the early Karnataka king dynasty

names talk of Naagas and Sindu? Naaga-dviipa is in

Jaffna, Sri Lanka and is mentioned in gold plates of

Vallipuram, and the Buddhist epic, Manimekalai.

Saraswati's old name, VisumbaaL reminds the tamil word,

visumbu "sky". "vaan" is "sky", "vaani" (the river from

the sky) runs in the Kongu region and finds mention

in sangam classics. "vav-" (as in vavvu) is a verb

with the meanings "to carry away, to sweep away, to take hold

of". The place where vAni river meets the Kaveri

is vavvaani (vav(vu)- + vaani) and, this is where

lot of pitr-karma is done. An old reminder of VisumbaaL/Saraswati?

naNNu-tal "to approach, to reside" gives rise to

a name tiru-naNA, where vaani meets kaaveri.

vavvaani is sanskritized as Bhavaani, and interestingly

the town-name where the river Saraswati comes up in the

sand in Rajasthan is called Bhavaanipura.

Regards,

N. Ganesan

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