Saraswati
சரஸ்வதி सरस्वती
Also Vagdevi, Sharada, Bharati, Vani, Kalaimagal.
ShaktaSmartaVaishnava
Who this is
Saraswati is learning, speech and music, and the one deity whose worship consists largely of putting the work down. On Saraswati Puja the books, the instruments and the tools are stacked before her and not touched, because the tradition holds that what you live by is honoured by being rested. She began as a river in the Rig Veda, the Saraswati that ran between the Yamuna and the Sutlej and dried up, and the goddess kept the river’s name and its association with clear flow. She is the only one of the three great goddesses who is not asked for anything material.
How to recognise them
White clothed, seated on a white lotus or a rock, with the veena across her, a palm leaf manuscript in one hand and a rosary in another. The swan is her vehicle, said to separate milk from water, which is the discrimination learning is for. The peacock stands behind her in some forms, kept waiting, because vanity is not the same as art.
Family and companions
Consort of Brahma in the puranic account. Bengal places her as a daughter of Durga and brings her in the Durga Puja tableau beside Lakshmi, Ganesha and Kartik, which is a family arrangement the south does not use.
How they are worshipped
Vasant Panchami; the ninth day of Navaratri; Thursday in some houses.
Vasant Panchami in Magha is her day in the north and the east, and the ninth day of Navaratri in the south, where the books are laid out on the ninth and taken up again on Vijayadasami. A child is given its first letter on that morning, the vidyarambham, with the finger drawn through rice. White flowers and white cloth are offered, and nothing fried or heavy.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The river that went underground
The Saraswati of the Rig Veda is a river, praised as the greatest of them, and the hymns place it between the Yamuna and the Sutlej. It dried up or changed course, and the tradition did not let the name go: it says the river went underground and joins the Ganga and the Yamuna invisibly at Prayag, so that the sangam there is of three rivers and not two. The goddess of learning keeps a river’s qualities in the way she is described, as something that must flow and that goes bad standing still.
The books that are put down
On the ninth day of Navaratri the household gathers what it works with, the schoolbooks, the ledgers, the veena, the carpenter’s plane, the driver’s keys, and stacks them before her with flowers, and for one day nobody uses any of it. A child who wants to read is told it cannot. On Vijayadasami the pile is taken up again and the first letter written. The custom is read two ways in the same house: as rest given to the tools, and as a demonstration to the child that learning is a thing you are given rather than a thing you own.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- Koothanur is the one temple in the Tamil country where she has her own sanctum, and the ninth day of Navaratri is the Saraswati Puja with the books laid down.
- Kerala
- Panachikkadu is the Kerala shrine, and the vidyarambham at Thunchan Parambu on Vijayadasami is where thousands of children are given the first letter in one morning.
- Karnataka
- Sharada at Sringeri is the seat Adi Sankara established, and the Navaratri there is kept for her through all nine nights.
- Bengal
- Vasant Panchami is the student’s festival, with the image in every school and para, and the books placed at her feet the night before.
- Kashmir
- Sharada Peeth, now across the line of control, gave Kashmir its old name as the land of Sharada and its script.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Koothanur Maha Saraswathi Temple Koothanur, Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu
- Sringeri Sharadamba Temple Sringeri, Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka
- Sri Gnana Saraswathi Temple, Basara Basara, Nirmal, Telangana
- Panachikkadu Saraswathy Temple Panachikkadu, Kottayam, Kerala
- Sri Vidya Saraswathi Temple, Wargal Wargal, Siddipet, Telangana
What is said
From the mantra library