The king who spent his whole life bringing a river down for people he had never met

A horse goes missing

Long before Rama was born, one of his ancestors ruled Ayodhya. His name was Sagara, and he decided to hold a horse sacrifice.

The way it worked was this. You let a horse walk wherever it wanted for a year, and wherever it went, that land became yours unless somebody stopped it. Sagara had sixty thousand sons and one grandson, Amshuman, and Amshuman was given the job of walking behind the horse.

Somebody stole it anyway. A rakshasa in disguise took the horse and vanished.

Go and find it, Sagara told his sixty thousand sons. Search the whole earth. Dig if you have to.

Sixty thousand brothers dig

They dug with their fingernails, which were as hard as diamonds, and the sound of it was like thunder.

They went round the world and found nothing, so their father sent them out again, and this time they went downward. Deep under the ground they met the great elephants who hold up the sides of the earth. The brothers bowed to each of them and kept digging.

Then they found the horse. It was grazing quietly beside a sage who sat with his eyes closed. The sage was Kapila.

The brothers did not stop to ask. They picked up whatever was near them and ran at him shouting, thief, we have found you.

Kapila opened his eyes and said one syllable, and the sixty thousand brothers were ash.

The eagle's answer

When they did not come home, Sagara sent his grandson.

Amshuman went the same way down, and at last he came to a place where a mountain of ash lay on the ground with the horse standing beside it, alive and well.

He wanted to offer water for his uncles, the way you do for the dead. He looked everywhere and there was none. Then a huge eagle came down beside him. It was Garuda, his mother's brother.

Do not offer them ordinary water, Garuda said, because it will not work. These men can only be released by the Ganga, and the Ganga is not on the earth. She is in the sky. Bring her down here, let her run over this ash, and your uncles will go straight to heaven.

Sagara finished his sacrifice and then spent the rest of his life trying to work out how to bring a river down out of the sky. He could not. He died.

Amshuman became king, and when he was old he climbed a Himalayan peak and stood there praying for thirty-two thousand years. The river did not come, and he died there. His son Dilipa thought about it every day of his reign and never found a way either.

Three kings, one after another, and the ash was still lying where it was.

Bhagiratha stands still

Dilipa's son was Bhagiratha.

He handed his kingdom to his ministers and went to a place called Gokarna. He stood there in the hot season with fires burning on four sides of him and the sun overhead as the fifth, with his arms in the air, eating once a month, for a thousand years.

Brahma came and told him to ask for something.

Bhagiratha asked for two things. Let me bring the river down for Sagara's sons. And let me have a child, so our family does not end with me.

Brahma agreed, and then warned him. She is enormous. If she falls straight onto the earth, the earth will not survive it. Only Shiva can take that fall.

So Bhagiratha stood on the tip of one toe for a year, arms up, living on air, still as a pillar, until Shiva came and said, I am pleased with you, I will take her on my head.

The Ganga came down out of the sky with her whole weight, and she came down meaning to knock this Shiva straight through the world and out the other side. Shiva knew exactly what she was thinking. He let her land in his hair, and his hair closed over her.

She wandered inside those matted locks for years and could not find the way out.

Down on the earth Bhagiratha waited, saw no river, and began his penance all over again.

The water reaches the ash

At last Shiva let her go into a lake called Bindusara, and she came out in seven streams, and the seventh one followed Bhagiratha's chariot.

He drove, and the river came after him. Once she flooded a sage named Jahnu in the middle of his sacrifice, and Jahnu drank the whole river in one go. Everyone begged him, and he let her out again through his ears, which is why one of her names is Jahnavi, daughter of Jahnu. Then she fell in behind the chariot as though nothing had happened.

Bhagiratha drove all the way to the sea, and down into the place below it, and the water ran out over the ash.

Brahma came and told him it was finished. The sixty thousand are released. As long as there is sea on this earth they will be in heaven. And from today this river is your daughter, and people will call her the Bhagirathi, after you.

Then he added the ordinary instruction, which is really the point. Now go and bathe, and perform the water rites for your ancestors properly, and then go home and rule.

Sagara could not do it. Amshuman could not do it. Dilipa could not do it. Bhagiratha did it, and he had never met one of the men he did it for.

The last thing Brahma told him to do was the ordinary thing, and it is the same thing families still do in the fortnight of Pitru Paksha. Pour out water, by name, for the dead of your own line.

If you are not sure which tithi your own family's shraddha falls on this year, you can [ask an Acharya](/app/ask).

Sources

• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 39: the horse is stolen by a rakshasa in disguise, and Sagara sends his sixty thousand sons to dig for it. Hari Prasad Shastri's English translation, Wisdomlib.
• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 40: the brothers are sent down a second time, bow to the elephants of the quarters, accuse Kapila and are reduced to ashes.
• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 41: Amshuman finds the ashes and the horse, and Garuda tells him only the Ganga can release the dead.
• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 42: Amshuman and Dilipa fail, and Bhagiratha begins his austerities at Gokarna.
• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 43: Shiva takes the fall of the Ganga on his head, and Jahnu drinks and releases her.
• Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga 44: the water reaches the ashes, and the river is named Bhagirathi.
• Bhagavata Purana, Canto 9, chapter 8: the same story of Sagara, his sons and Kapila, told much more briefly.
• Bhagavata Purana, Canto 9, chapter 9: the Bhagavata's short version of the descent of the Ganga.