Most archaeologists, geologists, anthropologists, and historians agree to the narrative that

the Indus Valley Civilization also known as the Harappan Civilization, which first came to the
limelight in 1920s, was at its zenith during third millennium BC roughly dating from 2600-1900.
Mohenjo-Daro in Sindh (Present-day District Larkano, Sindh, Pakistan) and Harappa in Sahiwal
District of Punjab. B.B Lal (1997) in his book titled The Earliest Civilization of South Asia
(Rise, Maturity and Decline) recalls that the Indus Valley Civilization otherwise known as
Harappan civilization covered much larger area than any of its contemporaries such as Egyptian
Civilization based on Nile Valley and Mesopotamian Civilization based on Tigris-Euphrates
rivers. It spanned from westernmost known station, viz. Sutkagen Dor located in Makran district
of Balochistan, Pakistan to the easternmost post, viz. Alamgirpur, Meerut District of Uttar
Pradesh (India) in the upper Ganga-Yamuna vicinity. Lal (1997) claims that this civilization
would almost cover the whole of northwestern part of the subcontinent from Shortughai in
northern Afghanistan to Daimabad in south; it is a distance of 1400 kilometres; and from
Sutkagen Dor on the west to Alamgirpur on the east is the distance approximately of 1400
kilometres.

B.B Lal goes on to mention that the Indus-Ganga divide is the fact that at some point of
time in the course of protohistory, the Yamuna now a tributary of the Ganga might owe
allegiance to the Ghaggar-Sarasvati system and flowed southwestward. According to him,
Ghaggar known as Hakra in Bahawalpur and for that matter in many relative regions of Punjab
(Pakistan) and Sindh (Pakistan) was once a mighty river dried up in Haryana. In Sindh, the river
flowed southwards as indicated by now-dry courses known as Hakra, Nara, Wahind and son on;
and they directly discharged into Rann of Kutch directly. Kalibangan (in present-day Rajasthan),
a Harappan civilization also used to be situated on its bank. It also suggests that the river may
have been alive during the third millennium BC to sustain human activities there. Sir Mortimer
Wheeler, once the Director General of Archaeology in India, has also written a book titled The
Cambridge History of India: Supplementary Volume, The Indus Valley Civilization, which got
published in 1953. He also reports that Sarasvati or Ghaggar-Hakra or Wahindat in his words,
“watered the deserts of Bikaner and Bahawalpur and may have struggled through as a rival Indus
to the Arabian Sea.” Bikaner is a city in northwest of the State of Rajasthan, India. Shah Abdul
Latif Bhittai, the most eminent poet in Sindhi literature, also mentions about Bikaner in one of
his poems of Sur Sarang which particularly adores the monsoon season.

1
 Joshi and his colleagues in (1984) plots that 137 early Harappan and 109 Mature
Harappan sites had been anticipated in the Ghaggar-Sarasvati drainage on the Indian Side of the
border. Mughal (1972, 74) plots that 40 Early Harappan and 174 Mature Harappan sites were
found in Cholistan. Hence, this makes a total of 177 Early Harappan and 283 Mature Harappan
sites in the Ghaggar-Sarasvati valley. Evidences, Lal maintains, suggest that Yamuna from the
east and the Sutlej from the north would join Ghaggar. James Tod (1920), Late Political Agent to
the Western Rajput States, in his work titled Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan also links the
flow of Ghaggar having close links with Sutlej. The ancient literature including the Vedas holds
a view that the river (Ghaggar) then came to be popularly called as Sarasvati. However, it is still
called with the names of Ghaggar-Hakra in different areas of South Punjab (Pakistan) and the
Southeast regions of Sindh (Pakistan). The combined stream of all these rivers, Lal perceives,
would eventually join the sea at Runn of Kutch.

References

Joshi, J.P., Madhu Bala and Jassu Ram. 1984. The Indus Civilization: A Reconsideration on the
Basis of Distribution Maps. In B.B. Lal, S.P. Gupta, and Shashi Asthana (eds.), Frontiers of the
Indus Civilization, pp. 511-30. New Delhi: Books and Books.

Lal, B. B. (1997). The Earliest Civilization of South Asia (Rise, Maturity and Decline). Aryan
Books International, New Delhi, India.

Mughal, M.R 1972. Excavation at Jalilpur. Pakistan Archaeology, 8:117-24.

--1974. New Evidence of the Early Harappan Culture from Jalilpur, Pakistan Archaeology,
27(2):106-13.

Tod, J. (1920). Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Oxford University Press. Edited with an
Introduction and Notes by William Crooke, C.I.E

Wheeler, E. M. (1953). The Cambridge History of India: Supplementary Volume, The Indus
Valley Civilization. Cambridge University Press, Great Britain.