Ganges

“ From early ages the Ganges has been the sacred river of India, and its waters are as hallowed as those of the Jordan or the well of Zemsem. Such miraculous powers are ascribed to this stream, that, according to Hindu tradition, those who die immersed in its waters attain heavenly bliss. ”

“ The Ganges has always been reckoned as a most sacred stream, whose waters wash from the soul all taint of sin. There is, however, one spot, namely, the confluence of the Jumna with the Ganges, which is so very sacred, that any one who dies there must of necessity go straight to Paradise. ”

“ Janghera, thus happily placed between the rugged scenery of the upper provinces, and the smiling landscapes of Bengal, partakes of the nature of both: the Ganges spreads itself like a sea at the foot of the rock, which on the land-side overlooks a wide expanse of fertile country, having for a back-ground the low ranges of hills which separate Behar from Bengal. ”

“ They carried the rice and sugar and salt, the cotton goods and silk fabrics of Bengal to Northern India, or brought down the cereals of Behar, the brass ware or brocade of Benares, the richer manufactures of the imperial cities of the west. For the Ganges was the great highway of trade in India, and men still living can remember her broad breast covered with thousands of slow-moving but shapely boats sailing up and down the stream. ”

“ Let the Lord Vishnu send down the River Ganges from heaven to earth so that I may fitly perform the obsequies of King Sagar's sons and thus give rest to their spirits." "I grant you the boon, King Bhagirath," said the god Brahmadeva. But the Ganges River will break through the earth's surface in its descent and will vanish beneath it. Pray, therefore, to the Lord Shiva that he may break its fall, so that it may flow gently upon the earth's surface". ”

“ She chews the chambeli, and hungry Baby, struggling for the "fount," is insulted with apples of Sodom; she swallows a portion of dhallapee, and he is regaled as with the melting melons of Ceylon.
* * * * * Some fine afternoon your ayah takes your little Johnny to stroll by the river's bank,--to watch the green budgerows, as they glide, pulled by singing dandees (so the boatmen of Ganges are called) up to Patna,--to watch the brown corpses, as they float silently down from Benares. At night the ayah returns, wringing her hands. Where is your merry darling? She knows not. ”

“ Dashing its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains, meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea; while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. ”

“ Ganges is a name invented in Europe. The natives always say Ganga, and consider this river to belong strictly to the feminine sex. Ganges is sacred in the eyes of the Hindus, because she is the most important of all the fostering goddesses of the country, and a daughter of the old Himavat (Himalaya) , from whose heart she springs for the salvation of the people. That is why she is worshiped, and why the city of Hardwar, built at her very source, is so sacred. ”

“ A man who appeared to be a mendicant fakīr, came down to the river-side, carrying in one hand a long pole, and in the other one joint of a thick bamboo, which formed a vessel for holding water, and from this he poured some of the holy stream of the Ganges on the little shrub goddess the tulsī.
In the midst of hundreds and hundreds of temples and ghāts, piled one above another on the high cliff, or rising out of the Ganges, the mind is perfectly bewildered; it turns from beauty to beauty, anxious to preserve the memory of each, and the amateur throws down the pencil in despair. ”

“ From time to time bands of natives, covered with the dust of travel, tumbled down the stairways and plunged eagerly into the purging river. There is no sin so vile, says the Hindu, that it cannot be washed away in the Ganges at the foot of Benares. Let us hope so, for its waters certainly have no other virtues. Gladly would I, for one, bear away any portable burden of peccadillos in preference to descending into that fever-infected flow of mud. A ray of sunlight will not pass through a wineglassful of Ganges water. ”

“ Because of the sacredness of the Ganges men bathe in it, and pray to die beside it, that after their bodies have been burned on its banks the ashes may be scattered over its waters, and allowed to float away far out to sea. ”

“ It is called the Ganges, after the goddess Gunga. The Hindoos say that the goddess Gungu—who was produced from the sweat of Vrishnoo's foot, which Brumha caught and preserved in his alms-dish—came down from heaven, and divided herself into one hundred streams, which are the mouths of the river Ganges. All classes and castes worship her. The sight, the name, or the touch of the river Ganges is said to take away all sin. To die on the edge of the river, or to die partly buried in the stream, drinking its waters, while their bodies are besmeared with mud, is supposed to render them very holy. ”

