Note 425 — Chapter I

The Ganges, the Jumna, and the Godāvari are said to be the holiest of all rivers.423 There are a number of beliefs about the origin of the Ganges. One of them is that the Ganges is the stream caused by King Bali washing the feet of Vāman (the Dwarf incarnation of Vishnu).425 Another story relates that the god Brahma was exhausted by overwork at the time of the marriage of Shiva and Pārvati. The gods, therefore, created water from their own lustres, and gave it to Brahma in a gourd, to be used in a similar contingency. When Vishnu in his Vāman avatār (or Dwarf incarnation) bestrode the heavens with a single step, Brahma washed his toe in the water from this gourd. A stream was thus created called Swarga-ganga and brought down to the earth by Bhagīrath, the grandson of Sagar. When the Ganges fell from the heavens, it was supported and held fast by God Shiva in his jatā or matted hair. It was released by his loosening the hair, and in its course, inundated the sacrificial ground of King Jahnu. The latter, being angry, drank up its waters. On the entreaties of Bhagīrath, he released the stream by tearing off his thigh.426 The river then flowed to the spot where the sixty thousand sons of Sagar were burnt to ashes; and it is said by some that one of the sixty thousand was saved at the end of each year up to the year 1955 of the Samvat era (corresponding to A. D. 1899), by the end of which period all the sixty thousand had attained salvation. From the earth the Ganges went to the nether regions. Thus flowing in the heavens, on the earth and in the Pātāl, the Ganges is called Tripathaga (i.e., flowing in three courses). In its divine form, the Ganges is the wife of Shiva. Owing to the curse of Brahma, she was born in human form in this world and was married to Shantanu, by whom she became the mother of Bhishma, the heroic uncle of the Kauravas and the Pāndavas.427