Bhagiratha

Yudhishthira grieves that those who abandon dharma sometimes prosper. Lomasha answers him not with comfort but with a warning: prosperity without dharma is a slow poison. He traces the chain of destruction — insolence to vanity to anger to shamelessness to ruin — and tells Yudhishthira that the path to lasting prosperity runs through tirthas, austerities, and the example of the righteous kings who came before him.

After completing the sacrifice, Sagara is honored by the gods and hands the kingdom to his grandson Anshuman before departing to heaven. Anshuman rules well, then passes the throne to his son Dilipa — who, grieving for his dead ancestors, tries desperately to bring down the Ganga but fails, and eventually hands the burden to his son Bhagiratha before retiring to the forest.

Having learned that only Maheshvara can bear the force of Ganga's descent, Bhagiratha travels to Mount Kailasa and begins a new round of austerities. He does not stop until Shankara himself grants the boon: the god will bear the river on his head, so that Bhagiratha's fathers may finally reach heaven.

For a thousand celestial years, King Bhagiratha lives on nothing but fruits, roots, and water, performing terrible austerities to bring the river Ganga down from heaven. When she finally appears in personified form and asks what he desires, he tells her the story of his grandfathers — the sixty thousand sons of Sagara, destroyed by the sage Kapila, whose ashes cannot reach heaven without being touched by her waters. Ganga agrees to descend, but warns him that no one in the three worlds can withstand her force except Nilakantha Maheshvara himself.

Ganga has descended to earth but needs a guide. King Bhagiratha leads her to the ashes of his ancestors — the sixty thousand sons of Sagara who were burned to cinders by a sage's curse — and with the river's sacred waters, he fills the ocean itself.