Ganga Descends and Fills the Ocean for Bhagiratha
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.
Ganga reached the surface of the earth and spoke to Bhagiratha.
"O great king! Show me the path that I should follow. O lord of the earth! It is for your sake that I have descended on earth."
Bhagiratha understood. He had spent years in the Himalayas, standing on one leg, eating only air, performing austerities so intense that the gods themselves had taken notice. He had done it for one reason: to bring Ganga down from heaven so her waters could touch the ashes of his ancestors — the sixty thousand sons of Sagara, burned to cinders by the sage Kapila's wrathful glance, their souls trapped without release.
Now the river was here. But she needed to know where to go.
Bhagiratha led her to the place where the bodies of the great-souled sons of Sagara were kept, so that they might be purified with the sacred waters.
Hara — the god who had caught Ganga in his matted locks when she fell from heaven, breaking her descent so the earth would not be shattered — had borne her all the way down. Now he released her. Worshipped by the worlds, he returned to Kailasa, best of mountains, with the thirty gods.
Bhagiratha walked on. Ganga followed.
He led her to the ocean — Varuna's abode, the great sea that had been emptied long ago. The sage Agastya had drunk it dry for a specific reason: to help the gods destroy the rakshasa (demon) Vatapi, a killer of brahmanas who had terrorized the earth. When the ocean was gone, the demons hiding in its depths were exposed and destroyed. But the ocean itself never returned.
Now Bhagiratha filled it.
With Ganga's waters flowing behind him, he reached the shore of the empty sea and poured the river into it. Forcefully, steadily, he filled up Varuna's abode until the ocean was whole again — the same ocean that had been drunk up by the great-souled Agastya.
The king thought of Ganga as his daughter. His desires having been fulfilled, he offered oblations to his ancestors there — the sixty thousand sons of Sagara, finally touched by the sacred waters, finally released. Aranyaka Parva, Chapter 405