Where does the Godavari begin?

It starts long before there was a river, with the water in Brahma’s pot — the water Shiva himself had made and given him. When Vishnu, born small as the dwarf Vamana, took the three worlds from the asura king Bali in three steps, his second step covered the whole world, and it came down in Brahma’s own home. Brahma looked at his father’s foot standing there and thought, what can I do with the water in my pot that would be worth doing? And he decided to wash his father’s foot with it. He said the holy words over the water and poured it over Vishnu’s foot, and it fell on Mount Meru and ran off the mountain in four directions. Vishnu caught the stream that ran north. The one that ran west went back into the pot. The rishis and the gods and the ancestors caught the one that ran east. And the one that ran south, Shiva caught in his matted hair, and kept.

So the Ganga was in Shiva’s hair. He had put her there the way you put something on your head to honour it, and Uma, his wife, could not bear it. Send her away, she said, again and again, and every time he said no. Oh, I am helpless, she said.

She went to her sons, Ganesha and Skanda, and to Jaya, and told them in secret. He will never let her go, she said. Not if the gods ask him, not if the asuras ask him, not if you ask him. So either I go back to the mountain and do my penance all over again, or I find some brahmin who has burnt away every wrong thing he ever did, and let him ask. For a man like that she might come down to the earth.

Ganesha said, let the three of us see to it, my brother and Jaya and I.

At that time there had been no rain on the earth for twenty-four years. Everything that could die had died, everything that moved and everything that grew, except in one place.

There is a hill in the south called Brahmagiri, Brahma’s hill, because Brahma once held a sacrifice on it. On that hill lived the rishi Gautama, and in his ashram nothing was wrong. No hunger, no sickness, no fear, no grief, no poverty, no drought, because whatever Gautama thought of, grew. In the whole world his was the one house where an offering was still being made to the gods and the ancestors, and the gods in heaven ate only because Gautama fed them.

The rishis of the other ashrams heard about it, asked the way to Gautama’s, and came. He took them all in and looked after them as if they were his sons, and gave each of them what he wanted, and every day he asked, what shall I do for you? Years went by like that.

Ganesha heard the gods singing about him. Mother, he said, the gods themselves are singing about a brahmin called Gautama, who has done with his penance what the gods can only do with effort. If a man like that asks for her, she will come. We only need some way to make him ask.

He went to Brahmagiri with Skanda and Jaya, and lived in Gautama’s ashram for a few days, quietly. Then he started on the rishis. We have eaten this man’s food long enough, he said. Our own ashrams are clean and pure. Let us go home. So they went to Gautama to take their leave, and Gautama would not hear of it. Stay, he said, with his palms together. All of you. Let me serve you. While I am standing here ready to serve you, it is not right for you to go to any other ashram.

Ganesha went back to the rishis and said, you see. He has bought us with his food, and now he will not let us go. And he has done nothing wrong, so we cannot punish him. Let me handle this cleverly. And the rishis said, do it, as long as it is for his good.

He put on a brahmin’s clothes. Then he took Jaya aside. Turn yourself into a cow, he said, and do it so that nobody knows. Go into Gautama’s field and eat his rice. Trample it, tear it up. And if he hits you, or shouts at you, or so much as looks at you, fall down and bellow, and lie there between living and dying.

She did it. Gautama came to his field and found a cow in his rice, eating and trampling, and he picked up a blade of grass and waved it at her to shoo her off. The cow bellowed and fell down. She lay there. And the noise brought the whole ashram running, and the rishis stood round the fallen cow with Ganesha at their head and looked at Gautama.

We are leaving, they said. You looked after us like sons, and now we are taking our leave of you. Look at her — the mother of the Rudras, lying on the ground. If we stay in your house after this, everything we have earned by our penance goes to waste, and our penance is all we have.

Gautama fell down in front of them as if lightning had struck him. You are all I have, he said. Make me clean.

Ganesha, in his brahmin’s clothes, said, this cow is neither dead nor alive. Gautama said, she will never get up. Tell me what will make me clean and I will do it, whatever it is. And the rishis said, whatever he says, we say.

So Ganesha said it. We have heard that the water that was once in Brahma’s pot is now in Shiva’s matted hair. Go and get it, by penance and by rites, and bring it here and pour it over this cow. Then we will all come back and live in your house as before.

Flowers fell out of the sky. The rishis went home to ashrams that suddenly had food and water in them again, and Ganesha went home with his brother and Jaya, very pleased with himself.

Gautama was left alone with a cow on the ground. He sat and thought about it. What is this that has happened to me? He thought for a long time, and then he understood. The gods had arranged it, for a good reason — it would help the whole world, it would please Shiva and Parvati both, and it would bring the Ganga down to earth. There is no wrong in me, he said. He talked it over with his wife, and then he left Brahmagiri and set out for Kailash.

