River and Goddess Worship in India

R. U. S. Prasad holds a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He is currently an Associate in the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of two books on telecommunications and Rig-Vedic and Post-Rig-Vedic Polity.

• 1. Introduction2. Origin of the Vedic river Sarasvati – various theories3. Sarasvati in ancient Indian texts- an over-view4. Sarasvati in the Rig-Veda5. Sarasvati in the Yajur-Veda and the Atharva-Veda6. Sarasvati in the Brahmanas7. Sarasvati and other deities in Vedic texts8. Sarasvati and Vak9. Sarasvati in the Mahabharata10. Important pilgrimage sites (Tirthas) on Sarasvati and folklore associated with them11. Sarasvati and the Puranas12. Iconography of Sarasvati13. Conclusions

This is a commendable book, thorough, carefully researched, ground-breaking, and generously sensitive to the multiple dimensions of Sarasvati as goddess and river over the ages. R. U. S. Prasad has very responsibly studied the many and varied relevant texts, and also paid attention to geographical, architectural, and iconographic details. He has taken seriously a very long history, without reducing the meaning of what we learn about Sarasvati simply to historical data. Scholars and believers both will respect this book and benefit from the immense learning it contains. It should quickly become a standard resource for the study of Sarasvati and similar figures in the Vedic and Hindu traditions. Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology and Director, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, USThis carefully researched study provides an excellent contribution to present controversial debates on the identity of India’s holy river. Of particular relevance in this context is the critical evaluation of the various theories about Sarasvati’s identification with the Helmand river in Afghanistan, the Indus and the seasonal monsoon fed Ghaggar-Hakra river in Haryana and south eastern Pakistan. The main emphasis and significant capacity of the book is the comprehensive analysis of the textual evidence from the Rigveda to the Puranas, depicting the successive stages and facets of Sarasvati’s transformation from a river goddess to the divine embodiment of speech and learning, fine arts and music.Hermann Kulke, Kiel University, Germany Dr R.U.S. Prasad’s work reflects a very thorough study of the available evidence on Sarasvati. He has effectively demonstrated within the confines of evidence that Sarasvati was a river in reality eulogized by the Aryans without getting trapped in the quagmire of an irrelevant archaeological debate. Tracing the evolution of Sarasvati through the corpus of later Vedic texts, he has been able to show how the goddess of river gradually merges with goddess of wisdom and learning. The coverage of the pilgrimage sites along the course of the Sarasvati and of the pattern of their clustering mainly in the state of present Haryana is comprehensive; this perhaps derives from the early tradition of the sanctity of Brahmavarta as sacred space par excellence, although by the time the lists of the tirthas were really formalized, their sanctity may have been more notional than functional.Professor B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India