Sacred Drops: History, Ecology, and the Ritual Significance of the River Ganga

While it is the unquestioned truth in India, especially among the Hindu devout, that the water of the River Ganga is ritually pure and thus the preeminent ablution for the human body and objects of worship before the gods, there has not been enough puzzlement over why in a country where mythology indicates a plurality of places for expiatory waters, this one river emerged as the reigning source. This paper offers a perspective across several centuries and diverse periods of Indian history to suggest that the sanctity of the river and its miraculous powers can be traced to a particular geographical imaginary endowed with fundamental ideas and practices drawn from a pilgrim's perspective, one that recapitulates a difficult passage across a mountaneous terrain in search of a riparian source. Such a cosmology, I shall argue, was not merely confined to widows and renunciates seeking merit in their afterlife. Medieval Indian kingdoms and empires including the Mughals and the British, tried to extend their claim over the Gangetic plains and sites of trade and pilgrimage along the river, precisely in order to harness the power of this sacred terrain.