He climbed to the top of Kailash and spread kusha grass on the rock and sat down on it, and he did not speak. कुश kusha is the stiff grass also called darbha, the grass a rishi sits on and prays with. And he praised Shiva. You are the earth, he said, that carries everything that moves and everything that stands still. You are the water, and the sun and the moon and the fire that give us the days and the seasons. You are the wind and the sky. You are the sacrifice, the one who performs it, the fire it goes into and the fruit it gives. You are everything, so what is the use of my words? And he praised Uma, the mother of everything, whose kind glance even Indra longs for.

While he was still speaking, Shiva was there in front of him, with Uma beside him and Ganesha and all his people behind. What shall I give you, Gautama? he said. Ask for anything, even the things the gods cannot get.

Gautama wept. Then he said, if you are pleased with me, give me the Ganga that is in your hair.

Shiva said, what you have asked for is for the three worlds. Ask for something for yourself. Gautama asked that whoever praised Shiva and the goddess with his hymn should have what they wanted, and Shiva said, done. Ask for more.

So Gautama asked for the river. Let a bath in her, anywhere from here to the sea, wash away the killing of a brahmin and every other wrong a man can do. Let her be the holiest of all rivers. Wherever she runs, all the way to the sea, you be there too. Let anyone who so much as comes near her be freed, even the worst of men, and the ancestors who come to bathe in her. Put every river in heaven and on earth and under it on one side, and put her on the other, and let her be the better one. That is enough. I bow to you.

And Shiva said, so be it. There has never been a holier place than this and there never will be. It is true, it is true, it is true. It is in the Veda, and Gautami is the holiest of all rivers. And he was gone.

When Shiva had gone, Gautama’s hair grew into matted locks, and the river was in them. He walked home to Brahmagiri leading the Ganga, with the gods all round him and flowers coming down out of the sky, and the rishis and the brahmins and the kings came out to meet him shouting victory.

On the top of the hill he put his matted hair down on the rock. He thought of Shiva, and he put his palms together and spoke to the river. Mother, he said, born from the hair of the three-eyed lord, giver of everything anyone wants, forgive us. Be calm. Go happily, and do good to everyone.

The Ganga stood up out of his hair in the form of a goddess, with a garland on, and asked him, where shall I go? Up to the gods? Back into the pot? Down under the earth? Everyone knows you never lie, so tell me.

Gautama said, I asked for you for the sake of the three worlds. Shiva gave you to me. Let it be that, and nothing else.

She agreed. She divided herself into three, for heaven, for the earth and for the worlds below, and people see only the part that is on the earth. Then Gautama said goodbye to her, and she went east, towards the sea.

Last of all, Shiva came to him again, and Gautama asked him how a man should bathe in her, and Shiva told him: the rules for going to her, what a bath in her is worth in the year Jupiter is in Leo, and the six names she would have, and Gautami was the first of them.

This is what Trimbakeshwar tells. The water comes out of the rock high up on Brahmagiri, at Gangadwar. Then it goes back into the hill and is gone, and it comes out again down in the town, in the middle of Trimbakeshwar, in the kund called Kushavarta. The kund got its name from the kusha grass Gautama stirred the river with when he brought her down, and Kushavarta has the whole of that. From the kund the river runs east, down to Nashik and across the country to the sea. And the year Shiva named, the year Jupiter is in Leo, is the year the Kumbh comes to Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, and why it is called Simhastha has that, and the whole of what Shiva said about bathing in her.

The way up to Gangadwar is on foot, by a flight of stone steps that goes up the face of the hill from the town. It is a climb, and the town drops away below you as you go. At the top, in the rock, is Gangadwar, a small cave temple, and this is the first place on the hill where the water of the Godavari can be seen.

In the 1880s there were seven hundred steps, with a wall on either side and a divider down the middle, so that pilgrims went up by one side and came down by the other. At the top there was a broad platform with a sheer cliff going up behind it, and water dripped down the cliff and ran out through a stone cow’s mouth into a small tank, and a priest sat there all day and dressed the cow’s head with leaves and flowers. From the platform a pilgrim looked straight down on the town and its temples and its pools, and out across the plain to the thin silver line of the river winding away between its banks, with Anjaneri close by. Anjaneri is the hill with Hanuman’s mother’s name, on the road back towards Nashik.

Brahmagiri is the hill itself, and the Trimbakeshwar temple is a short walk from Kushavarta. Once she is out of the hill, the river the whole of Nashik is built on is this one, and the Godavari at Nashik picks her up there.