Bhagiratha and the Ganga

The last story in this book is the story of how the Ganga came to the earth — and the part Shiva played in receiving her.

It begins with a king named Sagara who had sixty thousand sons. Sagara performed a great horse sacrifice. The sacrificial horse was sent out to wander, as was the custom. Indra — jealous of the rite — stole the horse and tied it in a hidden cave where a sage named Kapila was in meditation, hoping the sons of Sagara would blame Kapila and there would be trouble.

The sixty thousand sons found the horse near Kapila. They accused the sage of stealing it. Kapila — disturbed in his deep meditation — opened his eyes. The look from his eyes burned the sixty thousand princes to ash, all of them, on the spot.

The ash of the princes remained where they fell. The Purana adds that, because they had died unburied and without rites, their souls were stuck — could not pass to the world of the ancestors.

Their family did not give up. Successive generations tried to find a way to liberate the trapped souls of the sixty thousand. None succeeded. The ash remained. The souls remained stuck.

Many generations later, a king named Bhagiratha — descended from the same line — decided to dedicate his life to the rescue. The only thing that could purify so much accumulated ash, the sages told him, was Ganga — the celestial river — but Ganga lived in the heavens. She had never come to earth.

Bhagiratha left his kingdom. He gave up his throne. He went to a mountain and began austerity to Brahma. He sat. He fasted. He prayed. He did this for years.

At last Brahma came. “Ask,” he said.

“Bring the Ganga down,” Bhagiratha said.

Brahma considered. “I can ask her to descend. But Bhagiratha, listen carefully. Ganga is a celestial river. Her force is enormous. If she falls directly from the heavens to the earth, she will split the earth in half. The ground cannot bear her impact. We need someone — strong enough, calm enough — to receive her fall. To break her force. To slow her down so the earth can hold her.”

“Who?” Bhagiratha asked.

“Only one being can do it,” Brahma said. “Shiva.”

Bhagiratha bowed. He went to the Himalayas and began another long austerity — this time to Shiva. He sat by the Ganga’s eventual valley. He prayed.

Shiva came.

“I have heard,” Shiva said. “I will catch her.”

The descent was arranged. Brahma told Ganga to come down.

Ganga came down from the heavens. She came as a great roaring torrent, vast, white, impossibly fast — falling out of the sky with a force that would have shattered the world.

Shiva stood beneath her.

He did not put out his hand. He stood with his head bowed slightly, and let her land in his matted hair.

The Ganga fell into Shiva’s hair and was caught there. The hair of the great ascetic — knotted in long thick locks, the hair he had not combed in countless years — absorbed the river’s fall.

She tried to find her way out. The locks of his hair were a maze. She wandered in them, looking for an exit. The Purana lets this take a while. Ganga was lost in Shiva’s hair.

Bhagiratha — watching from below — grew worried. The river had been caught, certainly, but she had not come out.

He went to Shiva and prayed again. He asked the lord to release her.

Shiva, gently, let a single small strand of his hair untie. From that one strand, a small stream of the river fell out — quietly, in a stream the earth could bear. It flowed down the mountain. It flowed across the plains. It came eventually to the place where the sixty thousand princes’ ash lay.

Bhagiratha walked ahead of the river, leading her with his chariot. Where Bhagiratha walked, the Ganga followed. He led her across what is now northern India until she came to the ash.

The waters touched the ash. The souls of the sixty thousand were released. They rose, finally, to the world of the ancestors. The Ganga flowed on — past the ash, on through the plain, eventually to the sea.

She has been flowing ever since.

The Ganga in Shiva’s hair is the small crescent-shaped detail you will see in many depictions of Shiva — a curving line near the top of his head. That is her.

The Purana’s lesson from this last story is the largest things in the world can only come down through someone willing to hold them. Bhagiratha could not have brought the Ganga alone. Even the gods could not. Only Shiva — the great ascetic with the matted hair — could absorb a celestial river’s fall and slow her down to a flow the earth could bear.

That is also, the wise have said, the work of the great teacher and the great devotee. To stand between heaven and earth and take the fall — to make the divine bearable to the human — is the service the world still needs.

Here this Shiva Purana ends. Forty stories have been told. He has many more. But these are the ones to know. Begin them again whenever you forget. Shiva, the Purana keeps reminding the reader, is easily pleased — even by reading his stories with attention is enough to begin.

Om Namaḥ Śivāya.