Benten, also known as Benzaiten or Benzai-Ten, is the only goddess out of the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan whose virtue is of amiability. Benten is very much associated with snakes and dragons as she is often seen mounted on a serpent or dragon and her messenger is said to be a snake itself.
Benten is the goddess often depicted as a beautiful women who often depicted playing a lute, seated on a dragon or serpent. It is even said that Benten is also to take on the form of the serpent. Interestingly, Benten is the same goddess as Saraswati.
A goddess of language, literature, love, wisdom, fortune, learning, art, music, poetry, rhetoric, speech, eloquence, wealth and longevity. Patron of children, artists and geishas, inventor of Sanskrit, one whom protects against natural disaster and a river goddess. Benten is actually the goddess of everything that flows, water to words, music to knowledge.
A legend tells of Benten descending to earth where she met and married a dragon so it would stop eating children.
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