The Ganges: Much More Than Just a River

 

More than 2,000 years ago, a powerful leader built a fortress¹ on India's holiest river -- the Ganges. King Yayati set up the fort to help guard his territory.

Today, ruins are all that remain of the old structure. The area along the Ganges River is now an industrial city called Kanpur. Workers there collect stones from the ruins to build simple homes. These shelters, called shanties², sit on top of what once was the king's fortress.

The Ganges stretches over 2,700 kilometers across India. It begins high up in the Himalayan Mountains and eventually empties into the Bay of Bengal.

The Ganges has seen empires rise and fall. It has seen countless³ wars, kings, British colonial rulers, independence, and the rise of Hindu nationalism as a political movement.

In India, the Ganges is far more than just a river. It is religion, industry, farming, and politics.

To Hindus, the Ganges is known as "Ganga Ma" — meaning Mother Ganges. It is the center of spiritual life for more than a billion people. Every year, millions of Hindu pilgrims visit temples and other holy places along the Ganges. The word "pilgrimage" means traveling to a special place for an important, often religious, reason.

The river is a source of water for millions of people. To drink from the Ganges is to bring luck. For many Hindus, life is considered incomplete if they do not bathe in the river at least once in their lifetime. Its waters are believed to wash away sin.

But all is not well with the Ganges. Pollution has left much of it dangerous to drink. Large amounts of untreated wastewater are being added to the river every day. Another source of pollution comes from water used by manufacturers of cloth and leather products.

Criminal groups illegally remove sand from the riverside. They use it to feed India's seemingly endless need for concrete, a common building material.

Hydroelectric dams were built along waterways emptying into the Ganges. These dams are needed to supply power to India's growing economy. But some Hindus are angry. They say the machinery⁴ has compromised the purity of the river.

The Ganges starts at the Gangotri Glacier⁵. Its ice provides almost half the river's water. Over the past 40 years, the ice has been melting at a frightening rate. The glacier is now shrinking about 22 meters every year.

For thousands of years, the glacial ice melt has guaranteed that India's dry plains get enough water, even during the driest months. The rest comes from smaller waterways that flow down the mountains.

As the Ganges flows across the plains, its once clean water becomes dirty. The mineral-rich water begins collecting waste and pollution from the millions of people who depend on it. Millions of liters of waste products -- along with heavy metals, agricultural chemicals, human bodies, and animal remains⁶ -- enter the Ganges every day.

This has made it one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Indian officials have tried to limit the pollution in some places, but large parts remain dangerously unhealthy.

Still, to Hindus, the river remains religiously pure.

Every year, tens of thousands of Hindus bring the bodies of their loved ones to be cremated⁷ at the Ganges, in the city of Varanasi. A Hindu who dies there or whose remains are destroyed by fire alongside it, is also freed from that cycle of birth and death.

After Varanasi, the Ganges continues eastward⁹ through endless farmland as it nears the coast. It eventually splits off into ever-smaller rivers. The biggest of these rivers, the Hooghly, flows south toward the sea. It passes through Kolkata, the largest city in eastern India. Once known as Calcutta, the city is now home to nearly 15 million people. Finally, the Ganges River empties into the Bay of Bengal.

For the end of this story, however, we travel back up to the Gangotri Glacier. There a Hindu holy man named Mouni Baba makes his home. He spoke¹⁰ with The Associated Press.

"Human existence is like this ice," he said. "It melts and becomes water and then merges¹¹ into a stream. The stream goes into a tributary¹² which flows into a river and then it all ends up in an ocean. Some (rivers) remain pure while others collect dirt along the way. Some (people) help mankind and some become the cause of its devastation¹³."

I'm Jonathan Evans.

And I'm Anna Matteo.

Words in This Story

empire – n. a group of territories or peoples under one ruler

source – n. the beginning of a stream of water : someone or something that provides what is wanted or needed

sin – n. an offense¹⁴ against religious or moral law

leather – n. animal skin dressed for use

hydroelectric – adj. of or relating to production of electricity by waterpower

plain – n. a large area of flat land without trees

cremate⁸ – v. to burn the body of a person who has died

cycle – n. a set of events or actions that happen again and again in the same order : a repeating series of events or actions

tributary – n. a stream feeding a larger stream or a lake

devastation – n. great damage or destruction

1 fortress   

n.堡垒，防御工事

参考例句：

• They made an attempt on a fortress.他们试图夺取这一要塞。
• The soldier scaled the wall of the fortress by turret.士兵通过塔车攀登上了要塞的城墙。

2 shanties   

n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌

参考例句：

• A few shanties sprawl in the weeds. 杂草丛中零零落落地歪着几所棚屋。 来自辞典例句
• The workers live in shanties outside the factory. 工人们住在工厂外面的小棚屋内。 来自互联网

3 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

4 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

5 glacier   

n.冰川，冰河

参考例句：

• The glacier calved a large iceberg.冰河崩解而形成一个大冰山。
• The upper surface of glacier is riven by crevasses.冰川的上表面已裂成冰隙。

6 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

7 cremated   

v.火葬，火化（尸体）( cremate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He wants to is cremated, not buried. 他要火葬，不要土葬。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The bodies were cremated on the shore. 他们的尸体在海边火化了。 来自辞典例句

8 cremate   

v.火葬，烧成灰

参考例句：

• She wants Chris to be cremated.她想把克里斯的尸体火化。
• Laowang explains: "Combustion is cremate, degenerating is inhumation. "老王解释道：“燃烧就是火葬，腐朽就是土葬。”

9 eastward   

adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部

参考例句：

• The river here tends eastward.这条河从这里向东流。
• The crowd is heading eastward,believing that they can find gold there.人群正在向东移去，他们认为在那里可以找到黄金。

10 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

11 merges   

（使）混合( merge的第三人称单数 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中

参考例句：

• The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Mo Yan"who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". 2012年诺贝尔文学奖得主为莫言，他“很好地将魔幻现实与民间故事、历史与当代结合在一起”。
• A device that collates, merges, or matches sets of punched cards or other documents. 一种整理、合并或比较一组穿孔卡片或其它文档的设备。

12 tributary   

n.支流；纳贡国；adj.附庸的；辅助的；支流的

参考例句：

• There was a tributary road near the end of the village.村的尽头有条岔道。
• As the largest tributary of Jinsha river,Yalong river is abundant in hydropower resources.雅砻江是金沙江的最大支流，水力资源十分丰富。

13 devastation   

n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤

参考例句：

• The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
• There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 offense   

n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪

参考例句：

• I hope you will not take any offense at my words. 对我讲的话请别见怪。
• His words gave great offense to everybody present.他的发言冲犯了在场的所有人。