Born from the Tongue

The sage Narada wanted to know about the Goddess, and asked the one person who would tell him plainly.

"Everyone names Prakriti," he said to Narayana. "Nobody explains her. Who is she?"

"She is the half of the Lord that makes things," said Narayana. "When the world had to be made she put out five of herself. Durga, who is Shiva's. Lakshmi, who is the wealth of the world. Savitri, the mother of the Vedas. Radha, who is Krishna's own life. And the third of the five, who is the one I think you are really asking about."

Then he told it from the beginning.

Before there was anything, there was Krishna alone, and he divided. His right half stayed what it was. His left half became a woman, and that woman was the Goddess, Prakriti, the root from which everything made is made. A whole day of Brahma passed. Then the Goddess put out five forms of herself, and the Purana follows them one by one. The one it follows first came from her tongue.

A daughter stepped out of the Goddess's tongue the way a word does. She was white. White skin, white clothes, a string of jewels at her throat, a veena in her hands and a book. She did not have to be taught anything. Every book that would ever be written was already in her, and she was mistress of all the sciences from the moment she stood up.

"That is Saraswati," said Narayana. "She lives in every heart as the power to understand. When a poet finds his line, when a scholar wins his argument, when a singer keeps the note, that is her. Without her the whole company of Brahmins would stand with their mouths open and nothing coming out."

The Goddess divided again, into Lakshmi from her left side and Radha from her right. Krishna divided again too, into a two-armed form that was himself and a four-armed form, and the four-armed one was Narayana. Now there were brides and there were bridegrooms, and Krishna gave them out.

He looked at the white girl with the veena.

"You will follow this four-armed one," he said, "and be his wife." To Lakshmi he said the same. To Radha he said, "You stay. You are mine."

The fourth chapter of the book remembers one more thing about that moment, and tells it a little differently. There the white daughter has come from the end of Radha's lips, and she does not want to go anywhere. She wants to stay beside Krishna, where she was born.

Krishna was kind about it and did not pretend.

"If you married me and stayed," he said, "it would do you no good. Radha is near me, and Radha is stronger than you, and I cannot give her up. She is the deity of my life. Go to Vaikuntha. Its Lord will be your husband, and everything you wish for you will have there."

So Narayana took Lakshmi and Saraswati to Vaikuntha, and the goddess of speech began her first marriage, which was not her last.

Narada had one more question. "And who worshipped her first?"

"He did," said Narayana. "Krishna himself. On the fifth day of the bright half of Magha, the day that learning begins, he worshipped Saraswati with his own hands. After him Brahma did, and Vishnu, and Shiva, and Ananta who holds up the earth, and Dharma, and Sanaka and all the sages, and every king, and in the end every person who has ever held a book."

The Purana gives the rules of that first puja, and they are the rules still. Set up a water jar. Worship Ganesha first, because every beginning is his. Then call her, picture her white and smiling with the veena and the book, and give her sixteen things, nearly all of them white: ghee, curd, milk, rice, sesame sweets, sugarcane, honey, a coconut, white flowers, white sandal paste, a white cloth, and a conch to blow.

That, Narayana told Narada, is how she came to be, and how she came to be worshipped. What she did in Vaikuntha was another matter.

The Brahma Vaivarta begins after the end of a world. Everything has been drawn back in, and Krishna is alone with nothing to look at.

He begins to make, and he makes from himself. From his right side come the three strands of which everything is woven, and then a being who looks exactly like him and bows to him: that is Narayana. From his left side comes Shiva, with five faces. From a lotus that grows out of his navel comes Brahma, with four. From his chest comes Dharma, the order of things.

Then, from his mouth, with no warning, comes a girl holding a veena and a book.

She is white, and she shines like more moons than there are numbers for. Her eyes are like lotuses. She is smiling. The text calls her the mother of the Shrutis, of all the sciences, and of every learned person who will ever be born, and it names her at once: Saraswati, the one who came out of the mouth of God.

The others follow. Lakshmi comes from Krishna's mind, ever young, the mistress of all wealth. The Goddess herself, Prakriti, comes from his intelligence, golden, in a red sari, with weapons in her many hands and a lion to ride. From the tip of his tongue comes Savitri, clear as crystal, with a rosary, the mother of the Vedas. From his left side, last and most loved, comes Radha, with the walk of a swan.

Then Krishna gives the brides away.

"Lakshmi," he says, "you are Narayana's."

"Savitri, you are Brahma's."

"Durga, who rides the lion, you are Shiva's." And Shiva, the text says, accepts her.

Rati he gives to Kama, the god of love. Of Saraswati, in that list, he says nothing at all. She is not given to anyone. Yet a few lines further on the same chapter calls Brahma the husband of Saraswati, as if everyone knew it already, and later in the book she is counted among the wives of Narayana. The text does not stop to explain. It goes on to say what she is for.

"She is the deity of the mind," the sage Narayana tells Narada when he comes to the five Prakritis. "Of speech, of learning, of poetry, of memory. Of the picture you make in your head before you make it with your hands. Of the moment in a song when the beat lands. Every goddess of every village is a part of her, and Ganga and Tulasi and the rest are her portions."

And he gives her day: the fifth of bright Magha, when the first letters are written, with Ganesha and the Sun and Fire and Vishnu and Shiva and Parvati worshipped before her, and everything offered white. Krishna, he says, taught her protecting hymn first of all in Goloka, in the circle of the dance.