Ganga

Summary

Gaṅgā is the greatest river of India, and in its myths she is a woman and a goddess at once: the elder daughter of the Himalaya, sister of Pārvatī, who came down from heaven to earth at a king's prayer and was caught by Śiva in his hair. Her Sanskrit name is गङ्गा, Gaṅgā.

The story of her descent is in the first book of the Rāmāyaṇa, told by the sage Viśvāmitra to Rāma as they sit on the river bank. The mountain Himavat had two daughters by his wife Menā, Gaṅgā the elder and Umā the younger; the gods asked for Gaṅgā and he gave her to them, and she went to heaven. Then King Sagara, Rāma's distant ancestor, set out to perform the horse sacrifice; the horse was stolen, and his sixty thousand sons dug through the earth looking for it until they found it near the sage Kapila, who burned them to ashes. His grandson Aṃśumān looked for water to pour for their spirits and found none, and Garuḍa, brother of Sagara's wife Sumati and uncle of the sixty thousand, told him that their ashes could be purified only by the water of Gaṅgā coming down from heaven. Aṃśumān did austerities and died without bringing her down, his son Dilīpa did the same, and then his grandson Bhagīratha did austerities for many years until Brahmā agreed to her descent, telling him that the earth could not bear her fall and only Śiva could. Bhagīratha stood on the tip of his big toe for a whole year until Śiva agreed to receive her on his head.

Gaṅgā came down from heaven with unbearable force, thinking to sweep Śiva along with her into the underworld. He saw her pride and in anger held her in the coils of his matted hair, where she wandered round for years and found no way out. Bhagīratha did austerities again, and Śiva let her go into Lake Bindu in the Himalaya; seven rivers came out of it, three going east and three west, and the seventh followed Bhagīratha's chariot. She flooded the sacrificial ground of the sage Jahnu, who drank her all up and then, when the gods pleaded, let her out from his ears, so that she is called Jahnu's daughter. Then she reached the sea, entered the underworld with it, and covered the ashes of Sagara's sons, who rose to heaven. Brahmā said: from today she is called Bhāgīrathī, daughter of Bhagīratha, and the one of three paths, because she runs in heaven, on earth and in the underworld.

In the Mahābhārata Gaṅgā takes a woman's form and marries King Śāntanu; she bears him eight sons, throws seven into the river, and the eighth survives to become Bhīṣma, the eldest of the epic's elders. Her story with Śāntanu is told in the narratives below.

The idea the story turns on is water that does no good until it is held. Gaṅgā's fall would have shattered the earth, and without Śiva's head it would never have reached people. And the water that comes down from heaven does not stop at the earth: it goes on into the underworld to carry the dead up to heaven. The river is a road between the three worlds, washing the ashes so that their owners rise. And kings kept to that road generation after generation: the grandfather died without reaching it, the son died without reaching it, and the grandson reached it by his patience.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, a reading proposed on the method. Without its final long ā, the Sanskrit feminine ending, Gaṅgā is gaṅg: j, n and then a sound from the back of the throat, which is Arabic janaḥa. In Lane, janaḥa ilayhi is "he inclined to it"; said of a bird, "it contracted its wings to descend, or alight, and approached like one falling"; said of camels, "they went quickly, or swiftly". The Sanskrit dictionary derives the name from the verb of going and glosses it "swift-goer". On this reading Gaṅgā is the one who leans down from heaven to earth as a bird alights, and who runs swiftly, which is what the story makes her: a river falling from heaven with unbearable force.

Linguistic Root

Monier-Williams derives gaṅgā from the verb gam, to go, and glosses it "swift-goer". He records that in the Rāmāyaṇa Gaṅgā is the eldest daughter of Himavat and Menā, in the Mahābhārata the wife of Śāntanu and mother of Bhīṣma, that there is a Gaṅgā in the sky and another beneath the earth, and that the Ṛgveda names her once, in hymn 10.75.

