Slowly Down the Ganges - Eric Newby

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which can still be seen hanging in the form of icicles from the roof of the cave.

      At Hardwar, with twelve hundred miles of its course still to run to its nearest outlet to the sea it has already fallen 12,800 feet and here, only 1,000 feet above the sea, it begins to irrigate the land with the aid of wells and canals, and to give electric power. On its way to the sea it passes through three states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In them live 150,000,000 people, almost a third of the entire population of India. Of these nearly half live in Uttar Pradesh. There are 69,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh with populations of less than 500 and in this state more than eighty per cent of the cultivated holdings are of less than five acres (some are as little as half an acre). For much of its course the Ganges is not a navigable river in the real sense of the word, although, in spite of the fact that millions of cubic feet of water are drawn off from it, its strength is constantly renewed by the rivers that flow into it. It is in the 600-mile stretch between Allahabad and Rajmahal that it really gathers strength. At Rajmahal, in full flood, it goes down at 1,000,800 cubic feet a second which is greater than the maximum discharge of the Mississippi (the Thames at Staines discharges at 6,600 feet a second in full flood). Fortunately it brings down with it vast quantities of silt which it deposits free of charge for a season before sweeping it further downstream. A Victorian engineer, Sir Charles Lyell, estimated that 335,000,000 tons of silt were discharged each year at Ghazipur on the Middle Ganges. ‘Nearly the weight of sixty replicas of the Great Pyramid.’ A useless comparison. ‘It is scarcely possible,’ he goes on, ‘to present any picture to the mind which will convey an adequate conception to the mind of the mighty scale of this operation, so tranquilly and almost insensibly carried out by the Ganges.’ Whether some smallholder in Bihar, watching his half-acre slipping noisily into the water and his family being swept downstream on top of a haystack would regard the operation as being either tranquil or insensible is open to question. No one knows for certain the depth of the alluvial silt in the Delta.

      Like the black sheep of the family sent to Australia, the Ganges is always trying to straighten itself out. It sets its current strongly against one bank, undercutting it and leaving sluggish water on the other shore on which new deposits are made, until it finally breaks through and begins the whole process afresh. The Gangetic Plain is riddled with old, dead watercourses that the Ganges has forgotten about. At Kasimbazar in Bengal, where one of the first British trading stations was established in 1658, there is a flight of steps from which it is said that Warren Hastings used to come ashore. Only the river has gone, leaving a few pools choked with water hyacinth. The once illustrious city of Kanauj on the Upper Ganges is now so far from the actual stream that, passing it in a boat in the dry season, one does not realise that it is there at all. Rajmahal, once the capital of Bengal, was left high and dry, three miles from it, in 1863. Later, in the seventies, it was seven miles from it. Now the Ganges has returned. Too late, the city is moribund. The Bhagirathi, the short, eighty-mile stretch which connects it with the Hooghly, is more or less dry for eight months of the year. Power-vessels bound for Calcutta have to make a 400-mile detour through East Pakistan to reach the port which is itself always in danger of suffering the same fate as Rajmahal. Four hundred miles out in the Bay of Bengal the sea is discoloured by the silt brought down by it. The Ganges justifies the one hundred and second name given it in the Gangastottara-satanamavali – ‘Roaming About Rose-Apple-Tree Island’, which is India.

      Note: All diacritical marks which correctly should appear in Indian names have been omitted in this book.

       Gangastottara-sata-namavali

       (The 108 names of the Ganges)

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1 Ganga Ganges
2 Visnu-padabja-sambhuta Born from the lotus-like foot of Vishnu
3 Hara-vallabha Dear to Hara (Siva)
4 Himacalendra-tanaya Daughter of the Lord of Himalaya
5 Giri-mandala-gamini Flowing through the mountain-country
6 Tarakarati-janani Mother of [the demon] Taraka’s enemy (i.e. Kartikeya)
7 Sagaratmaja-tarika Liberator of the [60,000] sons of Sagara (who had been burnt to ashes by the angry glance of the sage Kapila)
8 Sarasvati-samayukta Joined to [the river] Sarasvati (said to have flowed underground and joined the Ganges at Allahabad)
9 Sughosa Melodious (or: Noisy)
10 Sindhu-gamini Flowing to the ocean
11 Bhagirathi Pertaining to the saint Bhagiratha (whose prayers brought the Ganges down from Heaven)
12 Bhagyavati Happy, fortunate
13 Bhagiratha-rathanuga Following the chariot of Bhagiratha (who led the Ganges down to Hell to purify the ashes of Sagara’s sons)
14 Trivikrama-padoddhuta Falling from the foot of Vishnu
15 Triloka-patha-gamini Flowing through the three worlds (i.e. Heaven, earth and the atmosphere or lower regions)
16 Ksira-subhra White as milk
17 Bahu-ksira [A cow] which gives much milk
18 Ksira-vrksa-samakula Abounding in [the four] ‘milk-trees’ (i.e. Nyagrodha (Banyan), Udumbara (glomer ous fig-tree), Asvattha (holy fig-tree), and Madhuka (Bassia Latifolia))
19 Trilocana-jata-vasini Dwelling in the matted locks of Siva
20 Rna-traya-vimocini Releasing from the Three Debts, viz. (1) Brahma-carya (study of the Vedas) to the rishis, (2) sacrifice and worship to the gods, and (3) procreation of a son, to the Manes
21 Tripurari-siras-cuda The tuft on the head of the enemy of Tripura (Siva). (Tripura was a triple fortification, built in the sky, air and earth of gold, silver and iron respectively, by Maya for the Asuras, and burnt by Siva)
22 Jahnavi Pertaining to Jahnu (who drank up the Ganges in a rage after it had flooded his sacrificial ground, but relented, and allowed it to flow from his ear)
23 Nata-bhiti-hrt Carrying away fear
24 Avyaya Imperishable
25 Nayanananda-dayini Affording delight to the eye
26 Naga-putrika Daughter of the mountain
27 Niranjana Not painted with collyrium (i.e. colourless)
28 Nitya-suddha Eternally pure
29 Nira-jala-pariskrta Adorned with a net of water
30 Savitri Stimulator
31 Salila-vasa Dwelling in water
32 Sagarambusa-medhini Swelling the waters of the ocean
33 Ramya Delightful