SRI SARASWATI PUJA AT BELUR MATH

Basant Panchami..Saraswati Puja 28th January !

Worshipping the Goddess of Knowledge, Arts and Music, Saraswati, is most popular in the "cultural capital of India" - Kolkata. The Goddess is worshipped with bel leaves, fresh white/yellow spring flowers (mainly marigolds, chrysanthemums, palash), grains of spring (specially, malt), phaag and abhro (herbal powdered colours) and white sandal wood paste.

Saraswati puja is done on Basant Panchami — which is the fifth day of the start of spring (Basant). Traditionally people fly kites and wear something yellow.

Maa Saraswati, as we Bengalis affectionately call her, is the goddess of wisdom and learning. As wisdom and learning can be communicated by speech, she is also the goddess of speech, the Vak Devi. (Vak in Sanskrit is a cognate of the English word "voice.") Learning involves the mind and the intellect. She is represented with four arms. She holds a lotus and a book in two of her hands. The lotus symbolizes the pure mind and intellect, and the book learning. With her other two hands she plays the veena, as she is also the goddess of music and the creative arts. As the wife of Brahma, the creator god, she holds all the creative energy of the cosmos and is the mother of the vedas ('veda' means wisdom and is a cognate of the word wisdom). She is dressed in white and sits on a white lotus symbolizing purity.

Popularly dubbed as the Bengali Valentine's Day, Saraswati Puja , it has become an occasion when young would be couples go for a date. Floral offerings are made in a big scale. Books, articles, instruments of music and arts, earthen inkpots and bamboo quills are placed before her. The ink is made from unboiled milk water, colour powder and silver glitter called abhro. On this day nobody writes or reads any book, or play any musical instrument. This signifies that the goddess is blessing the books placed in front of her that day.

On the day of Saraswati puja, young children starts writing through a ceremony called 'Hatey-Khori'. This is a ceremony which marks the beginning of writing for young children. People think that one become a learned person if one starts his introduction with letters from this auspicious day.

Photo Gallery of Sri Sri Saraswati Puja At Belur Math ( EXCLUSIVE )

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