River Ganges (Ganga)

Overview

The River Ganges is a river of about 2,500 kilometers that flows from the Himalayas across northern India and Bangladesh into the Bay of Bengal. Hindus revere the river as the goddess Ganga, and every day worshippers bathe in its waters, offer prayers at its banks, and carry its water home for rituals. Riverside cities such as Haridwar, Prayagraj, and Varanasi are major pilgrimage destinations of Hinduism.

Present

The River Ganges is in daily religious use along its entire course. Worshippers bathe at the ghats, the stone steps built along the riverbanks in pilgrimage cities, and priests perform aarti, an evening ceremony of fire offerings, at Haridwar, Varanasi, and other riverside towns each night. The Kumbh Mela, a bathing festival held in a rotating cycle among four Indian cities, takes place on the river at Haridwar and at Prayagraj, where the Ganges meets the Yamuna River; the festival draws tens of millions of pilgrims. Hundreds of millions of people live in the river's basin and depend on it for water and agriculture. The river carries heavy pollution from sewage and industrial waste, and Indian government programs work to clean its waters.

Religious Significance

Hindus revere the River Ganges as Ganga, a goddess in the form of a river, and address her as a mother. According to Hindu tradition, Ganga flowed in heaven, and a king named Bhagiratha prayed for her descent to earth so that her waters could purify the ashes of his ancestors; the god Shiva received the falling river in his hair to soften her descent. Hindus believe the river's water purifies, and that bathing in the Ganges cleanses sins; pilgrims travel to the river for this purpose throughout their lives. Many Hindus wish to die near the river or have their ashes scattered in it, believing this helps the soul toward moksha, release from the cycle of death and rebirth. Ganges water is carried home in containers and used in worship across India. At Prayagraj, Hindus venerate the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna, where tradition holds that a third, invisible river, the Saraswati, also joins.

History & Structure

The River Ganges begins in the Indian Himalayas. Its main source stream emerges from the Gangotri Glacier, and the river takes the name Ganges at Devprayag, where two Himalayan headstreams meet. It leaves the mountains at Haridwar, crosses the plains of northern India past Kanpur, Prayagraj, Varanasi, and Patna, and enters Bangladesh, where it joins the Brahmaputra River and forms a vast delta before reaching the Bay of Bengal. Temples, shrines, and ghats line the river in its pilgrimage cities; many of the stone ghats of Varanasi and Haridwar were built or rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries under Hindu rulers and patrons. Gangotri, near the river's source, and Gangasagar, where the river meets the sea, are pilgrimage destinations in their own right, marking the beginning and end of the river's course.

Additional Resources

• Book: Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River by Sudipta Sen (2019)