Bhagiratha

This is Bhagiratha, a king who did tapas to bring Ganga to earth. He did one tapas after another to bring Ganga down, as there were so many hurdles on his way. He is a king and his ancestors had been turned to ashes by a sage. Bhagiratha wanted to bring them back to life and the only way to do that was to ask Ganga to flow over the ashes.

Bhagiratha’s ancestor Sagara performed aswamedha, a horse sacrifice. He would let a decorated horse roam around and wherever the horse went, that land would belong to Sagara. If somebody wanted to claim the land, he would have to fight Sagara. This partiular aswamedha would gain him some powers that rivaled Indra. So, Indra did not want this to go well and he tied the horse in sage Kapila’s ashram. Sagara and his men accused  the sage of stealing the horse. The sage gets so mad that he turns them to ashes.

After many years, Bhagiratha gets to know of this and he decides to bring his ancestors back to life. He does a penance asking Brahma to let Ganga come down to earth. After many years of penance, Ganga is released from the heavens. Ganga flows down extremely forceful and Siva arrests Ganga in his hair. Bhagiratha has to convince Siva to let Ganga flow. Siva opens out a few dreadlocks and Ganga is released again. This time the flow is peaceful but accidentally flows over sage Jhanu’s fields and penance. Jhanu drinks up the entire Ganga. So, Bhagiratha does another penance to sage Jhanu. Ganga is once again released from Jhanu’s ears. After all these hurdles, Ganga flows over Bhagiratha’s ancestors ashes and the story ends well. Ganga is sometimes referred as Jhanavi and Bhagirathi because of this story. Ganga is still believed to be flowing from Siva’s hair, who resides in the Himalayas.

Bhagiratha was used to explain the previous sutra that I wrote about. He is said to have a heart of steel and that he did not give up, even when the tapas took years to please the gods. Bhagiratha in this pose has inspired an asana and it is called Bhagiratasana. Many people call this pose Vrkshasana.

I took this picture in Mahabalipuram, which depicts the story of Bhagiratha and Ganga.

PS  tapas means penance

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