On the Pursuits and
Constraints of Ganga
“Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati,
Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri,
may [you] come together in this water” 1
Commonly heard at the beginning of Hindu rituals, this is an invocation to the seven holy rivers of South Asia that are invited to infuse the water of ablutions with their divine presence. Thus collected, these rivers sanctify the water for various rites and all kinds of consumptions, including one’s own daily baths.2 Incessantly flowing, rivers have been commonly imagined, across time and civilizations, as uninhibited and cheerful young women, whose potentials are best harnessed in masculine pursuits of their containment and control. Channelled, contained, carried and consumed, rivers have been manipulated in ways that aim to alter their naturally boundless state. Seen in this light, several stories of rivers from South Asian religious traditions recall patriarchal anxieties over female agency and sexuality.
One of the earliest South Asian narratives concerning rivers is also the one about their captivity. In the Rigveda, Indra is often hailed for having slain the serpentine demon Vritra, who had imprisoned the Vedic seven-rivers.3 Thus freed, the rivers “rolled in the midst of never-ceasing currents, flowing without a rest for ever onward”.4 Possibly, the earliest personification of a South Asian river can be evinced in the Rigveda hymn describing the river Sindhu (Indus) as a beautiful and fair woman who, endowed with noble wealth, rides valiantly in a mighty, unrestrained and roaring chariot drawn by steeds.5 The river Sarasvati too is eulogized as she whose “limitless unbroken flood, swift-moving with a rapid rush, comes onwards with a tempestuous roar”.6 It is also in Vedic literature that one finds the first conceptions of waters as mothers and goddesses who facilitate healing and deliverance from sins.7 However, in the Puranic literature, composed from the closing centuries of the first millennium BCE, there appears a shift that perceived the once-hailed tumultuous course of a river as necessitating control and containment by interventions, of both divine and human feats.
Incidentally, this shift coincides with the rising popularity of the north Indian river goddess Ganga, who seemingly takes after the legacy of the tumultuous flow and motherly deliverance of her Vedic counterparts.8 In unparalleled reverence for her eternally flowing waters, Ganga is likened to the divine mother who washes the sins of the living and releases the dead from endless rebirths.9 Yet, it is in the several anachronic, and often incongruous, tales of her life that the concern for her control and containment is significantly apparent.
In a prequel to the older and more famous story of Ganga’s ‘descent’ on earth (see below), the Vamana Purana, (c. 5th–10th centuries CE) establishes her origins as one of three daughters of the snow-clad mountain Himavat and his wife Mena. Named Kutila, which literally translates as crooked and implies bends of both bodily and mental dispositions, she is described as fair complexioned, with eyes like lotus petals, dark and curly hair, and wearing clothes and garlands of the color white. Upon commencing austere penances at an early age, Kutila, was taken by the gods to Brahma, the god of creation, as a possible candidate to bear Shiva’s seed and give birth to the slayer of Mahisha, the buffalo-demon. Angered by Brahma’s rejection, Kutila vowed to eventually bear Shiva’s seed and bend his head [in servitude]. This led Brahma to curse the young girl to be burnt and become “all waters”. And thus, a spiteful Kutila transformed into a torrential river and flooded Brahma’s abode. Brahma controlled her firmly with the bonds of the four Vedas and, so confined, Kutila remained in his abode, flowing in his matted locks.10 Ironically, the Vedas that had once extolled the tempestuous waters could now be imagined as the fetters that bound them.
In the same Purana lies also a Vaishnava (Vishnu-worshiping) claim for Ganga’s first descent. In the narrative of Vishnu’s dwarf incarnation, the demon king Bali promises the dwarf to be granted as much land as he could measure in his three strides. But when the dwarf rose to a colossal stature, he measured the entire earth in his first stride. His second stride spanned across the cosmos to the extent of rupturing the womb of the cosmic egg, thus causing Kutila to gush into the cosmos and washing Vishnu’s foot. In lieu of the third stride, for which no more space remained, Bali famously offered his head. In the Bhagavata Purana (c. 9th–11th centuries CE), when Vishnu takes the second stride, his foot reaches the abode of Brahma, where the latter pours water from his pot of ablutions over the divine foot in its reverence. Purified upon contact with Vishnu’s foot,11 the water flowed as a divine river in the heavenly realms.12 In the Skanda Purana (c. 9th century CE or later), this river is further identified as the very stream that descends as Ganga, literally she who goes swiftly.13 This tradition of having Brahma wash Vishnu’s foot also made its way into visual depictions of this episode, an example of which is the mid-7th century Pallava-period carving in the Varaha cave temple in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu (Figure 1). Her control in the hands of Brahma and honor in the contact with Vishnu, essentially leave the exalted reputation of this once spritely goddess at the mercy of male divinities.
