Underworld Page 26
Another interesting area of ambiguity concerns the many shades of meaning that have been found in the name of the Sarasvati river. Possehl renders it ‘Chain of Pools’, Frawley reads it as ‘She who flows’.43 Griffith’s authoritative translation, on the other hand, is ‘The Watery’.44
What therefore are we to make of one of the most ambiguous and symbolic ideas that the Vedas have to offer: the great myth known as ‘the Freeing of the Seven Rivers’ that seems to speak of a flood cataclysm in the Himalayas?
What the Vedic sages knew (2): the meltdown in the Himalayas
The Rig Veda conjures up a compelling image of a demon in the form of a great dragon, or serpent, that has wrapped itself around the ice-covered mountain ranges that hem in northern India and strangled seven great rivers. The name of the demon is sometimes Ahi but more often Vrtra and the story of how he is slain by the god Indra and of how the seven rivers are freed, is repeated again and again in the hymns of the Rig Veda:
I will declare the manly deeds of Indra, the first that he achieved, the Thunder-wielder. He slew the Dragon, then disclosed the waters, and cleft the channels of the mountain torrents. He slew the Dragon lying on the mountain; his heavenly bolt of thunder Tvastr [the artificer of the gods] fashioned. Like lowing kine in rapid flow descending, the waters glided downward to the ocean … Indra with his own great and deadly thunder smote into pieces Vrtra … There he lies like a bank-bursting river, the waters taking courage flow above him. The Dragon lies beneath the feet of torrents which Vrtra with his greatness had encompassed … Rolled in the midst of never-ceasing currents flowing without a rest for ever onward, the waters bear off Vrtra’s nameless body … O Indra … thou hast let loose to flow the Seven Rivers. (1, 32, 1–12)
Indra hath hurled down the magician Vrtra who lay beleaguering the mighty river. Then both the heaven and earth trembled in terror at the strong Hero’s thunder when he bellowed. (2, 11, 9)
Thou, slaying Ahi, settest free the river’s path. (2, 13, 5)
Indra, whose hand wields thunder, rent piecemeal Ahi who barred up the waters, So that the quickening currents of the rivers flowed … Indra, this Mighty One, the Dragon’s Slayer, sent forth the flood of waters to the ocean. (2, 19, 2–3)
Thou in thy vigour having slaughtered Vrtra didst free the floods arrested by the Dragon. Heaven trembled at the birth of thine effulgence; Earth trembled at the fear of thy displeasure. The steadfast mountains shook in agitation: the waters flowed and desert spots were flooded. (4, 17, 1–3)
Thou slewest Ahi who besieged the waters … the insatiate one, extended, hard to waken, who slumbered in perpetual sleep, O Indra. The Dragon stretched against the seven prone rivers, where no joint was, thou rentest with thy thunder. (4, 19, 2–3)
Indra for man made waters flow together, slew Ahi and sent forth the Seven Rivers, and opened as it were obstructed fountains. (4, 28, 1)
E’en now endures thine exploit of the Rivers, when, Indra, for their floods thou clavest passage. Like men who sit at meat the mountains settled. (6, 30, 3)
Indra … ye slew the flood-obstructing serpent Vrtra … Heaven approved thine exploit. Ye urged to speed the currents of the rivers, and many seas have ye filled full with waters. (6, 72, 3)
A common explanation that is offered for this myth, both by foreign scholars and by the Indian commentators, sees Vrtra as a symbol for large, dark rain-clouds which Indra bursts open with his thunderbolt. The rivers in this scenario are said to symbolize ‘streams of rain’.45 Thus Horace Wilson writes:
the original purpose of the legend of Indra’s slaying of Vrtra … is merely an allegorical narrative of the production of rain. Vrtra … is nothing more than the accumulation of vapour condensed or figuratively shut up in, or obstructed by a cloud. Indra, with his thunderbolt, or atmospheric or electrical influence, divides the aggregated mass, and vent is given to the rain which then descends upon the earth.46
It is true that some descriptions of Vrtra in the Rig Veda do unambiguously depict the demon as a withholder of rain (‘the rain obstructor’, 1, 52, 6) and equally clearly associate his destruction with the onset of ‘floods of rain’ (1, 56, 5) – so any attempt to assess Vrtra’s character must take such descriptions into account. Nevertheless, I do not feel that Wilson’s elegant allegory satisfactorily explains certain key features of the myth outlined in the passages cited above: the constant references to the ‘freeing of the Seven Rivers’ (if ‘rivers’ are really ‘streams of rain’, then why are there just seven of them?); the description of pieces of Vrtra’s body being carried away in the waters, ‘rolled in the midst of never-ceasing currents’ (surely more consistent with what is seen during powerful floods than it is with rainstorms?); the clear statement that the released waters cut channels in the mountains and descend in rapid flow to the oceans; the way that the flooding of ‘desert spots’ is connected to this downrush of waters from the mountains; and most of all the way that the released waters are said to flow ‘above’ the Dragon Vrtra as he lies abased ‘beneath the feet of torrents’ (whereas, if he were merely a rain-cloud dispersed by Indra’s thunderbolt, one would have expected what was left of his ‘body’ – the remaining wisps of cloud? – to have been above the freed waters, not beneath them).
