The Descent of the River Gangā
Gangā is a river-goddess. Flowing originally in heaven, and therefore called Svar-Gangā (M: 45), the Heavenly Gangā, the river was brought down to earth by the severe penances of Bhagīratha, great-grandson of the mythic monarch Sagara.
Sagara wishing to attain the title of universal monarch arranged to perform a Horse-Sacrifice. Consecrating the right horse he loosed it to wander free all over the earth, guarded by his sixty thousand sons. The roaming of a sacrificial horse for a year, symbolized the sovereignty of a monarch over all the lands the horse wandered unchallenged. Indra, Lord of Heaven, jealous of the power and glory that Sagara would gain by the successful completion of the sacrifice and afraid that the King might seek for dominion in heaven itself, carried the horse away and left it to graze in the underworld near the hermitage of Kapila, a mighty sage who having adopted a vow of complete silence was performing austerities.
Searching high and low on earth and not finding the horse, the sixty thousand princes went down into the underworld and seeing Kapila asked if he had seen their father’s sacrificial horse. When annoyed by the sage’s silence they insulted him, Kapila opened his eyes in anger and burnt them all to ashes. After waiting for several years, the old king sent his eldest grandson Amsumat in search; Amsumat recovered the horse and brought back news that the ashes of his uncles were lying unconsecrated for want of the proper funeral rites and that only the holy waters of the heavenly river could purify them so that their souls would go to heaven. His son Bhagīratha undertook the task of bringing Gangā to earth, performing hundreds of years of severe penance in the Himālaya mountains, until the goddess, pleased, agreed to come down, if someone could support her fall so that its force would not shatter the earth’s surface and destroy all life. Nobody could be found fit to do this except Śiva, who, as the Lord of Beings, possessed the power to support Gangā’s descent. Bhagīratha went back to the mountains to perform more austerities, this time to please Śiva. Śiva agreed to bear the river on his head and let her flow down gently on to the earth. But Gangā exulting in her own power fell on Śiva’s head with such force that the god, infuriated, bound her up in his matted locks (M: 52). Bhagīratha left his kingdom and once more began a series of penances to make Śiva relent, and succeeded. The great god unbound one of his locks to allow part of the river to flow down gently. Chastened, Gangā followed Bhagīratha to where the unconsecrated ashes of his ancestors lay in the underworld in a pile. But that was not the end of Bhagīratha’s trials and tribulations. On her way, the river inundated the sacrificial grounds of another irascible sage, Jahnu, who was performing sacrificial rites at that moment, and was swallowed up in one mouthful by him. It was yet another bout of hardship and penance for Bhagīratha. The sage, pleased with his dedication and loyalty to the family, relented and let the river out through one ear. Hence the river was reborn as it were, as the daughter of Jahnu (M: 52). Her waters inundated and purified the ashes of Sagara’s sixty thousand sons, who were then able to reach heaven (M: 52). The huge concourse of waters formed the deep ocean and to honour Sagara, it was named, Sāgara, after him. And to honour that long-suffering and pious monarch, Bhagīratha, Gangā was named, Bhāgirathī. The name is still used for one of the three Himālayan rivers that join to form the great river Gangā, before it comes bursting through the gorge at Hardvar (the gateway of Hara or Śiva). The other two rivers are known as Mandākinī and Alaka-nandā (M: 65). Gangā is described as triple-streamed (S: 7: 6) because one stream still flows in heaven, one on earth and the third in the underworld.
Bali and Viṣṇu’s Triple-Stride
Aditi and Diti were sisters, daughters of Dakṣa, both married to Kaśyapa, the Primal Parent. Their sons were for ever fighting for supremacy over the universe. The sons of Aditi were the Devas or gods, Immortals, with Indra as their overlord; the sons of Diti were Daityas, Titans or anti-gods. Bali was a famous Daitya king, who through devotion and penance had defeated Indra in battles, humbled the gods and extended his dominion the over the Triple-World. He was virtuous, a just ruler and magnanimous to a fault; no one who came to him asking for alms went away empty-handed. The gods and Indra were disconsolate; Aditi, their mother wept in sorrow at their pitiable state and prayed to Vịṣnu, who out of compassion for her promised to be born as her son, Vāmana (dwarf) to humble Bali and restore their pristine glory to her sons (Śak. 7.27).
Bali once performed a great sacrifice on the banks of the river Narmadā and gave wealth in crores, and lands and gifts to any one who came to him pleading need and distress. Vāmana arrived there and asked for some land just sufficient to cover three strides. Bali, though warned by his Preceptor, readily agreed. The dwarf put his foot out, grew in size and covered the whole earth in one stride. Growing enormously in size, he covered the whole of the heavens with a second stride, standing poised with uplifted foot to take the third and final stride. Bali, to keep his word meekly bent down and offered his head, saying ‘This is all I have left, O All-Pervading Lord (Viṣṇu).’ Viṣṇu-Vāmana put his foot on Bali’s bowed head and pushed him down to Pātāla. In latermythological accounts, Pātāla signifies the nether world and Bali, therefore, became the King of the nether world. But, Pātāla was a big port in the estuary of the river Indus which together with Broach at the mouth of the Narmadā handled the extensive trade between India and the Mediterranean lands—Alexandria, Rome and earlier with Greece. A war of two peoples seems to underlie this mythological tale of two peoples or two great confederations of tribes who fought for the land between the Himālayas and the river Narmadā in the peninsula.
A solar myth is also involved in this tale. Viṣṇu—literally, All-Pervader—was originally the sun (Ṛgveda). The triple-stride represents the path of the sun across the sky with three clearly marked stations: dawn, noon, sunset. Vāmana, the dwarf, is the early morning sun that grows and waxes in power and pervades the whole universe, except the nether world (the antipodes), which then became Bali’s realm or darkness. Obviously this myth belongs to the period in proto-history when the earth was conceived of as flat, prior to the round-earth theory (earth as a sphere) suggested in parts of the Ṛgveda.
Churning of the Ocean
In the Beginning, Devas and Asuras (or Daityas), gods and anti-gods strove to obtain Amṛta, the elixir of immortality (the water of life). Viṣṇu advised them to throw in bits of all the great medicinal herbs into the Milky Ocean (Milky Way in the space-ocean) and churn it, using the cosmic mountain, Mandara as the stick, and Vāsuki, the serpent Time, as the rope. After great toil many wondrous things emerged out of the frothing ocean. First rose Surabhi, the cow of plenty, who granted all wishes to the good; then Vāruṇi, Wine; third, the Tree of Paradise emerged, bearing innumerable, unfading flowers, whose fragrance perfumed the whole world; then rose the Apsarās in all their beauty; followed by the cool-rayed moon that Śiva placed as a crest jewel on his topknot of matted locks. The ocean then spewed out deadly poison that Śiva immediately swallowed to preserve the universe, retaining it in his throat which turned blue-black. Beauty (Sri) herself, seated on a lotus then rose in glory and was followed by the archetypal physician Dhanvantari holding the bowl containing the Water of Life (Amṛta) in his hands. The story continues with the fierce battle for the Amṛta and the stratagem of Viṣṇu, by which only the Devas (gods) got to taste the ambrosia and gained immortality, the Daityas or Asuras being defeated.
The lotus is the symbol of the blossoming world that rose out of the still waters of the space-ocean. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in the many versions of the basic myths of origins, because they are layered, with different strands coming out of several ethno-cultural sources that reflect the heterogeneity of the people and the cultures that made up India and her civilization in the past. They are all fitted together to form a rich mythological mosaic but the joints sometimes show.