FIGURE ONE
Vishnu as Trivikrama, the three-strider
Mid-7th century
Varaha Cave, Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu
Photograph: Raghunath Akarsh, 2019
After initially appearing as a dwarf, Vishnu deceived the demon king Bali into granting him the land measured by the his three strides. Once he was promised the wish, the dwarf rose to a cosmic stature. Depicted here is the second stride which Vishnu takes to cover all cosmos. His left foot reaches the realm of Brahma where the latter, welcomes it by pouring the waters of Kutila from his pot of ablutions. Thus washing Vishnu’s foot, the sanctified waters flow in the heaven as the celestial river Ganga, before ultimately descending on earth (See Figure 2).
The more commonly known narrative associated with Ganga is of her eventual descent on earth, which is also essentially the tale of her containment by Shiva. Its most popular rendition is from the first kanda or book of the Ramayana (interpolation dateable to c. 3rd century CE) where Vishvamitra narrates to the young Rama and Lakshmana the story of their ancestor, Sagara. The childless king Sagara is eventually blessed with an illustrious heir from his first wife, Keshini, and 60,000 warrior-like sons from his second wife, Sumati. In time when Sagara conducted a horse sacrifice to expand his kingdom and glory, the sacrificial horse was mischievously hidden by Indra. Sagara’s 60,000 sons, who spared no effort in locating the horse, eventually found it in the deep interiors of the earth, grazing beside the divine sage Kapila who had been gravely immersed in penance. Assuming him to be the thief of the horse, the 60,000 sons attacked the ascetic, only to be turned into ashes by the latter’s wrath. Meanwhile, worried for his sons, Sagara sent his grandson Anshumant to look for his uncles. Confounded to see his uncles in heaps of ashes, he attempted to offer them funerary libations. However, no ordinary water of the earth could have brought salvation to his uncles who had been decimated by such ascetic wrath. Following the suggestion of the celestial bird, Garuda, Anshumant performed great austerities to bring down the celestial river Ganga on earth. When he died unsuccessfully, his son, Dilipa, and similarly thereafter his son, Bhagiratha, took over the austerities. Finally pleased, Brahma agreed to let Ganga flow on earth to wash away the ashes of Sagara’s sons. However, since the earth could not have withstood Ganga’s forceful fall, upon Brahma's suggestion, Bhagiratha “stood for a year on the tip of one big toe, worshiping Shiva”, who then agreed to bear Ganga on his head. And so finally, Ganga “plunged from the sky with irresistible force” onto Shiva’s head. However, once in Shiva’s head, Ganga was unable to find a way out of his matted locks and wandered in their coils for several years. Shiva, who is said to have taken pleasure in this (perhaps, her helplessness or her closeness to him), eventually released her, and thus flowing, she washed away the ashes of Sagara’s sons and nourished the northern plains (Figure 2).14 In a further interpolated verse in this chapter, we are told that Ganga’s forceful flow had flooded the sacrificial ground of the ascetic Jahnu, who decided to check the river’s pride by drinking up all her waters. Eventually, upon the pleas of gods, he released her through his ears. For her descent15 through Bhagiratha’s penance Ganga was named Bhagirathi, and for her emergence from Jahnu, she was named Jahnavi; the Kutila who once challenged Brahma was now forgotten.
