Sarasvata is a name of a great sage and is said to be the son of River Saraswati. There is a legendary story relating to the birth of Sarasvata. Sage Dadhici was an ascetic and once he engaged himself in severe austerity. Lord Indra became afraid of his position in the heaven and was threatened by Dadhici, the yogi with great power. So Lord Indra sent Alambusha, an Apsara to tempt Dadhici and distract him from his meditation. Dadhici saw the mystical dance of Alambusha at his hermitage and then he had a seminal discharge which fell into the river Saraswati. Then Saraswati gave birth to a son named Sarasvata. The sage Dadhici blessed Sarasvata with a divine power. He blessed Sarasvata with the power to cause rain to end the twelve-year drought. River Saraswati then took Sarasvata to her abode and raised him.

There is another legend in regard Sarasvata. In the epic Mahabharata it is described that during a great drought the Brahmans, engrossed by the care of subsistence, neglected the study of the sacred books as a result the Vedas were lost. Then Rishi Sarasvata alone, being fed with fish by his mother River Saraswati, kept up his studies, and preserved the Hindu scriptures. At the end of the famine the Brahmans went to him to learn the sacred texts. Then Rishi Sarasvata taught sixty thousand disciples and they acquired a knowledge of the Vedas from Sarasvata. This legend appears to indicate the revival, or more probably the introduction, of the Hindu ritual by the race of Brahmans, or the people called Sarasvata.