The Symbolism of Ganga in Ancient Puranas

Puranas mention of river Ganga as a holy river which came down on earth to uplift the collective conscience of the world. The story goes that there was one King by the name of Sagara with sixty thousand one sons and once he performed Ashwamega Yagya (Ashwa refers to horse and Yagya means Yagna) to prove his mettle/supremacy in the entire world for establishing his rule/kingdom.

*** In Ashwamega Yagya, the strongest horse in the king’s stable is sent along with his army of warriors to all those parts of the world that the king wishes to reign and if the horse remains undefeated till the end, the king is declared as the ruler of all those places through which the horse has moved.

The 60,000 sons of Sagara were following the horse when they saw him enter a cavern where sage Kapil Muni was meditating. Not seeing the horse in the cavern, they presumed that Kapila had captured it. They did not kill Kapil Muni as he was a sage but they started disturbing his meditations. Annoyed at being disturbed, Kapil Muni with a curse burnt the 60,000 sons of Sagara. Some Puranas say that this made them ghosts (Preta yoni in Hindi which literally means ethereal beings). In order to relieve them from Preta Yoni, his only surviving son (who was calm and composed) requested the sage to forgive them and suggest a way to get rid of this Pitra dosha (ancestral curse), to which Rishi Kapila said that only the water from river Ganga can relieve them which will be brought down on earth by one of the descendents of King Sagara.

The Puranas mention of a legend called Bhagirath who did Tapas (austerity/very hard work) for years to please Ganga and brought her on earth however the current of Ganga was so strong that the earth could not have withstood it, if she was not controlled by something. For that Bhagirath prayed Lord Shiva to hold Ganga in his Jatayen (uncombed twisted knots of hair) to slow down its current before releasing it on earth. Lord Shiva agreed and thus Bhagirath could relieve his ancestors from Preta yoni.

The Deep Seated Meaning of the Story

Now here is the deep seated meaning of this story. Ganga refers to pure and higher knowledge which in material sense would mean health imparting and disease/pest destroying lifeforce that can repair/undo the damage to the collective conscience. Sagar literally refers to the existing collective conscience as Sagar means ocean. Kapila literally means Sun (Pitta/focus of the soul) and thus the power that is needed to impart strength to the soul for roaming around in the web of maya (the hard disk of this Universe). The sixty thousand sons of Sagar refers to different parts of the collective conscience which had become aggressive, arrogant, egoist, lost, impulsive that were disturbing Pitta of the individual consciousness to focus on right things making things haywire.

*** In Ayurvedic terms it is excess Vata (hollowness/movement) disturbing Pitta and creating haywire movement of thoughts which means Rahu in Astrological sense. The sixty thousand number refers to the number of channels that we have in our body which has been mentioned as sixteen thousand Gopis of Lord Krishna. Which of the two numbers is correct is a debatable point as of now.

The horse of Ashwamega Yagya refers to the inner strength (as Ashwini Nakshatra where Ashwini means horse which literally refers to internal strength from where the son of Shiva i.e. the mighty Kartikeya was born). So, the king which can be equated to the brain being the central processing unit of the body, keeps sending its inner strength into different parts of the body/aspects of life to assess its strength and this happens all the time in our body. At collective level too, this is happening when a person or state or group or country is displaying his/her strength to establish his/her supremacy thereby displaying inflated ego. In absence of evolved Shiva which means patience and understanding of the working of the world, such a display of strength by inner Kartikeya is counterproductive.

If Ganga i.e. knowledge/purity is pushed suddenly with full force then the person will not be able to understand and assimilate this knowledge. Instead it will create insanity. Its like expecting a computer to download a huge data file into another smaller computer within just a few seconds by trying to push excess current through it. The result will be crashing of the disk.  That is why knowledge is pushed gradually through the souls (when they incarnate as human beings) and collective conscience of the world through several Yugas with the help of software guided or governed by planets (this is the reason that the paintings of Vedic times show planets surrounding Ganga during its arrival/avtaran on earth). Of course, the speed of the download also depends upon the maturity of the soul at the receiving end. Without knowledge and purity, everything becomes misaligned/disordered (which in the terms of physics means entropy), just as sixty thousand sons of Sagar did. While they were physically destroyed by Pitta/Sun/heat, their haywireness at quantum level remained (which we understand as Preta/ether). We are already experiencing this in todays world  in form of excess Vata Pitta (inflated ego, haywireness, global catastrophes, diseases and so on). So, to reestablish order, the Sun (intelligence of brain at individual level as well as Universal level) will have to evaporate all the matter that is causing chaos and bring back order with Vedic knowledge (Ganga).

*** Scientists today are baffled that a place in the galaxy that contains water trillions of times more than earth, is situated exactly at that location which is already mentioned  in Puranas with reference to the pole star. The Puranas state that Ganga was brought down on earth from there only. Since now, we know (or easily guess) that the civilization on earth was highly advanced in Vedic times, could it mean that someone (not human by today’s standards) brought down the glacier of Ganga on earth to restart life which had become ethereal  (evaporated due to Sun)? Seems very much possible going by the fact that earth has faced and will keep facing several rounds of destruction and resurgence (partial or whole). Puranas state that every time the earth gets destroyed, the sample of its flora and fauna is saved by a person called as Manu (not a name but a designation given to the person who begins life afresh) for resurrection of life. Bhagirath was also a descendent of Manu. Thus Bhagirath can be considered as a Sub Manu who worked tirelessly to bring down Ganga/knowledge and piousness in the conscience to evolve itself (in fact , that way we all are mini Manus in our own ways).

 Lord Rama as per Puranas was also a descendent of Bhagirath who refers to an evolved stage of Sun (Pitta/focus) which helps in establishing a society. It goes without  saying that this cycle of destruction and resurgence keeps happening all the time not only on earth at collective level but even at smaller level of society/nation and so on. This also means that even knowledge (Vedas) will keep evolving and more evolved a soul, higher will its understanding of this world/Universe and according will be her understanding of Dharma/righteousness. This also means that we should become good listeners to filter out right from wrong else we shall stop evolving as a soul.