“ The sanctity of the Ganges is another item of great interest. From its source in the Himalayas to the mouths in the Bay of Bengal, its banks are holy ground. Each point of junction of the main stream with a tributary has special claims to sanctity; but the tongue of land where the Ganges and the Jumna unite is the true “Praág”—the place of pilgrimage—to which hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus repair to wash away their sins in the sanctifying waters.
To die and be buried on the river bank is the last wish of millions of natives. ”

“ That the Ganges should be sacred, and even an object of worship, is easily intelligible—not only on account of its fertilising beneficence to the land, but there is something impressive in its very appearance: its absolute tranquillity and oceanic character as it flows, from half a mile to a mile wide, slowly, almost imperceptibly, onward through the vast hot plain. The water is greenish, not too clear, charged even in the lower portions of its course with the fine mud brought from the mountains ”

“ The shepherds of the Ganges, born all equal, are the owners of innumerable flocks who feed in meadows that are perpetually covered with flowers. They are never slaughtered there. It is a horrible crime in the country of the Ganges to kill and eat one’s fellows [semblables] . Their wool, finer and more brilliant than the most beautiful silk, is the greatest object of commerce in the Orient. ”

“ In the utmost marshes of India, eastward, about the source and head of the river Ganges, there is a nation called the Astomes, for they have no mouths: all hairie over the whole bodie, yet clothed with the soft cotton and downe that come from the leaves of trees; they live only by the aire, and smelling to sweet odours, which they draw in at their nose thrills. No meat nor drink they take, onely pleasant savours from divers and sundrie roots, flowers, and wild fruits, growing in the woods they entertaine ”

“ Besides Ganges, the Plain of the Kurus and Pray [=a] ga, the junction of Ganges and Jumna, get the highest laudation. Other rivers, such as the Gomal and Sarasvat [=i] , are also extolled, and the list is very long of places which to see or to bathe in releases from sin. "He who bathes in Ganges purifies seven descendants. [53] As long as the bones of a man touch Ganges-water so long that man is magnified in heaven." Again: "No place of pilgrimage is better than Ganges; no god is better than Vishnu; nothing is better than brahma—so said the sire of the gods" (iii. 85. 94-96) . ”

“ The Ganges is essentially a river of great cities: Calcutta, Monghyr, Patna, Benares and Allahabad all lie on its course below its junction with the Jumna; and the ancient capitals, Agra and Delhi, are on the Jumna, higher up. ”

“ As yet the novelty of this extraordinary method of navigating the Ganges has not worn off in the eyes of the native population on its banks; crowds are drawn up to survey the marvellous spectacle, and every employment is suspended while the fire-ship shoots rapidly along. ”

“ The Ganges is now, as it has been for ages, the main channel for the commerce of Northern India. The produce of Europe, of Southern India, of the Eastern Archipelago, of China, brought to Calcutta by ocean-going steamers or sailing-ships, is distributed upwards to Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi, and other great towns, almost exclusively by the Ganges route ”

“ Hotter, hotter, hotter still! till everything is burnt and parched and scorched, and every pond is dried up, and the great Ganges is little more, in some places, than a moderate sluggish stream, and the wide plains have nothing green about them, covered only with drifting beds of sand and dust; man and beast sunk into languor and sickness, as though a plague were upon them; hardly a sound in camp or city at mid-day, when all are gasping in their tents and houses ”

“ The worship of Mother Ganges is comparatively modern. She is mentioned only twice in the Rig Veda, and then without any emphasis or complementary epithet. Apparently at this time the so-called Aryan invaders had not reached her banks.77 There are numerous temples to Gangâ all along her banks, of which those at Hardwâr, Garhmuktesar, Soron, Mathura, Prayâg, and Benares are perhaps the most important in Upper India. She has her special festival on the seventh of the month of Baisâkh (May-June) , which is celebrated by general bathing all along the banks of the sacred stream. ”

