The story

The story spans five generations of one family, and it begins with a king whose name records a poisoning. While his mother carried him, her co-wives fed her poison, and he was born with it; so he was called Sagara, "with poison". He grew up to be an emperor, and on the advice of the sage Aurva he performed horse sacrifices. During one of them Indra stole the horse.

Sagara's sons by his wife Sumati, sixty thousand of them, set out to find it. They dug up the earth on every side looking for it, and at last, in the north-east, they found the horse standing near the sage Kapila, who sat in meditation. They took him for the thief. Here he is, they shouted, sitting with his eyes shut, and they ran at him with weapons raised. In that instant they were reduced to ash.

The Bhagavatam is careful about what happened. Shuka says plainly that it is wrong to claim the sage's anger burned them. How could the darkness of anger arise in one who is pure goodness, whose presence purifies the world? Their minds clouded, they burned with a fire from their own bodies, consumed by the offence they had committed against a great soul. Kapila did nothing. Their own act destroyed them.

Sagara had one other son, Asamanjasa, by his wife Keshini, whose conduct was so troubling that his father sent him away; the text says he had once been a yogi who fell from his path. Asamanjasa's son Amshuman was the one Sagara now sent after the horse. Amshuman followed his uncles' trail, found the horse and the heaps of ash beside Kapila, bowed to the sage and praised him. Kapila gave him the horse and told him one thing more: his uncles could be released only by the water of the Ganga.

Amshuman brought the horse home, and Sagara completed his sacrifice, handed over the kingdom and went on to his own liberation. Amshuman then spent the rest of his life in penance to bring the Ganga down, and died without success. His son Dilipa did the same and died the same way. The task passed to Dilipa's son, Bhagiratha.

Bhagiratha's penance was so great that the Ganga herself appeared and offered him a boon. But she raised two objections before she would come. When she fell from heaven, who would bear the force of her fall? Without someone to hold it, she would break through the earth and run down into the lower worlds. And she did not wish to go to earth at all. People would wash their sins away in her; where would she wash them?

Bhagiratha answered the second objection himself. Saints who have given up the world, who are at peace and devoted to the Lord, would bathe in her too, and since Hari, the destroyer of sin, lives in their hearts, their touch would take away every sin left in her. For the first objection he turned to Shiva and worshipped him, and Shiva, pleased, agreed to take the falling river on his head. So the water that had washed Vishnu's foot, the foot Vamana lifted past heaven in the eighth book, fell onto Shiva and came down to the earth.

Bhagiratha led her to the place where the sons of Sagara lay as ash, and as soon as her water touched those ashes they rose to heaven. Shuka draws the conclusion himself. If those who died for an offence against a great soul were lifted to heaven merely because the river touched their remains, what of those who bathe in her with faith?

The phrase "Bhagiratha prayatna", used in many Indian languages for an effort that seems beyond human strength, is not in the text. It grew out of this story, and it is easy to see why. But the Bhagavatam places the weight a little differently. The effort spans three lifetimes, and the first two fail. What finally succeeds is effort that draws down grace: a river that begins at Vishnu's foot, is held by Shiva, and is reassured by a king's trust in the saints. In a book that mostly moves through its dynasties a king or two at a time, this is the one line whose labour is measured in generations and whose reward is a river that still flows.

Who appears, and what it shows

• Bhagiratha — A king of the solar line whose penance brought the Ganga to earth, and whose name now means a superhuman effort.
• Shiva — In the Bhagavatam the greatest of Vishnu's devotees: he drinks the world's poison and catches the Ganga in his hair.
• Theme: Devotion under trial

Keep reading

• Ambarisha and Durvasa — Skandha 9, adhyayas 4-5 — A king breaks his fast with a sip of water, a sage takes offence, and the Lord's own discus chases the sage across the worlds.
• Rama's life in two chapters — Skandha 9, adhyayas 10-11 — The whole Ramayana told in two chapters — and what the Bhagavatam chooses to stress when it has room for so little.

Questions to explore

• Why did the sons of Sagara burn to ashes?
• Why did the Ganga need Shiva to receive her fall?
• What does "Bhagiratha prayatna" mean, and where does it come from?