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Why is the Ganges the Holy River in India?

In terms of length, the Ganges is not a world-famous river, but it is a world-famous river that is well-known both at home and abroad. She nurtured the land on both sides of the river with the abundant river water, provided the people along the coast with the convenience of boating and irrigation, and used the fertile soil to alluviate into the vast Ganges plain and delta, where the industrious people of the Ganges Basin have worked and lived here for generations. , created the famous Indian civilization in the ancient history of the world.

The footprints of historians and archaeologists are all over the banks of the Ganges, and poets and singers sing along the banks of the river. So far, it is still the quintessence of India and Bangladesh, especially the middle and upper reaches of the Ganges, which is the most economically and culturally developed and densely populated area.

The Ganges, the Indian people honor it as the “Holy River” and “Mother of India”, numerous myths and religious legends constitute the unique customs on both sides of the Ganges.

In Indian mythology, the Ganges was originally a goddess, the princess of Shimahuat (meaning the Snow King), who descended to the mortal world to nourish the earth and rescue the people. The goddess is the daughter of the Snow King, and her hometown is in the misty ice and snow kingdom of Duomen Mountain, which echoes the Gangoteli Glacier in Gamur on the southern slope of the Himalayas, the source of the Ganges, and is even more mythical.

Gamur means “cow’s mouth” in Hindi, and cows are regarded as gods in India. The Ganges water is a clear spring spit out from the mouth of the gods – cows, so it is regarded as extremely holy. .

According to religious legends, the Ganges is called the “Holy Water River” because the water of the Ganges comes from the “Sacred Mountain and Holy Lake”. The upper reaches of the Gangdise River is in the Gangdise Mountains in the Ali area of ​​Tibet, my country. There is a large and quiet freshwater lake on the southeastern slope of the Gangdise Mountains, called Mafa Mucuo Lake. The bottom is as flat as a mirror.

According to legend, the mountain here is the place where Shiva, the “god of gods”, practiced, and Hindus respect it as “the sacred mountain”. Shiva’s wife, the goddess Uma, is the daughter of the Himalayas. Mafamcu Lake is the place where Shiva and his wife bathed. Hindus respect it as a “holy lake”, because the Ganges water comes from the “holy lake”. Come, so the whole Ganges is “holy water”.

For thousands of years, devout Hindus have traveled long distances and even crossed the Himalayas barefoot to make pilgrimages to the “Sacred Mountain and Sacred Lake” in China. Get enlightenment from Lord Shiva.

In fact, there are different opinions about the origin of the Ganges.

In the Indian epic “Ramayana”, a section of “The Origin of the Ganges” talks about: It is said that the Hindu god Shiva and Uma copulated, and it lasted for 100 years at a time, without interruption, the gods reproduced Shiva. The ability was alarmed and begged Shiva to pour his semen into the Ganges, which gave birth to the ancient and splendid Indian civilization, and this is the reason why the water of the Ganges comes from the sky.

It is not difficult to find from this that sex is sublime and sacred in India.

Another story is even more interesting, that is, the emergence of Indian hardware.

It is also recorded in the Indian epic “Ramayana” about the birth process of the god of war Kumara: the god of fire poured semen from all directions to the goddess of the Ganges, the daughter of the mountain king, and the waves in the Ganges were overflowing with semen.

The goddess of the Ganges was terrified and excited, and was scorched by the raging fire, and immediately poured the splendid fetus into the waves in the river. What poured out of her shone like refined gold. It flows to the earth, and everything turns into pure silver. From coarse semen comes iron and copper; from dirty semen comes tin and lead.

Those things turned into all kinds of treasures as soon as they hit the ground. The goddess makes everything in the womb very beautiful and lovely. So the god of war Kumara was finally born.

Another legend says that a certain king in Indian history asked the goddess from the sky to come down to earth in order to wash away the sins of his ancestors in order to repair the afterlife. However, the water of the goddess was raging and the earth was unbearable. Lord Shiva stood on the upper reaches of the Ganges near the Himalayas and let the water flow slowly from his hair, thus weakening the water and washing away the sins of the king’s ancestors , and can be made in humans.

As a result, Hindus believe that the Ganges is the incarnation of the goddess and the “source of redemption”.