The Boy Who Kept the Vedas

There was once a sage named Dadhicha who lived on the bank of the Saraswati. His self-control was so great that it frightened Indra, the king of the gods, who was always afraid that some ascetic would grow strong enough to take his throne.

Indra tried to turn the sage from his vows and failed. But out of that time a child came into the world, a son of Dadhicha, and the epic says it was the river herself who carried him and gave him birth. When he was born she took him in her arms and went to find his father.

She found Dadhicha sitting among other sages.

"This is your son," Saraswati said. "I have carried him out of devotion to you. Take him."

Dadhicha took the child and held him close for a long time. Then he turned to the river.

"You rose from Brahma's lake in the old days," he said. "You have done me great good. This boy shall carry your name. He shall be called Sarasvata. And hear what he will do. A drought of twelve years is coming. When it comes, this Sarasvata will teach the Vedas to the greatest of Brahmins."

He blessed her as well, to be the first of all holy rivers. Then the river went away glad, and she took the boy with her and brought him up.

Years passed. The gods went to war with the demons and could find no weapon strong enough. Indra sent them to Dadhicha to ask for his bones. The sage gave up his life without a moment's doubt, and from his bones the thunderbolt was made. That is a story for another day. What matters here is that the boy was left with no father, only the river.

Then the drought came, as his father had said.

For twelve years no rain fell. The fields cracked. The sages who lived along the Saraswati had nothing to eat, and one by one they got up and went away in every direction, looking for food.

Sarasvata watched them go. He made up his mind to go too.

The river spoke to him.

"You need not leave, my son. Stay here. I will feed you. I will bring you large fish every day."

So he stayed. Every day the river gave him his food. Every day he made his offerings to the gods and the sages, and every day he recited the Vedas aloud, alone, so that not a line would slip from him.

When the twelve years were over and the rains returned, the sages came back thin and worn. They sat down together and asked one another to recite.

Nobody could. In all that wandering with empty stomachs, the Vedas had gone out of their heads. Not one of them could be sure of the words.

Then one of them, walking in the forest, came upon a boy sitting by himself and reciting, steadily, the whole of it. The boy shone like a god. The sage ran back and told the others.

They all came, a great crowd of grey-haired men, and stood before him.

"Teach us," they said.

"Then become my students in the proper way," said Sarasvata.

The old men looked at each other.

"Son, you are a child."

"I must do this rightly, or my own merit will be lost," the boy said. "One who teaches wrongly and one who learns wrongly are both soon ruined, and they come to hate each other. Sages do not measure greatness by years, or grey hair, or wealth, or the number of one's relatives. Among us, the great one is the one who knows the Veda."

They could not argue with that. They bowed to him as their teacher, sixty thousand of them. Each one brought a handful of grass and laid it down to make the boy a seat.

Then he taught them, and the Vedas were heard along the Saraswati again.