The River With Seven Names

"Then Baladeva went to Vinasana," said Vaishampayana, "which is the place where the Sarasvati becomes invisible."

Janamejaya knew the name and not the reason, and asked for it, and was told: she goes under the sand there out of contempt for the Sudras and the Abhiras who live along that stretch of her bank, and because she is lost at that spot the rishis have always called the place Vinasana, the Vanishing.

Balarama came to it in the middle of a war he had refused to join. He had taken his plough and walked away from both armies rather than lift a hand against either of the two men he had taught, and he was spending the days of the fighting on this river instead, going from ford to ford with brahmanas walking beside him and gifts going out of his hands at every stop.

He bathed in the tirtha where the water ends. There is nothing to look at there. The channel runs on, dry and pale, and the river that filled it is somewhere underneath, going the same way she always went, keeping her direction and refusing her face.

It is worth saying what he was doing on that road at all. Both of the men who were about to kill each other with maces at the far end of the war had learned the mace from him, sitting in the same yard, on the same days. He would not take a side between two of his own pupils. So he had left, on the day the fighting began, and gone up the Sarasvati with brahmanas walking beside him, and he was going to spend the entire eighteen days on this river, bathing, giving, and asking every ascetic he met for the name of the next ford and the reason for it.

That is the whole of what follows. A man walking up a river, asking why the places are called what they are called, and being answered.

From Vinasana he went on, downstream of a stream that was no longer there, to Subhumika on the excellent bank of the same river.

Subhumika is where the apsaras play, and they play there always and without any intermission, fair-complexioned and beautiful-faced, and their sports are of a pure character. That is the reason for the name. The ground belongs to them because they are the ones always on it.

Every month the gods and the gandharvas come down to that tirtha, which is the resort of Brahma himself. The Pitris come and take their pleasure there. Flowers fall on them, sacred and auspicious, and go on falling, and every creeper on that bank is loaded with blossom.

Baladeva bathed there and gave away a great deal of wealth to the brahmanas, and while he stood in the water he heard the celestial songs and the celestial instruments quite plainly, and he saw shadows on the ground and on the bank that belonged to gods and gandharvas and rakshasas whose bodies he could not see.

From there he went to the tirtha of the gandharvas, where Viswavasu and many others crowned with ascetic merit pass their whole time in dance and song of the most charming kind. He gave away goats there, and sheep, and kine, and mules, and camels, and gold, and silver. He fed many brahmanas and gratified them with costly gifts of the particular things they asked for, and when he left that place a crowd of them went with him, praising him as he walked.

The next ford is called Gargasrota, and it is called that because of a single old man.

Garga lived there, on that sacred water, and his soul had been cleansed by penances, and in that place he acquired a knowledge of Time and of the course of Time. He learned the deviations of the luminous bodies in the firmament. He learned every portent, the auspicious ones and the inauspicious ones, and what each of them meant. Highly blessed rishis of excellent vows came to that bank and waited on him, and what they waited for was that: a knowledge of Time.

Balarama came there smeared with white sandal paste, as he always was, wearing his blue robes, with one earring, and gave wealth away to many ascetics of cleansed souls and many kinds of costly food to the brahmanas.

It is a strange thing to notice on a river of fords, and Balarama noticed it: nearly every one of these places is named for somebody who was given something there. Garga was given the knowledge of Time and the ford took his name. The apsaras were given a bank to play on and the bank took theirs. Nothing on this river is called after the river.

Then he went on to the tirtha called Sankha, and there on the bank of the Sarasvati he saw the tree.

It is called Mohasankha. It is as tall as Meru and it looks like the White Mountain, and rishis resort to it. Yakshas live in it, and Vidyadharas, and rakshasas of immeasurable energy, and pisachas of immeasurable might, and Siddhas numbering in the thousands. All of them have given up every other kind of food. They observe vows and regulations, they take the fruit of that lord of the forest at the due seasons and eat nothing else, and they wander about it in separate bands, unseen by men. That one tree is the cause of the whole celebrated tirtha. Balarama gave away milch cows there, and vessels of copper and iron and other metals, and worshipped the brahmanas, and was worshipped by them in return.

He came next to the Dwaita lake, where he found ascetics of every description and every kind of attire, bathed in its waters, worshipped the brahmanas, and gave away articles of enjoyment in profusion.

Then he took the southern bank of the Sarasvati and followed it to Nagadhanwana.

