Ganga originally flowed only through heaven, where she sprang from the toe of Vishnu, and it was due to a mortal that she came to earth. Saghara, a king, desperately wanted sons. He prayed and performed rituals and penances, so that his two wives both became pregnant. They gave birth to many sons. Some time later, to thank the gods, Saghara made ready to perform a horse sacrifice, a very solemn and powerful ritual, but the horse was stolen. Saghara's sons went searching for the animal, and they began to dig into the earth, thinking it might be underground. When their excavations became too large, Vishnu turned all of them to dust. Saghara learned that his sons would be allowed to go to heaven only when the sacred River Ganges flowed to the earth. The sage Bhagirathi, Saghara's grandson, performed rigid penances, and Brahma agreed to allow the river to fall to earth in the Himalayas and flow through India. Ganga was not at all happy about this, however. She was perfectly happy to stay in heaven. She consented to flow to the earth, but promised she would flood the whole world and destroy humanity. To prevent this, Shiva stood under the spot where she fell from the sky and cushioned her fall. Her stream was divided into seven rivers, which are the Ganges and her tributaries.
FROM: "Ganga"
© MCMXCV - MMVI Encyclopedia Mythica™. All rights reserved.
Geographical sacrality in the Hindu tradition is also dramatically expressed in the reverence shown to almost every river of the Indian subcontinent. This reverence extends all the way back to the Rg-veda, where the idea is expressed that earthly rivers have their origin in heaven. In the Rg-veda the Sarasvati River is praised as a mighty goddess who blesses her devotees with health, long life, and poetic- inspiration.' The earthly Sarasvati River is said to be only a partial manifestation of the goddess Sarasvati, for she is said to exist in heaven as well as on earth. The earthly river is an extension or continuation of divine waters that flow from heaven to earth. In Rg-vedic cosmology the crea- tion of the world or the process of making the world habitable is associated with the freeing of the heavenly waters by Indra. Indra's enemy Vrtra is said to have withheld these waters, thus inhibiting crea- tion. When Indra defeats Vrtra the waters rush onto the earth like mother cows eager to suckle their young (10.9). The rivers of the earth are therefore seen as being necessary to creation and as having a heav- enly origin. They are brought to earth by the heroic act of a god who defeats a demon who has hoarded the waters and kept them from fer- tilizing and nourishing the earth in the form of rivers-38
Reverence for rivers in the Hindu tradition is nowhere more intense than in the case of the Ganges. Like the SarasvatT River in the Vedic tra- dition, the Ganges is said to have its origin in heaven. Many myths con- cerning the descent of the Ganges to earth emphasize this point. The oldest and probably best known concerns the restoration of the sixty thousand sons of King Sagara. According to this myth, Sagara's sons were dull-witted and impetuous, and while searching the world for their father's sacrificial horse they insulted and disturbed the tranquillity of the great sage Kapila. In anger, Kapiia burned them all to ashes with the fire that he had generated as the result of his great austerities. Sagara's descendants, despite their piety and ascetic efforts, were unable to restore their incinerated forefathers until the saintly and mighty Bhaglratha, the great-great-great-grandson of Sagara, undertook the task.
Giving his kingdom ov,er to a trusted minister, BhagTratha went to the Himalayas to do heroic austerities. After he had physically mortified himself for centuries, the Ganges appeared in bodily form and granted his wish: she would descend to the earth, provided that someone could be found to break her mighty fall, which otherwise would destroy the earth itself. Siva was persuaded to receive the Ganges on his head, and so the great heavenly river descended to earth, her mighty fall softened by Siva's massive tangle of hair. In his hair she became divided into many streams, each of which flowed to a different region of earth and sanc- tified that area. Her principal artery emerged from Siva's hair and came to India, and under Bhagiratha's guidance it cut a channel to where the ashes of Sagara's sons were piled. Moistened by her waters, the souls of the sixty thousand sons were purified and freed to undertake their jour- ney fo the land of their fathers, where they could be duly honored by their descendants.'
