Dr. Elizabeth Rohlman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. Dr. Rohlman’s research considers the role of narrative literature in articulating and constructing religious identity in pre-modern South Asia. For this seminar, Dr. Rohlm an focuses on Sarasvati and her role in Hindu lore.
It has been argued that Sarasvati is the most ancient goddess of Hinduism, and perhaps the first river to be worshipped as a goddess in Hindu tradition. Generations of Indologists have carefully traced the evolution of Sarasvati through Sanskrit tradition, from the river of the Vedas, through her association with the Vedic goddess of speech, Vac, to her emergence as a deity who is both a river goddess and the goddess of knowledge. Yet these catalogues of Sarasvati’s textual appearances do not tell the full story of Sarasvati’s place in Hindu traditions. Using as a metaphor the river that bears her name, this paper article examines the elusive and sometimes paradoxical position of Sarasvati in the history of Hinduism. The River Sarasvati is herself cloaked in mystery-already described as “lost” in the Vedas, she is a river that is believed to appear and disappear from the surface of the earth at will. Yet this mysterious nature conveys a great deal of power. The Sarasvati River carries ability to define the religious geography and tradition of a region, as she does in numerous regional Sarasvati traditions across India, or to sanctify the vast land of Bharata, as she does in the great epic, the Mahabharata. This paper argues that Sarasvati the goddess is no less elusive nor powerful than the river, arguing that it is her compound role as River, Speech, and Goddess that she develops into such a perplexing figure.
