Tattva

Ganga Cha Yamune Chaiva
Godavari Saraswati
Narmade Sindhu Kaveri
Jale Asmin Sannidhim Kuru

For centuries, Hindus have taken their morning dip while saying this prayer to the seven sacred rivers of India, beseeching that they be purified by the holy waters of these rivers. In this shloka, the one river that is called first, even before the mighty Indus, is the Ganga.

There are many rivers in the world that are bigger than Ganga. In the Indian subcontinent itself the Brahmaputra and the Indus are much longer, but none of them possess the character of this river. It is much more than a river to the people who live by its banks and the millions who come to her holy cities to take a ritual dip in its sanctified water. The Ganga is a part of our history and mythology, our legends and folklore. It has seen kingdoms rise and fall by its banks, watched preachers and poets sit by its flowing water; it is a wise, old river and a truly great one. The Ganga and its tributaries drain a large and fertile basin with an area of about one million square kilometers that supports one of the world’s highest density human populations. Some of the most important Hindu festivals and religious congregations are celebrated on the banks of the river Ganga such as the Kumbh Mela.

The intense devotion and love which her devotees feel for Ganga is no small measure due to the fact that she is the only accessible physical entity that flows both in the heavens and on the earth. Ganga is indeed divine grace flowing on to our material world, as is visible in the prosperity of the fertile and rich crop-yielding regions adjacent to her banks. The consequent deification of Ganga, as both a nourishing mother, and also as a guardian of the Hindu temple, is but a natural evolution, when from the depths of the human mind springs a natural ode to her benign nature, manifesting itself in all realms of artistic expression.

Sources:

http://www.indiasite.com/land/ganga.html

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/ganga

Sashidharan Komandur is a PhD student in the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. You can reach him at sash.kom@gmail.com

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