Other accounts of the Ganges' descent feature Visnu and some- times Krsna. After assuming his dwarf avatara to trick the demon Bali, Visnu strides across the cosmos to appropriate it ior the gods. On his third stride his foot strikes the vault of heaven and breaks it. The Ganges River pours through the hole and eventually finds its way to earth. Falling on Mount Meru, the cosmic axis, the Ganges divides into four parts, and as it flows onto the four world continents it purifies the world in every direction.1"1 In some versions of the myth the god Brahma, who is said to hold the heavenly Ganges in his water pot, pours the Ganges on Visnu's foot when it stretches into the heavenly sphere.1" in still other versions of the myth Visnu becomes liquified when he hears a particu- larly sublime song sung in his praise, and in this form he enters Brahma's water pot, which contains the Ganges, and thus sacralizes her."
In one way or another, these myths about the Ganges' coming to earth stress the river's heavenly origin, her essentially divine nature, and her association with the great male deities Brahma, Visnu, and Siva. Spilling out of heaven from Visnu's foot, containing Visnu's liquified essence according to some myths, and tailing onto Siva's head, where she meanders through his tangled locks, the mighty Ganges appears in this world after having been made more sacred by direct contact with Visnu and Siva. The river then spreads the divine potency of these gods into the world when she flows onto the earthly plane. She gives their sacred presences to the earth in liquid form." The myths make clear that the earthly Ganges is only a limited part of the cosmic river that flows in heaven and descends to other regions and worlds as well as this une. As mighty as the Ganges appears here, the earthly river is only a limited aspect of a reality that transcends this world. The Ganges, these myths insists, points beyond itself to a transcendent, cosmic dimension that locates the source of the river in a divine sphere.
Another important theme in the reverence for rivers in Hinduism is the purifying quality of rivers and of running water in general. The purity-conscious Hindu social system, in which pollution is inevitably accumulated in the course of a normal day, prescribes a ritual bath as the simplest way to rid oneself of impurities. This act consists of little more than pouring a handful of cold water over one's head and letting it run down one's body. Moving, flowing, or falling water is believed to have great cleansing power; d mere sprinkling of water over one's head or a dip in a stream is sufficient to remove most kinds of daily pollution accumulated through normal human intercourse with those in a state less pure that one's own.44 Like fire, the other great natural purifying element in Hinduism,45 water is affirmed to contain intrinsic powers of purification, particularly when in motion.
The most awesome manifestations of moving water in the Hindu context are the great rivers of the Indian subcontinent. Ever moving, ever the same, apparently inexhaustible, such rivers as the Jumna, Cau- very, Narmada, Brahmaputra, and Ganges are revered in particular for their great purifying powers. The myths concerning the heavenly origin of such rivers as the Ganges make the point that the mighty rivers of India are in essence animated by the impurities of the world, that they arise and for the most part fiow in celestial realms before falling to earth. Once descended to earth, however, these same rivers literally wash away the accumulated impurities of the realms they traverse. As a handful of water sprinkled over a person's head cleanses that person, so the river cleanses the entire world when she falls on Mount Meru. The Ganges, Jumna, Cauvery, and countless other rivers and streams are understood to perform a continuous, gracious process of purifying the earth and her inhabitants.
The physical evidence of this continuous process of purification is the clarity of a river's swiftly flowing source compared to its broad, sluggish, murky mouth before it enters the sea. A river may take on an increasingly impure appearance the farther it travels from its source. Rivers like the Ganges are nevertheless held to be equally purifying from source to mouth. While the source of the Ganges and the place where it breaks out of the mountains onto the plains are important pilgrimage sites, the lower Ganges also has many places of great sanctity. Banaras itself, perhaps the most sacred site in all of India, is far downstream on the Ganges. Though great removers of pollution, the rivers remain un- contaminated by what they remove, staying ever pure, ever potent, ever gracious to all those who come to them for purification.
Although all rivers are revered as removers of pollution, the Ganges is preeminent among India's rivers as a purifying power. Hymns extoll- ing the Ganges repeatedly emphasize the miraculously purifying powers of her waters. The Agni-purdna says that the river makes those regions she flows through into sacred ground, that bathing in her waters is an experience similar to being in heaven, that those afflicted with blindness and other ailments become like gods after bathing in her waters, that the Ganges has made pure thousands of impure people who have seen, touched, or drunk her waters.4'' To die while being immersed in the Ganges results in moksa, final spiritual liberation. Being bruslied by a breeze containing even a drop of Ganges water erases all sins accumu- lated over lifetimes.47 In the Brhaddharma-puruna a sinful king is said to have been spared an untimely death because he lived for a while with a merchant who used to bathe in the Ganges.''" The Mahdbhagavata- purana tells the story of a robber who, though sent to hell after death, was subsequently sent to Siva's heaven because his flesh was eaten by a jackal who had drunk Ganges water.