That place swarms with snakes. It is the home of Vasuki of great splendour, the king of the snakes, and fourteen thousand rishis have their permanent residence there as well. In the old days the celestials came down to that spot and installed the excellent snake Vasuki as king over all the serpents, according to the proper rites.

And there is no fear of snakes in that place. That is the thing to know about it. A man walks through a wood full of serpents with a serpent king in it and nothing there will harm him, because the installation was done correctly and the compact has held ever since.

Balarama gave away many valuables to the brahmanas at Nagadhanwana and then turned his face towards the east.

After that the fords came at every step, hundreds of them and then thousands of them, all of them famous. He bathed in all of them. He observed the fasts and the other vows exactly as the rishis directed, gave wealth away in profusion, and saluted every ascetic who had taken up residence at any of them, and when he asked what lay ahead the ascetics pointed out the road, and the road went to the place where the Sarasvati turns east.

He came out on the bank and stopped.

The Sarasvati was running eastward. Not curving, not wandering as a river wanders in flat country, but bent bodily out of her own direction, the way torrents of rain are bent sideways by the action of the wind. Every other water in that country goes to the west. This one had turned around.

He had walked the length of her by then. He had seen her go under the sand at Vinasana and had bathed in her where she was not there. He had seen the apsaras' bank and the tree tall as Meru and the wood where the snakes do not bite, and none of it had stopped him where he stood. This did. A river will do a great many things to get around an obstacle. It will not reverse itself out of kindness. Baladeva of the plough stood on that bank and was filled with wonder.

"Why?" said Janamejaya, when Vaishampayana reached that point. "Why did the Sarasvati bend her course there in an easterly direction? Best of Adhvaryus, tell me all of it. For what reason was that daughter of the Yadus filled with wonder? Why, indeed, did the foremost of rivers alter her course?"

"She did it," said Vaishampayana, "in order to look at the rishis who live in the forest of Naimisha. And this is how that came about."

In the Krita age the ascetics living in Naimisha undertook a grand sacrifice that ran for twelve years, and many were the rishis who came to it. They performed it according to the rites, day after day for twelve years, and when it was finished they set out in a great body to visit the tirthas.

There were so many of them that the fords on the southern bank of the Sarasvati began to look like towns and cities. Every one of those foremost of brahmanas wanted the merit of the tirthas, so they took up their abodes along the river, and the line of them ran all the way down to Samantapanchaka. The whole region resounded with loud Vedic recitation. Everywhere along the water there were homa fires burning, and the high-souled ones pouring clarified butter into them, and the river with all those fires along her looked exceedingly beautiful.

They came in every kind. Valkhilyas came, and Asmakuttas, and Dantolakhalinas, and Samprakshanas. Ascetics came who subsist on air, and ascetics who live on water, and ascetics who eat nothing but the dry fallen leaves of trees, and men under every other sort of vow, and men who had forsworn beds and slept on the bare hard earth. They made that foremost of rivers as beautiful as the celestials make the heavenly stream called Mandakini.

And there was not enough room for them.

Hundreds upon hundreds of rishis, all of them under an obligation to perform sacrifices, could not find sufficient ground on the banks of the Sarasvati to do it on. They took their sacred threads off and measured out plots of land with them, small plots, whatever the length of the thread would allow, and performed their Agnihotras and their other rites inside those little squares.

The river watched that. She saw a great body of rishis penetrated with despair and plunged into anxiety for want of one broad tirtha wide enough to work in.

So she came there, for their sake, and made many abodes for herself in that spot out of kindness to those rishis of sacred penances. And having turned her course for them and given them the room, that foremost of streams flowed away west again, as if she were saying, 'I must go from here now, having prevented the coming of these rishis from being wasted.'

That is what the receptacles of water at Naimisha are. That is the wonderful feat that was performed in that place. And that is what Balarama was standing and looking at.

He bathed in those pools, and gave wealth and articles of enjoyment and diverse kinds of food to the brahmanas there, and went on until he reached the ford that is called Sapta-Saraswat.

"Why is that tirtha called Sapta-Saraswat?" Janamejaya asked.

"O king," said Vaishampayana, "the seven Sarasvatis cover this universe. Wherever the Sarasvati was summoned by persons of great energy, thither she made her appearance. These are the seven forms of her: Suprava, Kanchanakshi, Visala, Manorama, Oghavati, Surenu, and Vimalodaka."

