Sacred Ganges River

The Ganges is one of the world's greatest rivers. Its wide valley stretches across northern India and Bangladesh from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. It is one of the most fertile of all agricultural regions. Its rice and other crops feed most of India and Bangladesh, where it is known as the Padma. The river is also an important trade artery.

Millions of Hindus venerate the Ganges as a "life-giving river" because their crops depend on its waters. To them the Ganges is sacred. They call it Gangamai, meaning "Mother Ganges." They believe that bathing in its waters washes away sin. To die on its banks assures eternal peace to the soul.

The Ganges is about 1,557 miles (2,506 kilometers) long. The Ganges Valley, or basin, is 200 to 400 miles (322 to 644 kilometers) wide. The total drainage basin covers an area of about 376,800 square miles (975,900 square kilometers). The river starts in an ice cave on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, some 10,300 feet (3,140 meters) above sea level.

It flows eastward and empties into the Bay of Bengal. Its mouths form a vast delta. At the delta it is joined by the southward-flowing Brahmaputra River. Their combined delta is the largest in the world. The delta begins more than 200 miles (322 kilometers) from the Bay of Bengal and lies mostly in Bangladesh. It is largely a tangled swampland.

The headwater of the Ganges in the Himalayas is called Bhagirathi. The Ganges breaks out of the foothills at Hardwar and is then joined by many small tributaries. Midway in its course, near Allahabad, it is joined by its chief tributary, the Yamuna (Jumna) River. The Hooghly River, an old channel of the Ganges, joins it at the delta.

Between the Ganges and the Yamuna is a doab, meaning "land between rivers." It is irrigated by two large canal systems supplied by the snow-fed Ganges. Rainfall in the valley ranges from 80 inches (203 centimeters) a year at the delta to about 25 inches (63 centimeters) in the Upper Ganges. The water supply of the Ganges system is dependent partly on the rains brought by the monsoon winds from July to October. Melting Himalayan snows in the hot season, from April to June, also contribute to the supply.

The Ganges Valley is one of the most thickly populated agricultural regions in the world. Most of the original natural vegetation and wild animals have disappeared, and the land is now heavily cultivated to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population.

Use of water for irrigation, either when the Ganges floods or by means of gravity canals, has been common since early times. Irrigation has increased the production of such food and cash crops as wheat, sugarcane, cotton, and oilseeds in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. River traffic is insignificant above the Middle Ganges Basin around Allahabad, where railways serve the region, but the rural people of West Bengal and Bangladesh continue to rely on the waterway to transport their agricultural products.

The chief cities on the Ganges are Calcutta and its suburb Howrah, Varanasi (also known as Benares), Allahabad, and Kanpur. Varanasi and Allahabad are holy cities where temples crowd the river banks. From them ghats, or steps, lead down to the water. Pilgrims go down to bathe or to fill little bottles with the sacred water. Some of the ghats are burning ghats where the dead are cremated and their ashes scattered on the Ganges.

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