FIGURE TWO
The Descent of Ganga / Arjuna’s penance
7th century
Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu
Photograph: Raghunath Akarsh, 2019
A popular enigma of Indian art, this relief depicts, either or both, the descent of Ganga from the Ramayana and the penance of Arjuna from the Mahabharata. In the case of the former, a natural cleft in the cliff face is carved as the river Ganga whose sinuous course is implied by the serpentine beings that inhabit it. To our left is the emaciated sage Bhagiratha, who like his description in the Ramayana stands on one foot to please Shiva to bear Ganga’s torrential descent. A four armed Shiva appears before him with an outstretched lower left palm to indicate the grant of Bhagiratha’s wishes. On a rainy day when the water, fallen from the sky, is channelled through the cleft, the sculptural programme is activated and the descent of Ganga is re-enacted. Celestials extoll her praise from either sides, animals delight in her waters, and humans perform their ablutions.
Incidentally, Ganga’s heavenly origins (Figure 1) and earthly descent were both contemporaneously carved in close proximity in the same town of Mamallapuram.
From Brahma’s pot of ablutions, through Vishnu’s foot, into the matted locks of Shiva, and then drunk and released by Jahnu, Ganga’s course has met with several obstructions. Her sprightful defiance of Brahma and vengeful vigor for Shiva preserve her voice of contestation, but the garbs of her ever-forgiving motherhood silence her stories as mere roars and rumblings of a plentiful river. To the common devout Hindu, she is the river par excellence, perhaps not so much of her own accord, but owed to her contact with the holy Hindu male trinity. Even in lands where Ganga did not traverse, her allegorical presence in the literary and visual imaginations mark the Indic tradition’s singular obsession with this goddess. The pursuit of water from this river for pilgrims across South Asia remarks on her central role in uniting various and varying faiths, which like her tributaries, become one on her banks.
Therefore, at times of new beginnings or consecrations, waters from Ganga, which bear the essence of Brahma Vishnu and Shiva, are the most sought-after and efficacious in ritual and popular culture. But her containment does not stop at divine and mythological imaginations. In the lived socio-political realities, her water had other significant roles as well. Owing to her exalted status, the waters of Ganga, along with another holy river Yamuna, were seen as symbols of universal sovereignty. A control of their waters and the lands they sustained meant a control over the most holy landscape of Indic religious imaginations. Thus, even when it was not entirely practical to have ruled over those lands, the waters from Ganga and Yamuna were symbolically carried as trophies of victorious campaigns.
For instance, among the list of insignias conquered from the northern military campaigns of the Chalukyas of Deccan, led in 690 CE by king Vinayaditya, we also find a mention of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna. At the start of the 9th century, a similar claim was made by another southern king of the Rashtrakuta dynasty, Govinda III, who is said to have taken from his enemies “the Ganga and Yamuna, made beautiful by their waves, and [had] acquired at the same moment that supreme lordship of which they are a visible sign”.16 The most popular of such a claim, however, comes from the Chola king of Tamil south India, Rajendra I, who sent an army in 1020 CE to capture the waters of Ganga. His inscription records that he “laughing at Bhagiratha who had brought down Ganga by the power of (his) austerities, wished to sanctify his own country with the waters of the Ganga carried thither through the strength of (his) arm”.17 The inscription goes on to record that upon Rajendra’s command, his army general defeated the kings of the banks of river Ganga and returned victorious with the holy water.18 In celebration of this feat in 1022 CE, Rājendra assumed a new title “Gangaikondacholan” literally the Chola who brought Ganga, and founded a new capital named after his new title, Gangaikondacholapuram. The conquered waters from Ganga were used to fill a newly excavated tank named “Cholagangam” or Ganga of the Cholas- an act that recalls the sanctifying verse at the beginning of this essay. From ascetic austerities to military might, the river once personified was time and again commodified as a fruit of masculine endeavors.
Yamuna too has a story to tell. In chapter 83 of the Harivamsa, a drunken Balarama, Krishna’s elder cousin, swings forth his plough and pulls river Yamuna into Vrindavan to quench his thirst (Figure 3). Offended by this new course, Yamuna pleads with Balarama to return her to her previous state, but dismissing her pleas, he walks away.19
FIGURE THREE
Balarama diverts the course of River Yamuna
c. 1725, Basohli, Punjab/ Jammu
Ink, opaque watercolors, gold, and beetle thorax casings on paper
7 1/2 in x W. 7 1/4 in, H. 19.3 cm x W. 18.3 cm
Photograph: Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
Object no. B82D10
Balarama is depicted here in his usual form as a princely figure of pale complexion, dressed in blue garments and holding a club and a plough. Just as the Harivamsa narrates, he draws River Yamuna to his vicinity in Vrindavan. A pleading Yamuna is depicted anthropomorphically as a bedecked maiden with a pot of water– typical of river goddesses.