The first of them was at Pushkara.

The Supreme Grandsire was performing a great sacrifice there, and many regenerate ones crowned with ascetic success came to the ground he had selected. The place rang with sacred hymns and the chanting of the Vedas. The preparations were so grand that the very gods lost their coolness looking at them. Whatever any of the guests so much as thought of needing appeared in front of him at once. The gandharvas sang and the tribes of apsaras danced and celestial instruments played the whole time, and the provisions laid in for that sacrifice satisfied the gods themselves, so what is there to say about men.

And in the middle of it, with the Grandsire installed in the rite and the ceremony under way, the rishis said the one thing that was true.

"This sacrifice cannot be said to possess high attributes, since that foremost of rivers, the Sarasvati, is not to be seen here."

Brahma heard it, and it did not offend him. He thought of the Sarasvati, cheerfully. And being thought of at Pushkara by the Grandsire in the middle of a sacrifice, she appeared there, and the name she took at Pushkara was Suprava.

The munis saw how quickly she had paid that regard to the Grandsire, and after that they esteemed the sacrifice highly.

At another time a great many munis mustered together at Naimisha and took up their residence there, and delightful disquisition went on among them about the Vedas. Conversant as they were with the diverse scriptures, there in that place they thought of the Sarasvati. Being thought of by rishis engaged in a sacrifice, the highly blessed river made her appearance at Naimisha to render them assistance, and there she came to be called Kanchanakshi, the golden-eyed, and all of them worshipped her.

While king Gaya was performing his great sacrifice at Gaya, the Sarasvati was summoned to it and came. The rishis of rigid vows who were present named that form of hers Visala, and it is a river of swift current, and it flows from the sides of Himavat.

Auddalaka performed a sacrifice with a large concourse of munis gathered for it, on the sacred ground of northern Kosala. Before he began he thought of the Sarasvati, and she came into that region for the sake of those rishis. They were clad in barks and deerskins, and they called her mentally, and by that mental calling she became known as Manorama, which is the mind's delight.

While the high-souled Kuru was engaged in a sacrifice at Kurukshetra, she made her appearance there also. It was Vasishtha, who was assisting Kuru in the rite, who summoned her, and she came full of celestial water, and at Kurukshetra her name was Oghavati.

Daksha at one time performed a sacrifice at the source of the Ganga, and she appeared there as the fast-flowing Surenu.

And once again, when Brahma was engaged in a sacrifice in the sacred forest of the Himavat mountains, the adorable Sarasvati was summoned by him and appeared, and there she was Vimalodaka, the clear water.

Seven times begun without her. Seven times called. Seven times she came, and took whatever name the place gave her, and did the work she was wanted for.

All seven of those forms then came and joined together in the one tirtha where Baladeva was standing. And because the seven mingled at that spot, that ford is known on earth by the name Sapta Sarasvati.

It is a place worth arriving at.

Numerous feathery creatures have their home there. Vadari grows on that bank, and Inguda, and Ksamarya, and Plaksha, and Aswattha, and Vibhitaka, and Kakkola, and Palasa, and Karira, and Pilu, and all the other kinds of tree that grow along the Sarasvati. There are forests of Karushakas and Vilwas and Amratakas, of Atimuktas and Kashandas and Parijatas, and forests of plantains, and the whole of it is agreeable to the sight and most charming.

Ascetics of every description live there. Some live on air and some on water. Some live on fruit and some on leaves. Some live on raw grain which they husk with the help of nothing but stones, and there are some who are called Vaneyas. The place resounds with the chanting of the Vedas and teems with animals of every kind, and it is the favourite abode of men without malice who are devoted to righteousness.

That was the ford where the great ascetic Mankanaka performed his penances and was crowned with success, and it was to that ford, at the end of that long road of gifts and fasts and fords, that Valadeva came, with the plough on his shoulder and the white sandal paste on his skin.

Seven sacrifices had been begun without her. Seven times men of great energy had stopped in the middle of what they were doing and admitted that the thing was incomplete, and had thought of her, and she had come. She had no altar of her own in any of those seven places. She was not the object of any of those rites. She was what the rite could not be done without, and each of the seven grounds gave her a different name and kept it, so that in seven countries she is remembered under seven words and not one of them is the word she started with.

And here, in this one sandy bend of a river that hides herself further down her own course, all seven of the names come back into the same water.