Historical Roots Of The Vedas

Nikita Ierisov
Nov 16
4 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

I first traveled to India when I was 24 years old, but at that time I didn't have any particular reason, I just wanted to go to explore. Since then I found many gems that Indian culture has to offer, and many of them share the same origin.

The Vedas are the hymns first preserved through an unbroken oral tradition, form the sacred foundation of Hinduism and may well be the oldest surviving literary expressions in any human language. Yoga, Jyotish Astrology and Ayurveda trace their origin from this sacred hymns.

From the Vedas also branched the philosophic teachings of the Upanishads, which are also called "The End of the Vedas". Upanishads form the corpus of Vedanta philosophy, which explains the Vedas themselves. Later on from the same source Puranas emerged, which form the core of modern Hindu religion and philosophy.

Vedas are written in Sanskrit - highly symbolical language. The script itself called Devanāgarī ( The city - Nagara; Deva - God ), thus the city of gods. Sanskrit, like other ancient languages - Arabic and Hebrew is a highly musical language. Thus to master this language simply learning words and grammar is not enough, the particular rhytmic and tonal expression is needed.

The Sarasvati River: The Lost Vedic River

The Sarasvati River is described in the Rig Veda as the mightiest of all rivers, “flowing from the mountains to the sea.” It is praised more than any other river in Vedic hymns - symbolizing both physical abundance and spiritual illumination.

However, by the time of the Later Vedic and Puranic periods, references begin to speak of her disappearance - the river that once nourished a great civilization had dwindled into memory.

Geological and Climatic Cataclysm (~2000–1900 BCE)

Until the late 20th century, the mainstream academic view (based largely on 19th-century colonial scholarship) held that Indian civilization began with the Indus Valley Civilization (Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, c. 2600–1900 BCE), supposedly unrelated to the Vedic culture, which was thought to arrive later with “Aryan migrants” around 1500 BCE.

However, satellite imagery, ground surveys, and excavations revealed thousands of settlements along the dry beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra, now identified as the ancient Sarasvati River.These settlements proved to be contemporaneous with, or even older than, the Indus sites - forming what many now call the Indus–Sarasvati Civilization.

This meant that the very heartland of early Indian culture lay not only along the Indus, but also along the long-forgotten Sarasvati, exactly as described in the Rig Veda.

The Saraswati river is believed to have been fed by both glacial meltwaters from the Himalayas (notably from the Sutlej and Yamuna) and monsoonal rains.

Around 1900 BCE, a combination of tectonic shifts and climatic desiccation brought about a profound transformation - deprived of its headwaters, the Sarasvati dried up - first breaking into a network of smaller seasonal streams, then vanishing into the sands of Rajasthan and Cholistan.

Satelite imaginary of Saraswati River, Ghaggar-Hakra, Harrapan settlements. Thar Desert. Indus Valley. — It confirms that early Harappan society was **not just Indus-based** - the Saraswati region was central. This aligns with **Rigvedic references** to a prosperous riverine landscape. Image (c) PNAS

Chronological Re-evaluation:

Timeline of Saraswati River drying up — Saraswati's river journey

If the Rig Veda praises the Sarasvati as “flowing from the mountains to the sea,” yet geology shows that the river had already dried up by 1900 BCE, then the Vedic hymns must have been composed before that date this environmental shift, likely much earlier.

Consequently, an increasing number of experts now place the core Rig-Vedic corpus in the third or even fourth millennium BCE, with the other three Vedas - the Yajur, Sama, and Atharva - also likely originating in the pre-cataclysmic era.

Thus, instead of an “Aryan invasion” bringing culture into India, we see a continuous indigenous evolution - the spiritual and cultural foundations of India arising from within the subcontinent itself. Which will make India the most continuous civilization on Earth with unbrekable history spanning through over seven millenia.

Philosophical and Cultural Implications:

In the Vedic imagination, the drying of the Sarasvati was not merely environmental but spiritual: the fading of a golden age of divine communion with nature.

So, rather than a break between the Indus and Vedic cultures, the emerging picture suggests a deep cultural continuity: The urban Harappan phase expressed sacred geometry, order, and water-based life ; The Vedic phase preserved the same cosmic harmony through sound, ritual, and inner realization.

The discovery of the lost Sarasvati overturned the old colonial narrative of India’s origins.It revealed that: