THE GANGES
SIR WILLIAM W. HUNTER
Of all great rivers on the surface of the globe, none can compare in sanctity with the Ganges, or Mother Gangá, as she is affectionately called by devout Hindus. From her source in the Himálayas, to her mouth in the Bay of Bengal, her banks are holy ground. Each point of junction of a tributary with the main stream has its own special claims to sanctity. But the tongue of land at Allahábád, where the Ganges unites with her great sister river the Jumna, is the true _Prayág_, the place of pilgrimage whither hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus repair to wash away their sins in her sanctifying waters. Many of the other holy rivers of India borrow their sanctity from a supposed underground connection with the Ganges. This fond fable recalls the primitive time when the Aryan race was moving southward with fresh and tender recollections of the Gangetic plains. It is told not only of first-class rivers of Central and Southern India, like the Narbadá, but also of many minor streams of local sanctity.
An ancient legend relates how Gangá, the fair daughter of King Himálaya (Himávat) and of his queen, the air-nymph Menaka, was persuaded, after long supplication, to shed her purifying influence upon the sinful earth. The icicle-studded cavern from which she issues is the tangled hair of the god Siva. Loving legends hallow each part of her course; and from the names of her tributaries and of the towns along her banks, a whole mythology might be built up. The southern offshoots of the Aryan race not only sanctified their southern rivers by a fabled connection with the holy stream of the north. They also hoped that in the distant future, their rivers would attain an equal sanctity by the diversion of the Ganges waters through underground channels. Thus, the Bráhmans along the Narbadá maintain that in this iron age of the world (indeed, in the year 1894 A. D.) the sacred character of the Ganges will depart from her now polluted stream, and take refuge by an underground passage in their own Narbadá river.
The estuary of the Ganges is not less sacred than her source. Ságar Island at her mouth is annually visited by a vast concourse of pilgrims, in commemoration of her act of saving grace; when, in order to cleanse the 60,000 damned ones of the house of Ságar, she divided herself into a hundred channels, thus making sure of reaching their remains with her purifying waters, and so forming the delta of Bengal. The six years’ pilgrimage from her source to her mouth and back again, known as _pradak-shina_, is still performed by many; and a few devotees may yet be seen wearily accomplishing the meritorious penance of “measuring their length” along certain parts of the route. To bathe in the Ganges at the stated festivals washes away guilt, and those who have thus purified themselves carry back bottles of her water to their kindred in far-off provinces. To die and be cremated on the river bank, and to have their ashes borne seaward by her stream, is the last wish of millions of Hindus. Even to ejaculate “Gangá, Gangá, at the distance of one hundred leagues from the river,” said her more enthusiastic devotees, might atone for the sins committed during three previous lives.
[Illustration: THE GANGES]
The Ganges has earned the reverence of the people by centuries of unfailing work done for them. She and her tributaries are the unwearied water-carriers for the densely-peopled provinces of Northern India, and the peasantry reverence the bountiful stream which fertilizes their fields and distributes their produce. None of the other rivers of India comes near to the Ganges in works of beneficence. The Brahmaputra and the Indus have longer streams, as measured by the geographer, but their upper courses lie beyond the great mountain wall in the unknown recesses of the Himálayas.
Not one of the rivers of Southern India is navigable in the proper sense. But in the north, the Ganges begins to distribute fertility by irrigation as soon as she reaches the plains, within 200 miles of her source, and at the same time her channel becomes in some sort navigable. Thenceforward she rolls majestically down to the sea in a beautiful stream, which never becomes a merely destructive torrent in the rains, and never dwindles away in the hottest summer. Tapped by canals, she distributes millions of cubic feet of water every hour in irrigation; but her diminished volume is promptly recruited by great tributaries, and the wide area of her catchment basin renders her stream inexhaustible in the service of man. Embankments are in but few places required to restrain her inundations, for the alluvial silt which she spills over her banks affords in most parts a top-dressing of inexhaustible fertility. If one crop be drowned by flood, the peasant comforts himself with the thought that the next crop from his silt-manured fields will abundantly requite him.
The Ganges has also played a preëminent part in the commercial development of Northern India. Until the opening of the railway system, from 1855 to 1870, her magnificent stream formed almost the sole channel of traffic between upper India and the seaboard. The products not only of the river plains, but even the cotton of the Central Provinces, were formerly brought by this route to Calcutta. Notwithstanding the revolution caused by the railways, the heavier and more bulky staples are still conveyed by the river, and the Ganges may yet rank as one of the greatest waterways in the world.
The value of the upward and downward trade of the interior with Calcutta, by the Gangetic channels, may be taken at about 400,000,000 of rupees per annum, of which over 153,000,000 go by country-boats, and nearly 240,000,000 by steamers (1891). This is exclusive of the sea-borne commerce. But the adjustments which have to be made are so numerous that the calculation is an intricate one. As far back as 1876, the number of cargo boats registered at Bámangháta, on one of the canals east of Calcutta, was 178,627; at Hugli, a river-side station on a single one of the many Gangetic mouths, 124,357; and at Patna, 550 miles from the mouth of the river, the number of cargo boats entered in the register was 61,571. The port of Calcutta is itself one of the world’s greatest emporia for sea and river-borne commerce. Its total exports and imports landward and seaward amounted in 1881 to about 1,400,000,000 of rupees (Rx. 140,000,000) and to 1,523,000,000 of rupees (Rx. 152,363,583) in 1891.
Articles of European commerce, such as wheat, indigo, cotton, opium, and saltpetre, prefer the railway; so also do the imports of Manchester piece goods. But if we take into account the vast development in the export trade of oil-seeds, rice, etc., still carried by the river, and the growing interchange of food-grains between interior districts of the country, it seems probable that the actual amount of traffic on the Ganges has increased rather than diminished since the opening of the railways. At well-chosen points along her course, the iron lines touch the banks, and these river-side stations form centres for collecting and distributing the produce of the surrounding country. The Ganges, therefore, is not merely a rival, but a feeder of the railway. Her ancient cities, such as Allahábád, Benares, and Patna, have thus been able to preserve their former importance; while fishing villages like Sahibganj and Goalanda have been raised into thriving river marts.
For, unlike the Indus and the Brahmaputra, the Ganges is a river of great historic cities. Calcutta, Patna, and Benares are built on her banks; Agra and Delhi on those of her tributary, the Jumna; and Allahábád on the tongue of land where the two sister streams unite. Many millions of human beings live by commerce along her margin. Calcutta, with its suburbs on both sides of the river, contains a population of nearly a million. It has a municipal revenue of four and one-fourth millions of rupees; a sea-borne and coasting commerce in 1891 of 770,000,000 of rupees, with a landward trade of over 750,000,000. These figures vary from year to year, but show a steady increase. Calcutta lies on the Hugli, the most westerly of the mouths by which the Ganges enters the sea. To the eastward stretches the delta, till it is hemmed in on the other side by the Meghná, the most easterly of the mouths of the Ganges. More accurately speaking, the Meghná is the vast estuary by which the combined waters of the Brahmaputra and Gangetic river-systems find their way into the Bay of Bengal.
MORNING ON THE GANGES
PIERRE LOTI
Nearly all the streets lead to the Ganges, where they grow wider and become less gloomy. Here, suddenly, the magnificent palaces and all the brightness of the day dawn upon us.
These massive tiers of steps, which stretch along the banks and reach to the water’s edge even in these times of drought, where fallen temples emerge from their slimy bed, were made in honour of the Ganges, and on each landing there are little granite altars, shaped like niches, in which diminutive gods are placed. These images are like those of the temples, but they are of more massive construction, so as to withstand the swirl of the waters which cover them during the annual rains.