In the Gupta and early medieval periods it was common for the per- sonified images of the Ganges and Jumna to flank the doorways of tem- ples.''' The Ganges' role as threshold figure in these periods probably had to do with both her (and the Jumna's) purificatory powers. The Ganges' heavenly origin and descent to the earth made her an intermediary be- tween the earthly and heavenly realms. She is a continuous, liquid link between the two worlds. Her location at the thresholds of temples was appropriate in that she connected and formed a transition between the worlds of men and gods. Her position at the doorways of temples prob- ably also indicated her role as remover of pollution. Before entering the sacred realm of the gods, which a temple represents, devotees should cleanse themselves of worldly impurities. Crossing the threshold of a temple flanked by images of the goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, devotees probably were symbolically cleansed in the purificatory waters of these rivers.
The Ganges' location as a threshold figure in medieval temples also suggests the threshold function of the physical Ganges River (and other rivers). The most common name for a sacred place in Hinduism is tir- tha, which means a place for crossing over from one place to another, especially a place for crossing a river, a fording place. As applied to sacred places the term signifies a place at which one may cross from one plane of reality to another, in particular, a place where one can cross from the earthly plane to the divine plane, or from the limited human sphere to the unconditioned divine sphere. As a sacred place, as a tsrtha, the Ganges is prototypical. Her waters are affirmed to orginate in heaven and to flow in a continuous stream into the earthly sphere. The Ganges is often called she who flows in the three worlds (Triloka-patha- gamini).50 She is a liquid axis mundi, a pathway connecting all spheres of reality, a presence at which or in which one may cross over to another sphere of the cosmos, ascend to heavenly worlds, or transcend human limitations. As Diana Eck has so nicely put it: "It is because the Gahga descended in her avatarana that she is a place of ascent as a tirtha."51 Flowing out into the world, the Ganges moves according to rhythms and currents that originate in heaven. Her waters have had physical contact with the great gods Visnu and Siva. She is a sacred bridge to those realms from which she has come.
The Ganges' role as a mediator between this world and the divine worlds, as a place at which or in which crossings may be made, is clear in the context of death rituals." A strong and widespread Hindu belief is that to die in the Ganges, or to have a few drops of Ganges water poured on one's lips just prior to death, is to gain immediate liberation.53 Although any part of the Ganges is believed to have this redemptive power, the cult of seeking to die in contact with the Ganges is most active in Banaras, where special hostels for the dying accommodate the thousands of pious Hindus who make a final pilgrimage from all over India to die on the banks of the Ganges there." The Ganges is under- stood to be a particularly accessible bridge from one mode of being to the other, a sure crossing point in the difficult transition from life to death or from bondage to liberation.
Another strong and widespread belief in India is that having their ashes or bones thrown into the Ganges guarantees the dead a safe journey to the realm of the ancestors. Against this background the story of the redemption of Sagara's sons makes sense. Cursed to eternal banishment from the realm of the ancestors, the souls of Sagara's sons can only reach the goal of the dead by means of contact with the Ganges, which provides them a special route to heaven. In this role the Ganges is known especially by the epithet Svarga-sopana-sarani (she who is a flowing staircase to heaven).55 Pious Hindus make a pilgrimage to various points on the banks of the Ganges to cast the ashes of their ancestors and kin onto the waters of the Ganges so that they, like the sons of Sagara, will be ensured a successful transition to the realm of the dead. Just as the mighty waters of the Ganges are envisioned in Hindu cosmology as continuously descending from heaven to earth, so a continuous procession of souls is ascending the Ganges to transcendent realms.
The Ganges as the surest access between the worlds of the living and the dead is also seen in sraddha and tarpana rituals, which are per- formed in honor of ancestors. These rites frequently stipulate Ganges water as desirable. The intention of these rites is to nourish the ancestors, the pitrs, in the heavenly sphere. The use of Ganges water may be understood both as nourishing the ancestors directly and as representing the means by which the other offerings to the ancestors will reach the desired realm. The use of Ganges water guarantees the efficacy of the rites by making the Ganges present as a tirtha, a crossing point from the world of the living to the world of the dead.
A particularly strong motif in reverence to the Ganges is her presence to her devotees as a mother. Ganga Ma, "Mother Ganges," is probably the river's most popular epithet. Like a mother or as a mother the Ganges is here in the world to comfort her children. She is tangible, approachable, and all-accepting. All who approach her for comfort and blessing are enveloped by her yielding, redemptive waters. She is the distilled essence of compassion in liquid form. No one is denied her blessing, Jagganatha, the author of the Ganga Lahan. probably the most famous hymn in praise of the Ganges, was outcast by his fellow Hindus for having a love affair with a Muslim woman. He says that he was even shunned by untouchables and madmen. He declares that he was so despicable, so polluted, that none of the tirthas was able to cleanse him'? The Ganges alone was willing to accept him and cleanse him, and he in gratitude praises her as a loving mother:
I come to you as a child to his mother.
I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.
I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.
I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.
I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.
I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.
Do with me whatever you will.
The Ganges' maternal aspect is seen especially in her nourishing qualities. Her waters are sometimes likened to milk or amrta, the drink of immortality." "The concept of the river in India is that of a sustaining mother. The stream of the river carries payas. The word payas stands for both water and milk. Appropriately this has been used in relation to the river as the stream that sustains the people, her children, with water, as a mother sustains her babies with her milk.""0 Her waters are life- giving, nourishing to all those who bathe in or drink them.^' Her waters have miraculous vivifying powers. The ashes of Sagara's sons, and the ashes of the dead in general, are enlivened, invigorated, or otherwise made strong enough by the touch of her waters to make the journey to heaven.
As a mother, the Ganges nourishes the land through which it flows, making it fertile. Historically, the land along the banks of the Ganges has been intensely cultivated. It is particularly fertile because of the sediment periodically deposited by the flood waters of the river and because of irrigation. Images of the Ganges often show her carrying a plate of food and a purnakumbha, an overflowing pot.'"' Mother Ganges is depicted as a being overflowing with food and life-giving waters, as one who continually nourishes all she comes in contact with. As giver of food and as water that makes fields rich with crops, the Ganges bestows her blessings concretely in this world. She makes the earth abundant with crops and thereby sustains and enriches life. As the bestower of worldly blessings the Ganges is particularly approached to en- sure healthy crops and to promote fertility in women. "Today in Bihar, at the start of the plowing season, before the seeds are sown, farmers put Ganga water in a pot and set it in a special place in the field to ensure good harvest. Among those who live along the river, a newly married woman unfolds her sari to Ganga and prays for children and the long life of her husband."
© 2005 Cerebrum Tech, All Rights Reserved
FROM: MantraONnet's "Ganga"
Reverence for rivers in the Hindu tradition is nowhere more intense than in the case of the Ganges. Like the SarasvatT River in the Vedic tra- dition, the Ganges is said to have its origin in heaven. Many myths con- cerning the descent of the Ganges to earth emphasize this point. The oldest and probably best known concerns the restoration of the sixty thousand sons of King Sagara. According to this myth, Sagara's sons were dull-witted and impetuous, and while searching the world for their father's sacrificial horse they insulted and disturbed the tranquillity of the great sage Kapila. In anger, Kapiia burned them all to ashes with the fire that he had generated as the result of his great austerities. Sagara's descendants, despite their piety and ascetic efforts, were unable to restore their incinerated forefathers until the saintly and mighty Bhaglratha, the great-great-great-grandson of Sagara, undertook the task.
Giving his kingdom ov,er to a trusted minister, BhagTratha went to the Himalayas to do heroic austerities. After he had physically mortified himself for centuries, the Ganges appeared in bodily form and granted his wish: she would descend to the earth, provided that someone could be found to break her mighty fall, which otherwise would destroy the earth itself. Siva was persuaded to receive the Ganges on his head, and so the great heavenly river descended to earth, her mighty fall softened by Siva's massive tangle of hair. In his hair she became divided into many streams, each of which flowed to a different region of earth and sanc- tified that area. Her principal artery emerged from Siva's hair and came to India, and under Bhagiratha's guidance it cut a channel to where the ashes of Sagara's sons were piled. Moistened by her waters, the souls of the sixty thousand sons were purified and freed to undertake their jour- ney fo the land of their fathers, where they could be duly honored by their descendants.'
Other accounts of the Ganges' descent feature Visnu and some- times Krsna. After assuming his dwarf avatara to trick the demon Bali, Visnu strides across the cosmos to appropriate it ior the gods. On his third stride his foot strikes the vault of heaven and breaks it. The Ganges River pours through the hole and eventually finds its way to earth. Falling on Mount Meru, the cosmic axis, the Ganges divides into four parts, and as it flows onto the four world continents it purifies the world in every direction.1"1 In some versions of the myth the god Brahma, who is said to hold the heavenly Ganges in his water pot, pours the Ganges on Visnu's foot when it stretches into the heavenly sphere.1" in still other versions of the myth Visnu becomes liquified when he hears a particu- larly sublime song sung in his praise, and in this form he enters Brahma's water pot, which contains the Ganges, and thus sacralizes her."
In one way or another, these myths about the Ganges' coming to earth stress the river's heavenly origin, her essentially divine nature, and her association with the great male deities Brahma, Visnu, and Siva. Spilling out of heaven from Visnu's foot, containing Visnu's liquified essence according to some myths, and tailing onto Siva's head, where she meanders through his tangled locks, the mighty Ganges appears in this world after having been made more sacred by direct contact with Visnu and Siva. The river then spreads the divine potency of these gods into the world when she flows onto the earthly plane. She gives their sacred presences to the earth in liquid form." The myths make clear that the earthly Ganges is only a limited part of the cosmic river that flows in heaven and descends to other regions and worlds as well as this une. As mighty as the Ganges appears here, the earthly river is only a limited aspect of a reality that transcends this world. The Ganges, these myths insists, points beyond itself to a transcendent, cosmic dimension that locates the source of the river in a divine sphere.
Another important theme in the reverence for rivers in Hinduism is the purifying quality of rivers and of running water in general. The purity-conscious Hindu social system, in which pollution is inevitably accumulated in the course of a normal day, prescribes a ritual bath as the simplest way to rid oneself of impurities. This act consists of little more than pouring a handful of cold water over one's head and letting it run down one's body. Moving, flowing, or falling water is believed to have great cleansing power; d mere sprinkling of water over one's head or a dip in a stream is sufficient to remove most kinds of daily pollution accumulated through normal human intercourse with those in a state less pure that one's own.44 Like fire, the other great natural purifying element in Hinduism,45 water is affirmed to contain intrinsic powers of purification, particularly when in motion.
The most awesome manifestations of moving water in the Hindu context are the great rivers of the Indian subcontinent. Ever moving, ever the same, apparently inexhaustible, such rivers as the Jumna, Cau- very, Narmada, Brahmaputra, and Ganges are revered in particular for their great purifying powers. The myths concerning the heavenly origin of such rivers as the Ganges make the point that the mighty rivers of India are in essence animated by the impurities of the world, that they arise and for the most part fiow in celestial realms before falling to earth. Once descended to earth, however, these same rivers literally wash away the accumulated impurities of the realms they traverse. As a handful of water sprinkled over a person's head cleanses that person, so the river cleanses the entire world when she falls on Mount Meru. The Ganges, Jumna, Cauvery, and countless other rivers and streams are understood to perform a continuous, gracious process of purifying the earth and her inhabitants.
The physical evidence of this continuous process of purification is the clarity of a river's swiftly flowing source compared to its broad, sluggish, murky mouth before it enters the sea. A river may take on an increasingly impure appearance the farther it travels from its source. Rivers like the Ganges are nevertheless held to be equally purifying from source to mouth. While the source of the Ganges and the place where it breaks out of the mountains onto the plains are important pilgrimage sites, the lower Ganges also has many places of great sanctity. Banaras itself, perhaps the most sacred site in all of India, is far downstream on the Ganges. Though great removers of pollution, the rivers remain un- contaminated by what they remove, staying ever pure, ever potent, ever gracious to all those who come to them for purification.
