Saraswati is the personification of all knowledge, arts, sciences, crafts and skills: fine arts and music included. Her vehical is a swan. She is playing a veena and has a scroll representing knowledge in one hand and a mala in the other representing mastery of the mantras (sacred sounds).
Form is beyond words... yet our minds strive to label forms with language. Actually, form comes before words. There are four divisions of speech. In the first division which is the highest reality, no individual sound or concept manifests. Since there is no sound or concept, it is conjectured that this must be pure light, as in 'divine light'. On a physiological level it appears that this is the result of energy generated in the synaptic cleft of nerves with activity and inactivity of the thoughts as they travel from one region of the brain to another. Next, is the first step toward manifestation which is envisioning with a spiritual eye. Next is the phonological and semantic concepts that we attach to form and the fourth step is to articulate speech. Another generation or abstraction from that is, of course, written words. All words get understood in the context of our mother tongues and the connotations we place upon words. Saraswati represents the energy of this knowledge.
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