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Bal Kand · Episode 4 · Sargas 35–44
Vishwamitra tells how Bhagiratha's tapas brought the Ganga down from heaven, through Shiva's locks, to free his ancestors.
A retelling of Valmiki's Ramayana, not a translation. Where a later tradition adds to the story, we mark it.
They had spent the night on the bank of the Sona. By midday they stood before the Ganga, bright with swans and cranes, and everyone was glad at the sight. They bathed and offered her water to their ancestors. Then the sages sat around Vishwamitra on the bank, and Rama and Lakshmana sat before him as students sit before a teacher. Rama asked how this river ran through three worlds before she reached the ocean.
Vishwamitra began with her family. Himavat, the king of mountains, had two daughters lovelier than any on earth. The elder was Ganga and the younger was Uma. The gods asked Himavat for Ganga, for the good of the three worlds, and he gave her freely, and she rose to heaven as a river of the gods. Uma took up fierce austerities, and her father gave her in marriage to Rudra, the god Shiva. Vishwamitra told too how Ganga once carried the blazing seed of Shiva, from which Karttikeya, the commander of the gods' army, was born.
Then Rama asked about his own ancestor, and the real story began. Sagara, king of Ayodhya, had no children. After a hundred years of austerity in the Himalaya, the sage Bhrigu gave him a boon. One of his queens would bear a single son to carry on the line, and the other would bear sixty thousand sons. The queens could choose. Keshini chose the one son, and Sumati, the sister of Garuda, chose the sixty thousand. Keshini's son was Asamanja. Sumati bore something like a long gourd, and when it broke, sixty thousand sons came out. Nurses raised them in jars of ghee. Asamanja grew up cruel. He threw the children of Ayodhya into the Sarayu and laughed as they drowned, so Sagara banished him. Asamanja's son Amshuman was the opposite, kind to everyone and loved by all.
Sagara began a great horse sacrifice between the Himalaya and the Vindhya, with Amshuman guarding the horse. On one of the sacred days, Indra took the form of a rakshasa and stole it. The text says this plainly and gives no motive. The priests warned that an interrupted rite would bring ill fortune on them all. So Sagara sent out his sixty thousand sons to dig up the whole earth, a square yojana each, until they found the horse and the thief. They tore at the ground with arms as hard as diamond, and the earth cried out. Serpents, asuras and every creature that lived below were killed. The sons suspected everyone they met of the theft and tormented every living being. The frightened gods went to Brahma. The earth belongs to Vishnu, Brahma told them, and he upholds her always. In the form of the sage Kapila he will burn these princes to ash with his anger.
The sons dug down past the four great elephants that hold up the earth at its quarters, and honoured each one. In the northeast they came upon Kapila sitting quietly, with the horse grazing near him. Mad with joy and rage, they rushed at him with ploughs, trees and stones, shouting that he was the thief. Kapila gave one deep sound of anger, "hum", and the sixty thousand became heaps of ash.
When his sons did not come back, Sagara sent Amshuman with bow and sword down the tunnel his uncles had dug. Amshuman found the mounds of ash and wept, and he saw the horse grazing near by. He wanted to offer funeral water to his uncles, but there was no water anywhere. Then Garuda appeared, the uncles' own mother's brother. Do not grieve, Garuda told him; this destruction was for the good of the worlds. Kapila had burned them, so ordinary water would not serve. Only Ganga, Himavat's elder daughter, could save them. When her water washed these ashes, she would lead the sixty thousand to heaven. Amshuman took the horse home, and Sagara finished his sacrifice. But for the rest of his long reign he found no way to bring Ganga down.
Amshuman became king after him. He handed the throne to his son Dilipa and did austerities in the Himalaya for thirty-two thousand years, and he died without bringing the river. Dilipa grieved over his ancestors, performed many sacrifices and ruled long and well, but he found no way, and in the end he fell ill and died. His son Bhagiratha had no children. He left his kingdom with his ministers and went to Gokarna in the Himalaya. There he stood between five fires with his arms raised, eating once a month, for thousands of years. At last Brahma came and offered a boon. Bhagiratha asked for two things. Let Sagara's sons receive their water through me, he said, and when Ganga touches their ashes, let them go to heaven forever. And let me have a son, so that the line of Ikshvaku does not end. Brahma granted both. But the earth could not survive the fall of Ganga, he warned, and only Shiva could bear it.
So Bhagiratha stood for a year on the tip of his big toe, and Shiva agreed to take Ganga on his head. Ganga fell from the sky with a force no one could withstand. In her pride she thought she would sweep Shiva down with her into the underworld. Shiva saw her pride and grew angry, and he caught her in the coils of his matted hair. She wandered there for years and could find no way out. Bhagiratha took up his austerity again, and at last Shiva released her toward the Bindu lake. Seven streams flowed from it. Three ran east, three ran west, and the seventh followed Bhagiratha's chariot.
The gods crowded the sky to watch, and their jewels made it shine as though it held a hundred suns. Leaping fish flashed like lightning, and the foam and the flying swans looked like autumn clouds. Sages drank the water, holy now because it had touched Shiva's body. On the way the river flooded the sacrifice ground of the sage Jahnu. Angered by her pride, he drank her up entirely. The astonished gods worshipped him and asked him to accept Ganga as his daughter. He let her flow out again from his ears, and so she is also called Jahnavi.
Bhagiratha led her on to the sea and then down into the chasm his ancestors had dug. There he saw the ashes and grieved, and Ganga washed over them. The sixty thousand rose to heaven, and Brahma came to the king. Sagara's sons would dwell among the gods as long as the ocean held water. Ganga would be Bhagiratha's eldest daughter and bear his name, Bhagirathi. She would also be called the river of three paths, for she makes heaven, earth and the underworld holy. Sagara could not do this, Brahma said, nor Amshuman, nor Dilipa, though each tried all his life. Bhagiratha had done it.
Bhagiratha offered the water to his forefathers and went home. Vishwamitra told Rama that the day was passing and it was time for their prayers. The river beside them ran on toward the sea: the same water that had carried Rama's own ancestors to heaven.
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