Vyas | July - August, 2003

"The Ganga to me is the symbol of India's memorable past which has been flowing into the present and continues to flow towards the ocean of the future."     -Jawaharlal Nehru

	Ganga has been a constant theme.

The Ganga has been a constant theme - an inspiration for Indian artists, philosophers, and writers. Amongst the sculptures of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu you will discover the wonderful complex of rock temples built by the Pallava kings of Kanchi in the 7th century. Most striking is the descent of the Ganga - over eighty feet long and thirty feet high. A natural cleft in the rock has been utilized to depict the Ganga. In this relief the Ganga is watched on either side by gods, demi-gods, hermits and snakes as she descends from the head of Lord Shiva.

The anonymous sculptors had a deep sense of humour. Among the worshipping hermits they carved the proverbially cunning cat, who also performed penance in the hope of being favoured with more and more mice as its prey.

The Ganga theme is developed by Shamkaracharya - the renowned Advaita Vedantin philosopher-poet - in his 'Gangashtakam' or 'Eight Verses for the Ganga'. He yearns: "Let the waters of the divine Ganga consecrate us - the waters that gush forth from the womb of the universe, swirl with delight in the matted locks of Lord Shiva. And descending from the heaven, cascading from the mountain range of Sumeru (a heavenly mountain), rolling on the earth, sternly scolding the army of sins, merging ultimately with the seas with a view to fulfilling them."

The same philosopher - poet sings in yet another stanza, descending onto the material plane: "Let the waters that become red, due to the flow of trickles through the vermilion-stained breasts of the bathing wives of the hermits, and that are covered by the flowers offered by the pious men, consecrate us."

Contrast the above with the description of a ghat (stepped riverbank) at Varanasi in Jaya Ganga - In Search of the River Goddess by Vijay Singh. The protagonist in the novel ' rowed down further towards the Tulsi ghat, where the poet saint is said to have translated the Ramayana into Hindi. Along the wall behind the ghat, six young men sat on their haunches, pants pulled down to knees, shirts tied in a bowknot at the waist and a beedi (a type of indigenous cigarette) in the mouth. Between each pair of legs dropped a scoop of grey matter, enveloped in a white steam to remind us that the distinguished gentlemen were defecating before the wintry witness of the holy river. Soon six streams of urine cascaded down the steps into the holy ghat to merge their destiny with the immortal waters of the Goddess Ganga'.

The reaction to this merger by the sculptors of Mamallapuram who carved out the descent of the Ganga, creatively placing the cunning cat at penance; or the reaction of Shamkaracharya who could seek blessings from the vermilion-stained water flowing from the bosoms of bathing wives of sages, is anybody's guess.