“ From twenty-five to fifty thousand people regularly—on special occasions one hundred thousand bathers and worshipers, Brahmans and believers of every caste—perform their daily rites in the Ganges, They are so rapt, ecstatic, bent on and absorbed in the mechanical formula, the endless minutiæ of their worship, that they are unconscious of the few curious strangers who may drift up and down the river-front in the brief tourist season. ”

“ When the Son flowed down its old channel joining the Ganges at Fatuha, the Ganges ran close past Arrah. Indeed, from a passage in the Mahábhárata, where the sojourn of the Pándavas in Ekachakra, now Arrah, is detailed, the Ganges is implied to have been not far of. When, however, the Son began flowing down its new channel, the natural result of the new force brought to bear on the waters of the Ganges at the junction would be to push the Ganges over to the north, thus gradually producing a large tract of newly formed land at the junction of the rivers. ”

“ The more advanced the society, the more numerous and the more complex are the relations between its component parts. The agricultural inhabitants of the Ganges Delta have evolved a far more complex society than that of the aborigines of Australia, but the civilization at the mouth of the Ganges is simplicity itself compared with that of Britain, Belgium or Japan. In the Ganges Delta each family group has a homestead. Outside of the homestead, the community life is almost wholly unspecialized. ”

“ The natives of India rarely venture beyond Hurdwar. They have, however, an opinion that the true Ganga, as they term the Ganges, originates at that spot; and, considering the cow as the greatest blessing given to mankind, (for the Hindus venerate it with even more fervor than a Catholic does a supposed relic of our Saviour,) emphatically term it ‘the Cow’s Mouth;’ implying thereby the purity, as well as the value, of the waters.
But those mountains which give birth to the Ganges, are likewise the sources of the Barampooter; a river exceeding even the Ganges in capacity! ”

“ The Ganges (called by the natives Ganga, the river,) takes its rise among the loftiest of the Himalayan peaks, and, after winding for a hundred and fifty miles through a stupendous labyrinth of mountains, enters the plains of Hindostan through an opening in the mountains of Hurdwar. ”

“ Thus, those nations of India, who live far from rivers, come and throw their dead into the Ganges to purify them, while the denizens of the aquatic domains of the Tchou-kiang dig a hole in the ground for theirs, to secure them a peaceful sleep during eternity! ”

“ The bearers of the Ganges water, though having literally nothing to tempt the plunderer, have been frequently murdered of late years by those frightful bands of assassins, the Thugs, who consider it to be an act of duty towards their goddess Bhowanee, who represents the destructive power, to sacrifice all the victims which she throws in their way, and therefore murder the most poverty-stricken wretches, in the hope of being rewarded by a richer booty. ”

“ This sorrowful, poetical allegory made us feel very keenly for the poor old man; but, however great our sympathy, we could not but suppose that probably the woes of the maiden Ganga do not affect her sources. In Hardwar the color of Ganges is crystal aqua marina, and the waters run gaily murmuring to the shore-reeds about the wonders they saw on their way from the Himalayas.
The beautiful river is the greatest and the purest of goddesses, in the eyes of the Hindus; and many are the honors given to her in Hardwar. ”

“ Ganega, the Hindu god with an elephant's head and four arms; the inspirer of cunning devices and good counsel, afterwards the patron of letters and learned men.
Ganelon, a count of Mayence, one of Charlemagne's paladins; trusted by him but faithless, and a traitor to his cause; is placed by Dante in the lowest hell.
Ganges, the great sacred river of India, which, though somewhat shorter than the Indus, drains a larger area and traverses a more fertile basin; it has its source in an ice-cave on the southern side of the Himalayas, 8 m. above Gangotri, at an elevation of 13,800 ft. ”

“ Inaccuracies respecting situation are not uncommon in the writings of the ancients relative to Indian geography, and those which have just been mentioned, with some other similar inconsistencies, may perhaps be reconciled, by supposing that under the name of the Ganges, either the Ganges proper, or the Godavery, may occasionally be understood. ”