Uncomfortable with Wilson’s pure symbolism for precisely these reasons, other scholars have offered a more literal interpretation of the myth in which the rivers are the seven physical rivers of ancient north-west India – an area that is indeed referred to as early as the Rig Veda as the ‘Land of the Seven Rivers’.47 The rivers concerned are generally presumed to be the Indus, the Sarasvati and the five rivers of the Punjab48 which ‘often entirely dried up in the summer’.49 According to this variant, Indra is ‘the god of the rainy season’ who calls the rivers back to life and Vrtra is the demon of summer drought.50
But there are problems here too. Most significantly, Indra’s ‘exploit of the Rivers’ is not portrayed in the Rig Veda as an annually or seasonally recurring event but as a one-off, unrepeatable event of awe-inspiring proportions that took place a long time ago (so long ago it is described as Indra’s first manly deed and the poet remarks with wonder that ‘e’en now’ its fame endures). When I read the accounts in the Rig I find it impossible to convince myself that the sages of remote antiquity who composed these hymns were talking about something that happened every year when they described this epic conflict that took place in the snow-covered northern mountain ranges. On the contrary, the texts leave no doubt that when Vrtra was slain he was slain for ever: ‘When Indra and the Dragon strove in battle, Maghavan [“Lord of Bounty”, an epithet for Indra] gained the victory for ever’ (1, 32, 13).
So I think there’s room for a third scenario – one that the scholars haven’t looked at.
Ice dragon
Suppose that Vrtra symbolizes glaciation – more specifically the Himalayan ice-cap, which would have been greatly extended at the Last Glacial Maximum and might indeed at times have choked off the headwaters of the Seven Rivers. If so, then it can be seen that the myth is quite consistent with the tumultuous collapse of ice-caps all around the world at the end of the Ice Age – and with what one might have expected to witness in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountains at this time:
Before the heroic intervention of Indra, the demon Ahi in his lair high in the mountains is explicitly described as being ‘extended’ and ‘stretched against the seven prone rivers’ and also as being locked in a ‘perpetual slumber’ – a suitable metaphor for an ice-cap in deep-freeze.
Indra’s slaying of Ahi/Vrtra is compared to the sudden opening of obstructed fountains.
The floods pouring down off the mountains are incredibly strong – strong enough to cleave rocks and ridges asunder as they carve out their paths.
Large chunks of the central dome of the ice-cap get flushed out with the powerful onrushing floods (‘Rolled in the midst of never-ceasing currents flowing without a rest for ever onward, the waters bear off Vrtra’s nameless body’).
The dramatic effects of the meltdown include tremendous descending waves (‘glacier waves’, see chapter 3) that form in the vast pools of meltwater on the surfaces of large glaciers (‘There he lies like a bank-bursting river, the waters taking courage flow above him. The Dragon lies beneath the feet of torrents’).
