GANGA
The divine beauty
Ganga is a great river of India. She rises from the Himalayas, flows through the vast fertile plains of North India and pours into the Eastern seas. Great kingdoms arose on her banks. Ganga is considered sacred and a bath in her waters is supposed to lead to salvation. In the lower reaches Ganga is also called Bhagirathi - one brought down by Bhagiratha, an ancestor of Rama. The story of this descent of the Ganga occurs in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. It involves on one hand the war of gods with demons, the demons' refuge in the ocean, the gulping away of the ocean by a great sage. On the other hand, it is related to the horse-sacrifice by Sagara, an ancestor of Rama. The horse vanished into the underworld. Sagara's sons going in search of the horse enraged a sage who turned them to ashes. Sagara's grandson Bhagiratha raised them to life with waters of the Ganga that flowed down to fill the emptied ocean as well.
