Every Hindu who bathes with intention, whether in a river or under a tap in a flat abroad, is invited to say a short verse that calls seven rivers into the water. The rivers are mothers: Ganga Ma, Yamuna Maiya, Narmada Mai, Kaveri Amma. They are also goddesses with their own temples, festivals and stories of descent from heaven. No other religion has made rivers quite so central, and no river anywhere carries the weight of devotion that the Ganga does.
This article follows the Ganga from the Himalaya to the sea, turns to her sisters, and ends with the question every thoughtful devotee eventually asks: how can a mother so loved be so badly treated?
The descent of Ganga
The story is told in the Ramayana and the Puranas. King Sagara of Ayodhya had sixty thousand sons, who in their arrogance disturbed the sage Kapila at his meditation and were burnt to ash by his glance. Their souls could find no rest, because the rites for the dead need water, and only the celestial Ganga, flowing in the heavens, could purify ash so cursed. Sagara's grandson tried to bring her down and failed; his son tried and failed. It was the great-grandson, Bhagiratha, who gave up his kingdom and performed tapasya, austerity, for years until Brahma agreed to release the river.
There was a problem. Ganga falling from heaven would shatter the earth. Bhagiratha prayed again, this time to Shiva, who agreed to receive her on his head. Ganga, proud of her force, came down meaning to sweep Shiva away, and he caught her in his matted locks, where she wandered for years without finding a way out. Bhagiratha prayed a third time, and Shiva let her out in a gentle stream. She followed Bhagiratha's chariot across the plains, flooded the hermitage of the sage Jahnu on the way (he drank her up and released her through his ear, hence her name Jahnavi), and at last touched the ashes of Sagara's sons at Gangasagar, where the river meets the Bay of Bengal. The sons rose to heaven.
This is why Shiva's images show a small female figure in his hair, why the river's upper course is called the Bhagirathi, and why "a Bhagiratha effort" is still an Indian phrase for a labour of impossible persistence. The physical source is the Gaumukh ice cave above Gangotri; the Bhagirathi takes the name Ganga at Devprayag, where the Alaknanda joins her.
Mother and goddess
Ganga is worshipped as a goddess in her own right. She rides a makara, a crocodile-like creature, holding a water pot, and stands with her sister Yamuna, who rides a tortoise, at the doorways of old temples to wash the pilgrim before he enters. She is a daughter of the Himalaya, which makes her Parvati's sister, and in the Mahabharata she is the mother of Bhishma. Krishna names her among his glories:
Of flowing rivers I am the Jahnavi. (Bhagavad Gita 10.31)
What she offers is purity. A bath in Ganga is held to wash away the residue of wrong action, and ashes placed in her are carried toward liberation. The morning snan, a dip at dawn with the Sun rising over the water and a prayer on the lips, is the oldest act of worship at any of her ghats.
The seven sacred rivers
The verse mentioned at the start is this:
Gange cha Yamune chaiva Godavari Saraswati, Narmade Sindhu Kaveri jale'smin sannidhim kuru.
"O Ganga and Yamuna, Godavari and Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri: be present in this water." These are the seven rivers of the later tradition, spread across the subcontinent. The Rig Veda speaks of a Sapta Sindhu, "seven rivers", but those were the rivers of the Punjab region, with the Sindhu (the Indus) and the Saraswati chief among them. The Vedic Saraswati dried up or shifted course in antiquity; tradition says she now flows unseen, which is why she is counted as the invisible third stream at Prayagraj. The Godavari of the Deccan, rising at Trimbak near Nashik, is called the Ganga of the south and has a Kumbh Mela of her own. Three others deserve a few words more.
Yamuna is Krishna's river. Vasudeva carried the newborn Krishna across her in a storm, and the water rose only to touch the child's feet before falling back. Krishna danced on the hoods of the serpent Kaliya in her depths and played the rasa lila on her banks at Vrindavan. Yamuna is also Kalindi, daughter of the Sun and sister of Yama, lord of death; brothers and sisters who bathe together in her on Bhai Dooj, two days after Diwali, are promised long life.
