IMAGING RIVER SARASVATI 47 Geological Society's memoir, there is also the US "NASA scientist," Navaratna S. Rajaram, speaking through the same volume. He tells us that "the Sarasvati river and the Sarasvati civilization are inseparable", and the latter name is the correct one to give to what has so far been known "(incorrectly) as the Harappan or the Indus Civilization". Indeed, "the ebb and flow of the ancient Sarasvati river determined the fate of the Harappan Civilization".3 That the two great excavated cities of the Indus Civilization, namely, Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, or such sites as Dholavira or Lothal are not on the Sarasvati, however it might be elevated from its status as a seasonal stream passing by Thanesar, does not matter to the proponents of the Sarasvati nomenclature.4 Giving a name amounts to half the battle, and if the Indus Civilization is to be rechristianed 'Sarasvati Civilization', name-capture, not argument, is the thing that matters. It may be recalled that John Marshall had used the name "Indus Civilization" in 1931,5 and Stuart Piggot had preferred "Harappa Culture" in 1950.6 Both terms are valid, the first referring to the geographical region of the Indus basin, and the other to the type-site. As late as 1984 B.B. Lal and S.P. Gupta conformed to the standard usage when they edited the Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, New Delhi. But thereafter the pull of the Sarasvati exerted itself, and in 1996 appeared S.P. Gupta's The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, Delhi. Professor V.N. Misra, full of authority as Director of the Deccan College Postgraduate Institute, Pune, India's premier research institute of archaeology, contributed an enthusiastic review of this book. He drew attention to the indication in the title that "the Harappan Civilization was not the product of one river alone, but of two rivers, the Indus and Sarasvati". Since a look at any atlas may not disclose a river like the Sarasvati running parallel to the Indus, Misra joined Gupta in inventing a "Sarasvati System, which includes the old beds of the Sutluj (sid), Ghaggar, Drishadvati, Yamuna, etc." One can then pursue an unspoken chain of logic: If the alleged Sarasvati system was important for the Indus culture, its people must have held Sarasvati sacred; and if they held such a belief, they must have been Vedic Aryans (not Dravidians or other unknown people). So Professor Misra could then more easily uphold Gupta's argument that "the Harappan and the Vedic were neither two different culture-complexes nor the earlier (sicl former) preceded the latter".7 The whole question of the Sarasvati, therefore, needs to be scrutinised carefully, perhaps as carefully as Navaratna Rajaram's famous "horse" on the Indus seals.8