Sarasvati, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge: From the Manuscript-wielding Vina-player to the Weapon-wielding Defender of the Dharma.

• Author: Jamison, Stephanie W.
• Position: Book review

Sarasvati, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge: From the Manuscript-wielding Vina-player to the Weapon-wielding Defender of the Dharma. By CATHERINE LUDVIK. Brill's Indological Library, vol. 27. Leiden: BRILL, 2007. Pp. xviii + 374, 25 fig.

This work, a revision of the author's 2001 University of Toronto dissertation, covers a remarkable amount of ground, in terms of chronology, geography, and source material. The common thread is the goddess whose name leads the title, one of the only, perhaps the only, goddess of any stature to endure from Vedic times into the Classical India of Hindu and Buddhist materials, and indeed carried beyond India with advancing Buddhism. The author studies "the conceptual and iconographic development" of Sarasvati from the Rig Veda to the second half of the first millennium C.E., organized around four foci: "Vedic Sarasvati" (pp. 9-91), "Epic and Puranic Sarasvati" (pp. 95-141), "Buddhist Sarasvati" (pp. 145-221), and "Images of Sarasvati" (pp. 225-75).

The first three sections are text-oriented. The Vedic section considers, in order, the Sarasvati materials in the Rig Veda, Atharva Veda, Yajur Veda, and Brahmanas; the second section evidence from the Mahdbharata and some early Puranas, primarily the Markandeya, the Matsya, and the Vayu. "Buddhist Sarasvati" is based entirely on the Sutra of Golden Light (Suvarnabhasa or Suvarnabhd-sottama Sutra), both in the Chinese translation of an earlier version no longer extant in Sanskrit and a somewhat later Sanskrit version. (The Sarasvati chapter of this sutra in Chinese, Sanskrit, and English is given in Appendix A, pp. 277-308, and in Appendix B, pp. 309-15, a list of herbs for a bath associated with Sarasvati in the sutra.) The leading role of this sutra in the book under review is clear from the fact that its treatment occupies more pages than any other topic. The final section is art historical rather than directly textual, and considers images that can definitely be identified as Sarasvati, others that are likely to be Sarasvati, and some that have been so identified but probably incorrectly. The images range in date from second century B.C.E. to ca. eighth century C.E.

The work is extremely thorough and systematic, and in the scholarly areas I control I found the treatment of the primary texts and of the secondary literature technically exact and conscientious. The plan of the book and its execution are straightforward. Since the overall goal of the book is to trace...