Saraswati Puja (Vasant Panchami)

A clay murti of Saraswati — white-clad, veena in hand, swan beside her — is installed on a yellow cloth at home, in schools and colleges, and in community pandals; in Bihar it is above all a students’ and educational festival. The puja is offered with yellow flowers, fruit and sweets, and the Saraswati Puran may be read.

Students and musicians lay their books, pens and instruments at the goddess’s feet to be blessed — and many deliberately do not study or play that day, out of respect.

Vasant Panchami is held the most auspicious day to begin a child’s formal education — the Vidyarambha / Aksharambha samskara, for toddlers of about two to five. After the goddess is worshipped, an elder or guru guides the child’s hand to trace the first letters — often “Om” — on a slate or in rice grains spread on a tray.

The act, done under Saraswati’s gaze, makes the start of literacy itself an offering, and seeks her blessing on a lifetime of learning.

After the worship, prasad is shared with all who come — in Bihar most characteristically boondi, kheer and ber (jujube), the fruit eaten only after the puja. Community and school pujas run over about two days, with an evening vigil of devotional song.

Then the clay murti is carried in a festive procession and given visarjan — immersion in a river or pond — returning the goddess to the waters from which, as a river-deity, she first came. Home pujas often keep this quieter.

Saraswati begins in the Rigveda as a mighty river-goddess — “best of mothers, of rivers, of goddesses” — and over the Vedic-to-Puranic ages she merged with Vāc, Speech, to become the white-clad goddess of vidya, music and the arts, holding the veena, a book and a rosary on her white lotus and swan. Her day, Vasant Panchami, is both her appearance-day and the herald of spring, kept in its signature yellow, and it is an abujh muhurat — a day so auspicious it needs no other. For Mithila — the land of Yajnavalkya, Gangesha and the Navya-Nyaya logicians, where learning is the deepest source of pride — she is the most fitting of deities, and her festival is, above all, the students’ own: a day to lay one’s books at the feet of knowledge and begin again.