Vyas | July, 2002

The sacred river Ganga (Ganges) in India is one of the most enduring images of the country.

	The Himalayan Landscape

Pollution has many definitions
It is, for instance, practiced by a dominant class in society against the weaker. They actually believe that the mere shadow of the untouchable caste is liable to pollute them. This unfortunate belief has its hoary past. The Chinese monk Fa-hsien who visited India in the 5th century in order to obtain authentic copies of Buddhist scriptures noted that meat eating was confined to those castes who could cause "pollution on approach" (perhaps the earliest reference to the practice of untouchability).

Now the word "untouchability" is not as expressive as "pollution on approach". The mere approach of a low caste person toward a high caste individual is thought to be polluting. Throughout most of India's history the dominant class played the role of a river, which could be polluted by the approach of pollutants living along it. Even today, there are high caste individuals who believe they get "polluted" by chance or choice and who must then depollute or consecrate themselves by sprinkling Ganga water or taking a dip in holy Ganga.

There is another kind of alleged pollution. Birth, menstruation, sexual contact and death have been held by several religions as carriers of pollution in human beings. But after the ritual bath or sprinkling with holy Ganga water, a person can retrieve his or her original status. As man was born in impurity, so he dies in impurity. Mourners avoid all close contact with outsiders for fear of carrying "pollution." Upon death a man's soul becomes a ghost (preta), but on the tenth day with the performance of the last funeral ceremony (antyeshti), with the immersion of the ashes in a holy river and with the holy dip by the mourners, the period of "pollution" ends and the soul acquires a subtle body for continuance of its onward journey.

	Kalidas Meghdutam

These definitions of pollution had not always assumed the dimensions of a problem. Kalidasa, the great 5th century poet and contemporary of Fa-hsien, is famous for his long poem "Cloud Messenger'"(Meghadoot). In his incidental description of the rivers like Narmada and Kshipra, he is not overawed by their consecrating qualities, if any. In Meghadoot, he describes a Yaksha or demi-god, who dwells in the divine city of Alka in the Himalayas. The Yaksha has offended his master Kubera - the lord of wealth - and has been banished for a year to the hills of Ramgiri (presently, Ramtek near Nagpur in Maharashtra). The worst aspect of his exile is his separation from his beautiful wife, whom he has left in the mountain city of Alka. The entire poem addresses the cloud, which in its northward journey passes over land, mountains, rivers and cities. Kalidasa advises the cloud messenger about a holy river Narmada, without invoking any nuance of holiness:

"Stay for awhile over the thicket haunted by the girls of the hill folk, then press on with faster pace, having shed your load of water and you will see the Narmada river scattered in torrents by the rugged rocks at the foot of the Vindhyas looking like the plastered pattern of stripes on the flank of an elephant."

Narmada River