Lane under j-n-ḥ: janaḥa ilayhi, he inclined to it; janaḥat al-shams, the sun inclined to setting; said of a bird, it drew in its wings to descend and approached like one falling; said of camels, they lowered their necks in running, or went swiftly; said of a ship, it came into shallow water and stuck to the ground. The root holds leaning downward and swiftness together, the two things a river running down from the mountains does.

The sounds: Arabic j answers g, and n is n. The ḥ, however, is a throat sound, and in the project's sound laws throat sounds drop or become h or g. Here is the point of doubt: the Indian grammarians take the name as the verb gam repeated, so that the two g's would be one root letter said twice, not two different letters. Neither Hindu essay reads Gaṅgā's name, so this reading is made on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

The water that washed Viṣṇu's foot

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Gaṅgā begins at the foot of Viṣṇu: when he came down as the dwarf Vāmana and stretched his left foot to the end of the universe, the nail of his big toe pierced the shell of the world, and the water of the first ocean came in through the hole as a river, the water that had washed his feet. On the top of Mount Meru it divides into four rivers. So when Gaṅgā fears that the sins of those who bathe in her will gather in her, Bhagīratha tells her that Śiva can bear her fall, and Śiva carries her on his head because she flows from the toes of Viṣṇu's foot.

Wife of Śāntanu and mother of Bhīṣma

The Mahābhārata tells that the eight gods called the Vasus were cursed by the sage Vasiṣṭha to be born as men, and asked Gaṅgā to be their mother and to throw each into the water the moment he was born, so that they might soon return to heaven. She married King Śāntanu on condition that he never question what she did; if he did, she would leave him. She bore seven sons, and as each was born she threw him into the river, smiling and saying "this is for your good", while he kept silent for fear she would leave. When the eighth was born he said: do not kill him; who are you? She answered: I am Gaṅgā, Jahnu's daughter, told him about the Vasus, and left him, taking the child. Years later Śāntanu saw a young man holding back the river's flow with his arrows; Gaṅgā came and gave him his son, saying she had raised and taught him. He is Devavrata, who vowed never to marry or reign so that his father could marry a fisherman's daughter, and was therefore called Bhīṣma, "the terrible".

In the Gaṅgā

Manu took the fish Matsya to the Gaṅgā when the tank grew too small for it, and the text calls the river "the favourite spouse of the Ocean". At the source of the Gaṅgā, Ulūpī, daughter of the king of the Nāgas, dragged Arjuna down to the bottom of the water as he bathed.

Symbolic Reading

The Hindu rereading essay reads Gaṅgā's descent as a reading of the geography of water: her coming down "from heaven" is her coming down from the Himalaya, the highest place on earth; Śiva's hair is the branching glaciers on the peaks that feed the river; and Śiva holding her back is the mountains slowing the water and preventing a destructive flood. It sees some truth in the saying that bathing in the Ganges purifies, since its water was historically clean and held agents that kill some germs.

In the text itself purity rests on two things everyone who lives by a river knows: water is poured for the dead as an offering, and Aṃśumān finds no water to pour for his uncles until the river comes down; and water washes, so the owners of the ashes rise when it covers them. In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Gaṅgā fears that the sins of those who bathe will gather in her: the river that purifies people needs someone to purify it too.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Thetis is a goddess of the sea married to a mortal man, King Peleus; when she bore Achilles she put him in the fire at night to burn away what was mortal in him, Peleus saw her and cried out, and she left him and went back to the sea. Gaṅgā is a goddess of the river married to a mortal king on a condition; she throws her sons into the water so that they may return to heaven, the husband cries out at the eighth, and she leaves him and goes back to the river. In both stories the son who remains is the greatest warrior of his epic.

The Iranian Anāhitā comes down as a river from Mount Hukairya to the sea Vourukasha, the whole sea boiling when she pours into it, and purifies the seed of men and the wombs of women. Another Indian river, Sarasvatī, shares with her the named water and the purity.

Gaṅgā's entry into the underworld to wash the ashes of Sagara's sons and carry them up to heaven is a descent to the realm of the dead from which the one who goes down brings back sixty thousand at once, and belongs with the descent to the underworld.