Although all rivers are revered as removers of pollution, the Ganges is preeminent among India's rivers as a purifying power. Hymns extoll- ing the Ganges repeatedly emphasize the miraculously purifying powers of her waters. The Agni-purdna says that the river makes those regions she flows through into sacred ground, that bathing in her waters is an experience similar to being in heaven, that those afflicted with blindness and other ailments become like gods after bathing in her waters, that the Ganges has made pure thousands of impure people who have seen, touched, or drunk her waters.4'' To die while being immersed in the Ganges results in moksa, final spiritual liberation. Being bruslied by a breeze containing even a drop of Ganges water erases all sins accumu- lated over lifetimes.47 In the Brhaddharma-puruna a sinful king is said to have been spared an untimely death because he lived for a while with a merchant who used to bathe in the Ganges.''" The Mahdbhagavata- purana tells the story of a robber who, though sent to hell after death, was subsequently sent to Siva's heaven because his flesh was eaten by a jackal who had drunk Ganges water.
In the Gupta and early medieval periods it was common for the per- sonified images of the Ganges and Jumna to flank the doorways of tem- ples.''' The Ganges' role as threshold figure in these periods probably had to do with both her (and the Jumna's) purificatory powers. The Ganges' heavenly origin and descent to the earth made her an intermediary be- tween the earthly and heavenly realms. She is a continuous, liquid link between the two worlds. Her location at the thresholds of temples was appropriate in that she connected and formed a transition between the worlds of men and gods. Her position at the doorways of temples prob- ably also indicated her role as remover of pollution. Before entering the sacred realm of the gods, which a temple represents, devotees should cleanse themselves of worldly impurities. Crossing the threshold of a temple flanked by images of the goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, devotees probably were symbolically cleansed in the purificatory waters of these rivers.
The Ganges' location as a threshold figure in medieval temples also suggests the threshold function of the physical Ganges River (and other rivers). The most common name for a sacred place in Hinduism is tir- tha, which means a place for crossing over from one place to another, especially a place for crossing a river, a fording place. As applied to sacred places the term signifies a place at which one may cross from one plane of reality to another, in particular, a place where one can cross from the earthly plane to the divine plane, or from the limited human sphere to the unconditioned divine sphere. As a sacred place, as a tsrtha, the Ganges is prototypical. Her waters are affirmed to orginate in heaven and to flow in a continuous stream into the earthly sphere. The Ganges is often called she who flows in the three worlds (Triloka-patha- gamini).50 She is a liquid axis mundi, a pathway connecting all spheres of reality, a presence at which or in which one may cross over to another sphere of the cosmos, ascend to heavenly worlds, or transcend human limitations. As Diana Eck has so nicely put it: "It is because the Gahga descended in her avatarana that she is a place of ascent as a tirtha."51 Flowing out into the world, the Ganges moves according to rhythms and currents that originate in heaven. Her waters have had physical contact with the great gods Visnu and Siva. She is a sacred bridge to those realms from which she has come.
The Ganges' role as a mediator between this world and the divine worlds, as a place at which or in which crossings may be made, is clear in the context of death rituals." A strong and widespread Hindu belief is that to die in the Ganges, or to have a few drops of Ganges water poured on one's lips just prior to death, is to gain immediate liberation.53 Although any part of the Ganges is believed to have this redemptive power, the cult of seeking to die in contact with the Ganges is most active in Banaras, where special hostels for the dying accommodate the thousands of pious Hindus who make a final pilgrimage from all over India to die on the banks of the Ganges there." The Ganges is under- stood to be a particularly accessible bridge from one mode of being to the other, a sure crossing point in the difficult transition from life to death or from bondage to liberation.