Gigantic earthquakes are unleashed as the burden imposed by the ice-cap on the land beneath is suddenly reduced; in the Himalayas and Kara-korams, which are anyway amongst the fastest-rising regions on earth, such isostatic rebound might have been amplified by normal mountain-building processes (‘the steadfast mountains shook in agitation’).
Distant desert areas far downstream are flooded.
The floods are of a nature to fill ‘many seas’.
After the catastrophic events that denuded the Himalayas and the Kara-korams of much of their Pleistocene ice-cover and that perhaps left them looking very much as they do today, the Seven Rivers that previously had been dammed up or frozen at their headwaters by the expansion of the ice-cap were set free and began to flow again in their normal courses.
Plausible? Some of it, perhaps. But this is one of the problems with the game of interpreting myth: the meaning ascribed may be more in the eye of the beholder than anywhere else …
Still, after reviewing the whole Vrtra mystery, I thought it made sense to look more closely into the scientific literature about the Himalayas. What did the palaeoclimatologists say had been happening there during the 10,000 years after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum when every other ice-covered area in the world, as far afield as New Guinea, the Andes, North America and northern Europe, was simultaneously experiencing the danger and the drama – but also the promise for a better future for mankind – of a ferocious meltdown?
Flying through ELA Land
Scientists studying ice-caps and glaciers make much use of the acronym ELA, which stands for Equilibrium Line Altitude, ‘the altitude on a glacier at which annual accumulation [of ice] is exactly matched by annual ablation [melting], so that the net mass balance is zero’.51 As one might expect, numerous studies have confirmed that ELAs across the Himalayan and Karakoram mountains were significantly lower at the Last Glacial Maximum than they are today (i.e. the ice-coverage descended further into the valleys and the ice-cap was therefore deeper – although opinions differ somewhat as to exactly how much deeper). A few examples from the literature are sufficient to illustrate the consensus on this matter:
It is evident that there is still considerable room for disagreement on the glacial succession in the north-west Himalaya and Karakoram, and even on the details of the events during the last Pleistocene glaciation. This is illustrated by the continuing divergence of opinion on the ELA depression during the Last Glacial Maximum, the maximum (of Haserodt) being 1250 metres and the minimum (of Scott) being 720 metres … Despite the apparent diversity in the estimates of ELA-depression-values for the Last Glacial Maximum, values for the north-west Himalaya, Greater Karakoram and Swat Kohistan tend to cluster in the range 800–1000 metres.52
For the Dunde ice cap on the northern flank of Tibet … we have interpreted a temperature decrease of four to six degrees Centigrade and consequent lowering of equilibrium line altitude (ELA) in the range of 700–850 metres during the last glacial stage.53
Estimated maximum depressions of ELAs range from approximately 1100 metres below present values (Swat Kohistan and the Hunza Valley in the Karakoram range) to 600 metres (southern side of the Zanskar range).54
Depressions of ELA were calculated from glacial geological mapping of the former extent of the glaciers. Maximum ELA depressions were 700 metres below present values in the Ningle Valley, 750 metres in the Liddar Valley, and 800 metres in the Sind Valley.55
ELAs were reconstructed for the Last Glacial Maximum advance … The results show an ELA depression of approximately 1000 metres below present values in the Ladakh range.56
One would not go far wrong by saying that the average lowering of ELA over the Himalayan/Karakoram ice-cap at the Last Glacial Maximum was probably of the order of 750 metres – i.e. about three-quarters of a kilometre.
Now what does this mean in practical terms? Writing in Science, Nicholas Borozovic, Douglas Burbank and Andrew Meigs helpfully provide an answer to this question with special reference to the north-western Himalayas and the Karakorams at the Last Glacial Maximum:
small changes in ELA significantly increase the percent surface area covered by glaciers when the region lies at an altitude similar to the EL A … For deeply incised mountainous regions (Nanga Parbat, the Karakoram, and Haramosh and Rakaposhi] there is an approximately linear relation between ELA lowering and the area above the snowline. Modern-day glaciers in the Karakoram are extensive; conditions at the LGM would have nearly doubled the area above the snowline available for their accumulation areas. For the Nanga Parbat and Haramosh and Rakaposhi regions, LGM conditions could have nearly quadrupled the area above the snowline … For the plateaus and dissected plateaus, the effect of lowering EL As is even greater on the landscape. The Deosai Plateau is unglaciated today but would have been blanketed by an ice sheet during LGM conditions.57
Years ago, so long ago it seems like a former incarnation, I flew in a five-seater Alouette helicopter over the bleak high plains of the Deosai plateau above Skardu. At one edge of the plains, which, if not permanently glaciated, were certainly deeply blanketed in snow, there is a lake, frozen most of the year round, called Shershar. Hovering over it in the thin air, we could see the distant peaks of the surrounding mountains, ice-bound, marching away in all directions.
