As the princes did not return home Sangara became alarmed for their safety and sent his grandson—Asamanja’s son—to look for tidings of them. This heroic prince, following the traces they had left of their eventful journey, at length reached the spot where the missing horse was detained and there discovered also the ashes of his sixty thousand uncles. Being piously desirous of making the usual oblations of water to the ashes of his deceased relatives, Asamanja’s son looked about for water but could find none. However, he met, in these nether regions, Suparna, a maternal uncle of his, “resembling the wind,” and from him he learned that the sixty thousand dead princes would be translated to heaven if only the waters of Ganga could be brought down from the celestial regions to lave their dust.
Seeing there was nothing that he could do for the manes of his dead relatives, the young prince took the horse, and returning with it to Ayodhya helped to complete Sangara’s sacrifice.
Sangara himself died after a reign of thirty thousand years. Ançumat, who succeeded him, practised rigid austerities, “on the romantic summit of Himavat,” for thirty-two thousand years, and left the kingdom to Dilipa, whose constant thought was how he should bring Ganga down from heaven for the benefit of his dead ancestors; but though he performed numerous sacrifices during his long reign of thirty thousand years, he made no progress in this matter. Dilipa’s son, Bhagiratha, earnestly devoted himself to the same object, and practised severe austerities with the view of obtaining the wished-for boon. “Restraining his senses and eating once a month and surrounding himself with five fires and with arms uplifted, he for a long lapse of time performed austerities at Gokara.” Brahma, pleased with the king’s asceticism, appeared before him and granted his wish, advising him, at the same time, to invoke the aid of Siva to accomplish it, as the earth would not be able to sustain the direct shock of the descent of Ganga from the celestial regions.
To obtain the assistance of Siva, Bhagiratha spent a whole year in adoring that god, who at the end of that period was graciously pleased to say to the king: “O foremost of men, I am well-pleased with thee. I will do what will be for thy welfare—I will hold the Mountain’s daughter on my head.” Upon this Ganga precipitated herself from the heavens upon Siva’s head, arrogantly thinking to reach the earth without delay, but Siva, vexed by her proud thought, caused her to wander for many a year amongst the tangles of his long hair. It was only when Bhagiratha had recourse to fresh austerities that Siva “cast Ganga off in the direction of the Vindu lake,” and she flowed in many channels over the joyful earth, to the delight and admiration of the celestials who witnessed her wonderful descent from the sky.
Ganga, following the royal ascetic Bhagiratha, flooded with her waters the “sacrificial ground of the high-souled Jahna of wonderful deeds, as he was performing a sacrifice.” The saint drank up her waters in a rage. When this occurred the deities and Gandharvas began to worship the angry Jahna, who, being propitiated by their attentions, allowed the river to flow off through his ears. Proceeding again in the wake of Bhagiratha’s chariot, Ganga, having reached the ocean, entered the under-world where the ashes of the sixty thousand sons of Sangara still lay. Her sanctifying waters flowed over their earthly remains and their spirits ascended to heaven.
Such is the history of the most sacred river of the Hindus, into whose heaven-descended waters millions upon millions of men and women crowd annually to have their sins washed away.
NOTES
I. Antiquity of the “Ramayana.”—Older than the “Ramayana” ascribed to Valmiki is the “Ramasaga” itself, which exists as a Buddhist story, known as the “Dasahrathajataka.” This is substantially the history of Rama and Sita, with the important omission of the rape of Sita and the expedition against Lanka, which incidents the poet of the “Ramayana” is believed by Dr. Albrecht Weber to have borrowed from the Homeric legends.[49] If this conjecture be correct, the treatment of the incidents in question by Valmiki is no slavish imitation of that of Homer. In the “Mahabharata” the story of Rama and Sita is narrated to Yudhisthira as an example, taken from the olden time, by way of consolation on a certain occasion, and agrees so closely with the work of Valmiki that it certainly looks very much like an epitome of that work. In regard to the age of this epic, Sir Monier Williams says: “We cannot be far wrong in asserting that a great portion of the ‘Ramayana,’ if not the entire ‘Ramayana,’ before us, must have been current in India as early as the fifth century B.C.”[50]
II. English versions of the “Ramayana.”—The English reader desirous of learning more of the details of the “Ramayana” than is contained in this epitome, may consult the following works: (1) The excellent metrical version of Mr. Ralph Griffith, in five volumes; (2) the prose translation now in course of publication by Babu Manmatha Nath Dutt, M.A.; (3) Mr. Taiboys Wheeler’s “History of India,” vol. iii.; and (4) The “Ramayana” of Tulsi Das, translated by Mr. F. T. Growse.
III. The “Ramayana” only a nature myth.—While one scholar finds history in the pages of the “Ramayana,” and discovers in its interesting details a poetical version of the conquest of Southern India by the Aryans, another, with a turn for mythological interpretation, assures us that it is only a nature myth. “The whole story,” he writes, “is clearly an account of how the full moon wanes and finally disappears from sight during the last fourteen days of the lunar month, which are the fourteen years of Rama and Sita’s exile. Her final disappearance is represented by her rape by Ravana, and her rescue means the return of the new moon. In the course of the story the triumph of the dark night, lightened by the moon and stars, is further represented by the conquest of Vali, the god of tempests of the monkey race, who had obscured the stars.”[51]