Another strong and widespread belief in India is that having their ashes or bones thrown into the Ganges guarantees the dead a safe journey to the realm of the ancestors. Against this background the story of the redemption of Sagara's sons makes sense. Cursed to eternal banishment from the realm of the ancestors, the souls of Sagara's sons can only reach the goal of the dead by means of contact with the Ganges, which provides them a special route to heaven. In this role the Ganges is known especially by the epithet Svarga-sopana-sarani (she who is a flowing staircase to heaven).55 Pious Hindus make a pilgrimage to various points on the banks of the Ganges to cast the ashes of their ancestors and kin onto the waters of the Ganges so that they, like the sons of Sagara, will be ensured a successful transition to the realm of the dead. Just as the mighty waters of the Ganges are envisioned in Hindu cosmology as continuously descending from heaven to earth, so a continuous procession of souls is ascending the Ganges to transcendent realms.
The Ganges as the surest access between the worlds of the living and the dead is also seen in sraddha and tarpana rituals, which are per- formed in honor of ancestors. These rites frequently stipulate Ganges water as desirable. The intention of these rites is to nourish the ancestors, the pitrs, in the heavenly sphere. The use of Ganges water may be understood both as nourishing the ancestors directly and as representing the means by which the other offerings to the ancestors will reach the desired realm. The use of Ganges water guarantees the efficacy of the rites by making the Ganges present as a tirtha, a crossing point from the world of the living to the world of the dead.
A particularly strong motif in reverence to the Ganges is her presence to her devotees as a mother. Ganga Ma, "Mother Ganges," is probably the river's most popular epithet. Like a mother or as a mother the Ganges is here in the world to comfort her children. She is tangible, approachable, and all-accepting. All who approach her for comfort and blessing are enveloped by her yielding, redemptive waters. She is the distilled essence of compassion in liquid form. No one is denied her blessing, Jagganatha, the author of the Ganga Lahan. probably the most famous hymn in praise of the Ganges, was outcast by his fellow Hindus for having a love affair with a Muslim woman. He says that he was even shunned by untouchables and madmen. He declares that he was so despicable, so polluted, that none of the tirthas was able to cleanse him'? The Ganges alone was willing to accept him and cleanse him, and he in gratitude praises her as a loving mother:
I come to you as a child to his mother.
I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.
I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.
I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.
I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.
I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.
Do with me whatever you will.
The Ganges' maternal aspect is seen especially in her nourishing qualities. Her waters are sometimes likened to milk or amrta, the drink of immortality." "The concept of the river in India is that of a sustaining mother. The stream of the river carries payas. The word payas stands for both water and milk. Appropriately this has been used in relation to the river as the stream that sustains the people, her children, with water, as a mother sustains her babies with her milk.""0 Her waters are life- giving, nourishing to all those who bathe in or drink them.^' Her waters have miraculous vivifying powers. The ashes of Sagara's sons, and the ashes of the dead in general, are enlivened, invigorated, or otherwise made strong enough by the touch of her waters to make the journey to heaven.
As a mother, the Ganges nourishes the land through which it flows, making it fertile. Historically, the land along the banks of the Ganges has been intensely cultivated. It is particularly fertile because of the sediment periodically deposited by the flood waters of the river and because of irrigation. Images of the Ganges often show her carrying a plate of food and a purnakumbha, an overflowing pot.'"' Mother Ganges is depicted as a being overflowing with food and life-giving waters, as one who continually nourishes all she comes in contact with. As giver of food and as water that makes fields rich with crops, the Ganges bestows her blessings concretely in this world. She makes the earth abundant with crops and thereby sustains and enriches life. As the bestower of worldly blessings the Ganges is particularly approached to en- sure healthy crops and to promote fertility in women. "Today in Bihar, at the start of the plowing season, before the seeds are sown, farmers put Ganga water in a pot and set it in a special place in the field to ensure good harvest. Among those who live along the river, a newly married woman unfolds her sari to Ganga and prays for children and the long life of her husband."
© 2005 Cerebrum Tech, All Rights Reserved
FROM: MantraONnet's "Ganga"
The Ganges River
Ganga
Ganges - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Makara is a mythical creature and Varuna's and Ganga's mount: Makara
Ganga The River Goddess - Tales in Art and Mythology
The Hare Krsnas - Transcendental Art Gallery - Srimati Ganga Ma Gallery --pics
Ganga in Hinduism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sacred Ganga
Various Aspects Of Ganges
River Goddess Ganga --painting
The Descent of Ganga
Ganga Basin, The
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