STO-501 – The Decent of Mother Ganga
King Sagar, the ruler of Ayodhya was of the Surya dynasty, and an ancestor of Rama. He performed the Asvamedha sacrifice ninety-nine times and each time the horse he sent around the earth returned to his kingdom unchallenged. Indra, the King of the Devas (gods), was jealous and during the hundredth sacrifice, he kidnapped the horse, hiding it in the hermitage of the sage Kapila Muni.
The sixty thousand sons of Sagar came to the hermitage of Kapila in their search for the horse and mistaking Kapila Muni to be the culprit attacked him. An enraged Kapila Muni burnt the sixty thousand princes to ashes by dint of his mystical prowess.
One of the grandchildren of King Sagar, hearing about the plight of his father and uncles, came in search of Kapila Muni and asked him for a solution to the problem. Kapila advised him that the waters of the river Ganga would miraculously bring the dead princes back to life.
His descendant Bhagiratha continued his efforts to bring the Ganga to the earth from the heavens to purify the ashes of his ancestors and bring them back to life. Bhagiratha’s prayers were rewarded and the Ganges rushed to the earth. However, the might of the river was too much for the earth to withstand. Fearing a catastrophe, Bhagiratha prayed to Shiva, who held out his matted hair to catch the plummeting river, and thus softened her impact on the earth. The Ganga thus became a symbol of Shiva. This manifestation of Shiva is known as ‘Gangadhara’, one who carries the water of the Ganges on his head. On Lord Shiva’s forehead is the emblem of the half-moon, yet to give supreme respect to Vishnu he placed the water of the Ganges above this emblem. The Ganga is considered to have emanated from the foot of Lord Vamana (the fifth incarnation), when with his third stride his toe pierced the outside of the universe, and some of the causal ocean spilled in to it. This became the source of the Ganga.
Bhagiratha patiently led the river down to the sea from the Himalayas. However, being unable to locate the exact spot where the ashes lay, he requested Ganga to follow her own course. So, Ganga divided herself into a hundred mouths in the region of Bengal and formed the Ganges delta. One of these streams washed the ashes, and offered salvation to the souls of the departed. The island with which this incident is associated and referred to as Sagar Island, where a bathe at the confluence of the river and the sea is considered to be very sacred on the festival day of Makara Sankranti (see FCT-406).
Bhagiratha’s penance and the descent of Ganga are portrayed in stone at the Pallava heritage site at Mahabalipuram near Chennai (Madras) in South India.