Narmada is the only river that pilgrims walk around. The Narmada parikrama begins at her source at Amarkantak, follows one bank to the sea near Bharuch, crosses by boat, and returns along the other bank, never crossing the river itself: well over two thousand kilometres, traditionally completed in three years, three months and thirteen days. Villagers along the way feed and house the walkers as a matter of course. A saying holds that Ganga purifies by bathing but Narmada purifies by sight alone. Her smooth stones are the banalingas worshipped in many homes, and the Omkareshwar jyotirlinga stands on an island in her stream.
Kaveri rises at Talakaveri in the Coorg hills and waters the Tamil country, which calls her Ponni and praises her in the Sangam poems and the epic Silappadikaram. The island of Srirangam, with its great Vishnu temple, lies in her arms. On Aadi Perukku, the eighteenth day of the Tamil month of Aadi, families gather at her banks to thank her for the rising water that fills the rice fields. For Tamil devotion she is simply the mother who feeds.
Prayagraj and Varanasi
At Prayagraj, Ganga meets Yamuna and the unseen Saraswati at the Triveni Sangam, "the braid of three". You can see the meeting: the Yamuna is darker and the Ganga paler, and they run side by side for a distance before mixing. Here the Kumbh Mela gathers every twelve years and the smaller Magh Mela every winter, and boatmen row pilgrims to the exact line where the waters join.
At Varanasi, Kashi, the river turns briefly northward, a bend the tradition reads as a sign of grace. More than eighty ghats step down to the water. At Dashashwamedh the evening aarti is offered to the river with lamps and conches; at Manikarnika and Harishchandra the pyres burn without pause. Hindus have long wished to die in Kashi because it is Shiva's city, and he is said to speak the liberating mantra into the ear of anyone who dies there: Kashyam maranam muktih, "death in Kashi is liberation". Ashes from every part of India, and now from across the world, are brought here to be given to the river.
Ganga at home
Almost every Hindu household keeps a small sealed pot, a kalash, of Ganga jal, Ganga water, brought back from a pilgrimage and kept for years; families will tell you it never spoils. A few drops go into the water used for puja, a spoonful is given to the dying, a sprinkle purifies a new house or a room after a death. In this way the river that fell from heaven onto Shiva's head reaches a kitchen cupboard in Leicester or New Jersey.
Reverence and pollution
And yet the Ganga is among the most polluted great rivers on earth. Sewage from the cities on her banks, industrial effluent, fertiliser run-off, and the leavings of ritual itself (flowers in plastic bags, half-burnt remains, idols painted with lead) flow into her every day. Devotees are often the first to say that the goddess cannot be polluted; it is the water that is dirty, and the water is our responsibility. That distinction is honest, but it can also become an excuse.
The better response has come from within the tradition. Sadhus and temple trusts have campaigned for sewage treatment; the government's clean-up programme has built plants and restricted dumping; courts have at times treated the river as a legal person; pilgrims are now asked to bathe without soap and to float only flowers and leaves. The Gangetic river dolphin, once common and now scarce, is a measure of how far there is to go. If Ganga is a mother, her children's duty is not only to pray to her but to clean her house.
Ganga Dussehra
The descent is remembered every year on Ganga Dussehra, the tenth day of the bright half of Jyeshtha, in late May or June, when Himalayan snowmelt is swelling the river. Pilgrims gather at Haridwar's Har ki Pauri, at Varanasi and at Prayagraj to bathe ten times, for the ten kinds of sin the river is said to wash away, and to float lamps on the water at dusk. A separate day, Ganga Saptami in Vaishakha, marks her birth in heaven; Dussehra marks her arrival among us.
To reflect on
If you can, go to a river at dawn. Stand in it, face the rising Sun, and say the verse of the seven rivers. Then do one practical thing: pick up what someone else has left on the bank, and carry your own offerings home. Bhagiratha brought the river down with a lifetime of effort; keeping her clean is the tapasya asked of this generation.