Rivers 08 - Saraswatis, How Many! Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

Rig Veda and scriptures praise
the Saraswati rising from Adi-Badri
and flowing to the ocean, or vanished
in the desert as the later texts say.

In Padmapuranam we have seen her
pausing at Pushkar, the lake city;
a river emerges from Pushkar lake
flow south to the Great Rann of Kutch;
Lavanavari River, the upper reaches
of which is known as Saraswati.

A third stream called Saraswati
rises at the tip of the Aravalli Hills
and lands in the Little Rann
just south of the Great Rann.

This rivulet is a short one,
but on its banks are strewn
several pilgrimage centres
like Siddhapur and Patan,
that remind us of the great river.

At Siddhapur is situated the famous
Rudramaala temple now in ruins,
and the sacred lake Bindusarowar;
at Patan, a magnificent stepped well;

on the shores of a big lake at Patan
there are three pyramid-like shrines
dedicated to river-goddesses
Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati.

Another small river Saraswati
flows down from the Gir Hills
near Gir National Park
in southwest Saurashtra
to Somnath, the temple town
on the coast of Arabian Sea.

A fifth river Saraswati
which had vanished on a
curse by Sage Ved Vyaasa,
they say it's all fiction.