jñānam dehi, smrtam dehi
vidhyām vidhyādi devate
pratishtam kavitam dehi
shaktim sikshyā prabodhikam.
(From the Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa)
The ancient Greeks had Athena and the ancient Romans had Minerva. Hindus still have Sarasvati. She is represented with a text, a rosary, and a crown. She is thus the Goddess of Knowledge, Mathematics, Music, and Learning.
In this invocation we see a clear recognition of the role of memory in the learning process. In traditional Hindu educational framework, memorization played an important role. When I was growing up I learned multiplication tables from 1 x 1 to 20 x 20 by heart, along with several shlokas and poems, long and short. To this day, I remember more than a hundred of them, and in different languages.
We also see in this prayer an expression of commitment to education and to the spread of knowledge. Reverence for knowledge used to be an element in traditional Hindu cultural framework.
All this is implicit in this Sanskrit prayer to Saraswati given above. Its rough English translation would be:
Bless me with knowledge and memory,
Oh Source of all Knowledge!
Bless me with perseverance and poetry,
And the ability to instruct students.
It is to be noted that in the imagery of Sarasvati the intellectual dimensions of culture (knowledge, music, art) is not a male prerogative. This attitude follows from recognizing that children learn our first words and numbers, songs and wisdom from their mothers.
Spurts of Thought 