It was March or April of 1981, I was still thirty and I was working with Mohamed Amin – a great friend and a great photographer who much later tragically lost his life in the Ethiopian Airlines hijack of 1996. We spent an exhilarating, nerve-racking fortnight flying around the Karakorams in the Alouette, which was owned by the Pakistan Army and piloted by a lieutenant colonel and a major with impressive handlebar moustaches. We were based in Gilgit, in the shadow of the 7,788 metre shark-tooth peak of Rakaposhi, and every day we went out and flew at ridiculous altitudes through the mountains – sometimes plunging down below the snowline into secret, verdant valleys – so that Mo could get the spectacular photographs that would later feature in our book Journey Through Pakistan.58 On the third morning, in all seriousness, I wrote out a will and left it with my passport in my hotel room.
The Alouette had a service ceiling of around 3300 metres, but we frequently struggled and clattered up to over 5200 metres – the pilots said it was a training exercise for them – and then just hung there suspended amidst the glaring white wilderness under the bright blue sky. It was a very macho thing to do with no oxygen on board and the machine wasn’t really built for it, but it brought home to me, more clearly than any other experience could possibly have done, how immense these mountains are. When we flew by Rakaposhi at 5000 metres, with our rotors almost brushing its flank, its peak still towered nearly 3000 metres above us. And within a 160 kilometre radius of Gilgit there are 100 peaks over 5486 metres high, including K2 which, at 8610 metres, is the world’s second-highest mountain.59
In an area of such superlatives it is hardly surprising that the north-west Himalayas and the Karakorams contain some of the longest valley glaciers in the world outside of the polar regions60 – and these huge glaciers coil through the ranges like ancient serpents of myth, their backs ridged with serried ranks of ice-scales.
At the Last Glacial Maximum they may have been up to four times as massive and the whole landscape surrounding them would have been locked and frozen in deep ice-cover extending to altitudes of 4000 metres – as much as a kilometre further down than today.61
Imagine what must have happened when all that ice melted down.
So, what did happen?
T
he scientific literature covering various effects and phenomena of the Ice Age in the Himalaya/Karakoram area is growing fast – as is interest in this subject amongst palaeoclimatologists and geologists.
One important issue that has been much debated concerns the glaciation and deglaciation of the Tibetan plateau at various periods during the past 2.5 million years. It has even been controversially suggested that the geologically recent uplift of Tibet as a result of mountain-building forces in the Himalayas between 3 and 2.5 million years ago may have been the specific trigger that set the Pleistocene Ice Age in motion ‘through the effects this had on the Earth’s rotation as well as on the circulation of ocean and atmosphere’.62
A related area of active debate concerns the overall extent of the Himalayan ice-cap. Here, explains Edward Derbyshire of the University of London’s Quaternary Research Centre, the broad measure of agreement that exists on the magnitude of the ELA depression at the Last Glacial Maximum:
is not matched by agreement on the regional extent of the last glaciation which has been described, at one extreme, as an ice sheet of continental scale and, at the other, as an Alpine glaciation in the Karakoram-northwest Himalayan region with some trunk valleys remaining unglacierized.63
How is it possible for serious and respected scientists, reporting their studies in peer-reviewed journals and working from essentially the same evidence base, to have come up with such divergent views about the extent of the Himalayan glaciation? ‘The explanation of the apparent paradox,’ suggests Derbyshire, lies in the difficulty of interpreting the chaotic geological record in this extremely mountainous region: