Life on the Ganges River

While the Romans were building their power in Italy, another great civilization was growing in another part of the world—the Indus Valley.

Do you remember reading about Mohenjo-Daro, the mysterious deserted city of the Indus Valley? The citadel cities of the Indus Valley were deserted long, long ago.

But India didn’t just sit empty! After the people of the Indus Valley disappeared, new settlers came into India. They were called the Aryans, and they came down into India from the north, from the area we call Asia.

At first, the Aryans were nomads. But they soon settled down along the two big rivers of India, the Indus River and the Ganges River. They became farmers, just like the people who lived in the first villages of Mesopotamia. They grew crops for food. And like the people of ancient Mesopotamia, the Aryans raised animals, especially horses and cows.

Every year, the Ganges River overflowed its banks and left rich, dark soil all over the fields nearby, just like the Nile River in Egypt. The people of ancient India grew wonderful crops in the dirt left by the Ganges River floods. They grew wheat, like the Mesopotamians, and rice, like the Chinese. Without the Ganges River, the people of India wouldn’t have been able to survive. They believed that the river had been provided by their chief god, Shiva, the god of life. Here is the story that the people of ancient India told about Shiva and the Ganges:

nce, the river-goddess Ganga lived in the heavens.

The good king of India, King Bhagiratha, grew more and more worried. How could his people survive without water? Surely Ganga would come down from the heavens and bring water to the people who lived on earth. But Ganga refused to come down. She stayed up in the skies with her water—and the people of India were thirsty.

So King Bhagiratha called to Shiva, the god of life. “Shiva!” he cried. “We are dying of thirst! Please, please send Ganga to earth for us.”

When Shiva heard Bhagiratha’s cries, he called Ganga to his throne. “Ganga,” he said, “the people of earth are thirsty. You must go down to the earth and take water to them!”

Ganga refused. “I will not!” she said. “I will stay here in the skies, my favorite place to be. Let the people of earth take care of themselves.”

“But I command you!” Shiva answered, “and you must obey me.”

At that, Ganga became furious. “Go to earth?” she yelled. “I’ll go to earth all right—and drown everyone on it!” She balanced on the top of a cloud, ready to throw herself down to the earth with such violence that water would flood the entire surface of the ground.

But when Shiva saw what she was about to do, he leaped down to earth ahead of her. When Ganga came crashing down, she landed on his head, and her full weight came down on Shiva, instead of on the unhappy people of earth. Water flowed down Shiva’s head in seven streams, down onto the thirsty ground beneath him. The seven streams came together into one mighty river—the Ganges River. And the Ganges River brought life and plenty to all the people who lived along its banks.

The people who believed in Shiva and Ganga were called Hindus. Their religion was called Hinduism. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Hindus worshipped many different gods. But all Hindu believers worshipped the Ganges River! Today, Hindu pilgrims still come to the banks of the Ganges. At dusk, they float lighted candles on the water and pray to the river-goddess, Ganga.