The River Who Listened

The poet stood on the bank and had to raise his voice, because the river was louder than he was.

She came down from the mountains in flood. The hymns do not call her gentle. They say she broke the ridges of the hills with her waves, the way a man digging for lotus roots tears up the mud. They say her flood had no end and no break in it, and that it came on with a roar. One poet looked at the brown water rushing past and called it a fort of iron. Nothing could get through her, and so nothing could get at the people who lived behind her.

"This is Saraswati," sang Vasishtha. "She runs like a chariot, and she leaves every other water behind."

She was not alone. The poets counted seven sister rivers, and she was the one they loved best. They gave her three titles in a single breath: best of mothers, best of rivers, best of goddesses.

They also believed she heard them. That is the strangest and warmest thing in these hymns. Other rivers ran past. This one paid attention.

"Clean in her course from the mountains to the sea," Vasishtha sang, "she alone among the rivers has listened."

They remembered what her listening had done. A man named Vadhryashva had worshipped her and had no son, and she gave him one, the fierce Divodasa, who grew up to be a great chief. For a king of old named Nahusha she had poured out milk and butter. The tribe of the Purus lived on her two grassy banks, and the five peoples prospered beside her.

So the poets came to her with small human requests and were not ashamed of them.

"Mother," said one, of the family of Gritsamada, "we are people of no fame at all. Give us a name."

"Guard us from those who hate us," said another. "You who strike down the ones who mock the gods."

There was a second thing they felt about her, and it is the seed of everything she became later. Standing by her water, they found their thoughts came clear. One of the oldest hymns in the collection calls her the one who stirs up every pleasant song and wakes every good thought. It says that the great flood lights up the mind.

The most moving verse is the last one of the longest hymn. The poet has praised her power for thirteen verses. Then his voice drops, and he sounds like a child holding on to his mother's hand.

"Lead us to good things, Saraswati. Do not hold back your milk from us. Do not push us away. Take our friendship gladly. Do not let us go from you to far-off fields."

He was asking never to have to leave her banks.

When the singing was over, Vasishtha said that his hymn had opened the doors of sacred order for her. He asked her to grow, and to give strength to the one who praised her. Then he and his people went up from the water to their fires, and the river went on to the sea.

By the time of the Mahabharata the river had changed, and everyone knew it.

When the great war was about to begin, Balarama would not fight for either side. He went on a pilgrimage instead, along the whole length of the Saraswati, giving away cattle and gold at every bathing place.

Early on the road he came to a place called Vinashana, which means the vanishing. There the river went down into the sand and could not be seen. The epic gives a hard reason of its own time. It says she hid herself there because she would not be looked at by certain peoples whom the poets of that day despised. Further on she came up again.

The sages along the way told Balarama why she was still the holiest of rivers. She had seven forms, they said, because she went wherever she was needed.

Once Brahma, the Grandfather, held a great sacrifice at Pushkar. Everything was perfect. Then the sages looked around.

"This cannot be called a great sacrifice," they said. "Saraswati is not here."

Brahma thought of her, and she appeared at Pushkar at once, and they named that stream Suprabha.

The sages of the Naimisha forest thought of her, and she came to them. King Gaya called her to his sacrifice, and the sage Auddalaka called her to northern Kosala. Vasishtha called her to Kurukshetra for King Kuru. Each time she came, and each time she was given a new name.

At one gathering so many sages came to her bank that there was no room left. They measured out tiny plots with their sacred threads and sat down in despair. The river saw it. She turned aside from her path and made pools and bays for them, and then she turned again and went on her way west.

Balarama watched the water bend, and he was filled with wonder. At the end of his journey he sang a verse to the sages.

"Where else is there such happiness as living by the Saraswati? Everyone should always remember her."