Dashing Through the Snow into 2015 BCE: An Offering to Saraswati from a Wintry Land - Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

Snowy Saraswati drapes our yard with her white sari and her hansa (swan that knows) flies through the blue sky in great freedom.  Big chunks of white fluffy snow fall off trees revealing the denuded blackness of the wintry branches.  Soon it will all melt and flow away into nothingness like the ancient river Saraswati. Legend has it that she used to flow in northern India during the time of the ziggurat builders in Mesopotamia. The Indus Valley Civilization of that time has melted away like many such great human achievements; yet, the river’s subterranean presence can be felt in Allahabad, the ancient city of my Alma Mater. There she meets her sisters Ganga and Yamuna to create a sangam, a confluence, a flowing togetherness of being.

As Vasant Panchami arrives in India and many students offer their books and musical instruments to Saraswati, the Hindu Goddess of learning, this blogger rides a snowy flight of fancy to the 21^st century Before the Common Era when Bronze Age civilizations flourished. Often subterranean rivers of our psyche flow effortlessly into timeless zones unavailable to our conscious and rational everydayness. Lost in getting and spending in a mad rush to erect illusory castles of permanence, we lose that overflowing Saraswati, that sinuous melody of our being.  She goes deep underground and lies dormant until we hear the quiet sound of her Vina.  An Indian master craftsman can make her murti with such meditative rapture that we get a glimpse of her concrete presence on the day of her annual celebration.  

One of my enduring childhood memories involves the making of her murti by our art teacher. As children my sister and I were given most of the responsibility for her puja by our father. On his daily morning walks, he would especially look for the mango flowers essential for her ritual. These heralded the coming of spring or Vasant. We had to wake up early, bathe, make garlands and grind sandalwood paste as our mother took care of more difficult jobs. The cool morning mist would mingle with the sound of her mantra as we, two young girls, would partake of the sharp tasting mango shoot with milk and honey as charanamrit, the liquid nectar flowing from her feet.  Perhaps when children repeat her mantra and write her name on a banana leaf with a bamboo pen and milk, something of her gnostic magic permeates their being. 

Wanting to know is a very strong impulse of our being, and in India we have many Saraswatis who preside over all kinds of learning.  This pristine white one must be worshipped by children so that they learn the discipline of discipleship.  If fortunate, we may find real teachers who will instill a sincere love of learning that can infuse life with profound beauty.  Without prayerful ritual observance of her puja that may later lead to a meditative absorption, she remains mainly an information gathering instrument.  Yet her very presence in the collective cultural consciousness can create a pathway that may lead some to the deeper aspects of Nila Saraswati Tara who presides over a mystic transformative knowledge.   

So flying on the wings of her milky swan, I sweep the timescape of the 21^st century BCE and find all kinds of cultures and people who create an ancient tapestry of our collective human heritage. I make my first stop in Egypt and find Mentuhotep II on the throne, the first ruler of the Middle Kingdom who reigned for 51 years.  The blue river Nile is flowing with tremendous power as people of his time erect monuments that will speak to their descendants.

Some of his wives were the priestesses of Hathor, a primordial goddess of death, dance and music.  The King looks like an old version of a black dervish in one depiction. He was identified with Osiris, god of the afterlife. I find his piercing eyes and his folded hands without any ornate kingly jewelry deeply appealing. This murti is stark like the myth of Osiris, ruler of the dead. Strangely he was also known as the lord of love and the lord of silence.

Flying over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea I descend upon Greco Anatolia.  This is an extremely ancient land as the findings in Çatalhöyük have attested, but more recent discoveries in Göbekli Tepe suggest we may have to rewrite the history of humanity once the meaning of its monumental temples is deciphered. But in the 21^st century BCE, the Hittites and Assyrians reign here. They may have been the earliest speakers of the Indo European group of languages that include Sanskrit and Greek.

Mycenaean Greeks also inhabited this land in this timeframe. Just a little south one could see the land of Knossos where the Minoans created a most exquisite civilization full of dynamic women and their serpentine goddesses. This legendary land housed King Minos and Daedalus’s famed labyrinth.  I was startled to see the name Manasa listed as one of the Mycenean goddesses; I only knew of the Bengali Manasa, an Indian serpent goddess!

Now the ancient Near East beckons the fanciful traveler where Inanna and Ishtar reigned across the minds of its people. Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, has been called the cradle of civilization by those who mark civilization as writing.  Another ancient habitat where humankind’s first known myths of the Enûma Eliš arise, the twenty first century BCE had a king called Ur Nammu.  He might have created one of the first codes of law that inaugurated a more patriarchal bend in civilization’s history. He also built the great ziggurat of Ur and dedicated it to Nanna, its moon god. Already a lot of history had washed up on the shores of these rivers, but this ancient seal with the moon makes a great impression.  It may be a ceremonial seal, but the low hanging moon and the priestess who leads the procession is quite a regal figure. 

Flying over the Yellow River we now visit the Xia dynasty in China.  The Great Flood of this river is spoken of in the bamboo annals of its history.  Yu the Great reigned at this time.  His father tried to stop the flood but failed and was killed. The son succeeded where the father had failed and became a legendary leader.  Like Indian, Mesopotamian and Biblical stories, Chinese mythology too speaks of a great flood.  The most ancient layer of Daoist philosophy might have operated at this time giving rise to the balancing play of the Yin and the Yang. I find the tale of the Weaver Goddess in Chinese mythology fascinating; daughter of the Jade Emperor, she weaves magical love tales and is connected to the Chinese version of the story of the Milky Way.

We now visit the ancient Indus Valley in search of the lost Saraswati.  The Mother Goddess figurine below speaks of India’s deep connection with female deities. Already in its mature period at the second millennium BCE, the civilization encompassed a vast part of modern South Asia.  Although contemporaneous with Egypt, Mesopotamia and Crete it has been relatively neglected and is the least known of the world’s oldest civilizations, possibly because no Rosetta stone has been found to unravel its “script.”

Mohenjo-daro was the most advanced city of this time and its archeological splendor reminds us that the deepest strata of Indic civilization lay in this sphere. It may contain clues to India’s ancient knowledge systems of Yoga and Tantra. Images found there speak eloquently of a civilization that shaped the Indic sensibility. The Pashupati Shiva seal, although disputed, appears to hint at Yoga’s antiquity.  The priest king and the dancing girl with an attitude are a tantalizing presence in our early history.  

While current generations of scholars are mired in colonial disputes around the Vedic and the Indus layers of its civilization, perhaps some young students who worship Saraswati today will discover the ancient clues without any reactive modality. It seems quite clear from current practices that the Vedic mantric civilization effortlessly mingled with Indus’ image world.  Today’s India is a secular democracy where many religions coexist. Its ancient understanding of plurality and multiple ways of knowing truths has been its greatest asset.  

Rain drops have now dented the smooth snow in our yard creating multiple cloud patterns. It reminds me that there are many ways of being in the world, and no one truth ought to claim superiority. My reverie tells me that we may be connected to the ancient land in more ways than we can imagine. We are after all recycled clay according to some Indic paths. Saraswati the goddess in her many personas is like the river that flows deep below our consciousness ready to awaken us to our connection to all that is.  Like today’s multicultural and multi-religious world, people long ago may have lived similar and yet profoundly different lives. They can speak to us if we allow this new year of 2015 CE to echo 2015 BCE in our mental landscape.