A pattern seemingly emerges of a general apathy towards the desires of rivers as youthful women. But the same river receives unstinted devotion when she is perceived as a mother that nurtures life and livelihoods. These rivers continue to be celebrated as mothers of incomparable sanctity, but are dismissed when they bleed with ecological deterioration in the hands of humans. Perhaps, we were never kind to our rivers; we turned a deaf ear to their youthful wishes, rendered them as mute mothers exalted only for their associations with male divinities, and violated their bodies for our needs and never-ending greed. The same patriarchy that silenced Kutila and contained Ganga and Yamuna, continues to cause their, and eventually our own, ecological collapse.
ENDNOTES
1 Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa 1.26.66. Nagar, Shanti Lal, trans. n.d. Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 121.
2 Some of these rites include oral rinsing (ācamana) at the start of a ritual, consecrative sprinkling (prokṣaṇa) and anointing showers (abhiṣeka) over an image or being.
3 This list of seven rivers differs from the later Puranic list of seven rivers discussed above.
4 Ṛgveda 1.32.10, Griffith, Ralph T., trans. 1896. Rig Veda. Second ed. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Benares: E.J. Lazarus and Co., 44.
5 Ṛgveda 10.75.8–9, Griffith, Ralph T., trans. 1897. Rig Veda. Second ed. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Benares: E.J. Lazarus and Co., 491.
6 Ṛgveda 6.61.8, Griffith, Ralph T., trans., 631.
7 Ṛgveda 10.9.1–9, Griffith, Ralph T., trans., 391.
8 It appears that Gaṅgā significantly takes after the form and function of the Vedic and early Puranic River Sarasvatī. See Darian, Steven G. 1978. The Ganges in Myth and History. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 58–62; Bartmans, Frans. 1990. Āpaḥ, the Sacred Waters: An Analysis of a Primordial Symbol in Hindu Myths. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 259.
9 Eck, Diana L. 2020. “Gaṅgā.” In Devī, 7:137–53. Berkeley: University of California Press, 137–153.
10 Vāmana Purāṇa 25.3–16. Gupta, Anandasvarupa, and Satyamsu Mohan Mukhopadhyaya, trans. 1968. The Vāmana Purāṇa: with English Translation. Varanasi: All India Kashiraj Trust, 244–245; Dimmitt, Cornelia, and Johannes Adrianus B. Buitenen, eds. 1978. Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas. Translated by Cornelia Dimmitt. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 157.
11 Vāmana Purāṇa 65.29–34.
12 Bhāgavata Purāṇa 8.21.4. Bhatt, G. P., ed. 1955. The Bhāgavata-purāṇa Part 3. Translated by G. V. Tagare. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass Publishers Pvt Ltd., 1103.
13 Skanda Purāṇa 1.1.19.15–16. Bhatt, G. P., ed. 1950. Sakanda-purāṇa Part 1. Translated by G. V. Tagare. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt Ltd., 170.
14 Goldman, Robert P., trans. 2015. “The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki.”. In An Anthology of Writings on the Ganga: Goddess and River in History, Culture, and Society, edited by Assa Doron, Richard Barz, and Barbara Nelson, 3-16. New Delhi: OUP India.
15 Rāmāyaṇa 1.43.34–38. See Griffith, Ralph T., trans. 1895. The Ramayan of Valmiki. Benaras: E. J. Lazarus and Co., 195–196.
16 Davis, Richard H. 1999. Lives of Indian Images. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass Publishers Private Limited, 75.
17 Krishna Sastri, H., ed. 1920. South Indian Inscriptions. Vol. vol. 3, part 3. Madras: The Superintendent, Government Press, 424.
18 Ibid, 425.
19 Brodbeck, Simon. 2020. “Interpretation of Baladeva and Yamunā at Harivaṃśa 83.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 24 (3): 313–43.
