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RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
is the wife of Brahmá, and the goddess presiding over letters and arts. The Vaishnavas of Bengal have a popular legend, that she was the wife of Vishúu, as were also Lakshmi and Gangá. The ladies disagreed, Saraswatí, like the other prototype of learned ladies, Minerva, being something of a termagant, and Vishnu, finding that one wife was as much as even a god could manage, transferred Saraswatí to Brahmá, and Gangá to Siva, and contented himself with Lakshmi alone. It is worthy of remark, that Saraswati is represented as of a white colour, without any superfluity of limbs, and not unfrequently of a graceful figure wearing a slender crescent on her brow, and sitting on a lotus.
On the morning of the fifth lunar day of Mágha, the whole of the pens and inkstands, and the books, if not too numerous and bulky, are collected the pens, or reeds, cleaned, the inkstands scoured, and the books, wrapped up in new cloth, are arranged upon a platform or a sheet, and are strewn over with fowers and blades of young barley; no flowers except white are to be offered. Sometimes these are the sole objects of adoration; but an image of Saraswatí stands, in general, immediately behind them; or, in place of the image, a water-jar; a not uncommon, although a curious substitute for a god or a goddess, amongst the Hindus,
After performing the necessary rites of ablution, Saraswatí is to be meditated upon, and invited to the place of worship, with some such mental prayer as
