swans and diverse other aquatic fowls, and having banks adorned with pasture lands with kine grazing on them.  Heaven herself loses her pride.  The high happiness which one enjoys by a residence on the banks of Ganga, can never be his who is residing even in heaven.  I have no doubt in this that the person who is afflicted with sins perpetrated in speech and thought and overt act, becomes cleansed at the very sight of Ganga.  By holding that sacred stream, touching it, and bathing in its waters, one rescues one’s ancestors to the seventh generation, one’s descendants to the seventh generation, as also other ancestors and descendant.  By hearing of Ganga, by wishing to repair to that river, by drinking its waters, by touching its waters, and by bathing in them a person rescues both his paternal and maternal races.  By seeing, touching, and drinking the waters of Ganga, or even by applauding Ganga, hundreds and thousands of sinful men became cleansed of all their sins.  They who wish to make their birth, life and learning fruitful, should repair to Ganga and gratify the Pitris and the deities by offering them oblations of water.  The merit that one earns by bathing in Ganga is such that the like of it is incapable of being earned through the acquisition of sons or wealth or the performance of meritorious acts.  Those who, although possessed of the physical ability, do not seek to have a sight of the auspicious Ganga of sacred current, are, without doubt, to be likened to persons afflicted with congenital blindness or those that are dead or those that are destitute of the power of locomotion through palsy or lameness.  What man is there that would not reverence this sacred stream that is adored by great Rishis conversant with the Present, the Past, and the Future, as also by the very deities with Indra at their head.  What man is there that would not seek the protection of Ganga whose protection is sought for by forest recluses and householders, and by Yatis and Brahmacharins alike?  The man of righteous conduct who, with rapt soul, thinks of Ganga at the time when his life-breaths are about to leave his body, succeeds in attaining to the highest end.  That man who dwells by the side of Ganga up to the time of his death, adoring her with reverence, becomes freed from the fear of every kind of calamity, of sin, and of kings.  When that highly sacred stream fell from the firmament.  Maheswara held it on his head.  It is that very stream which is adored in heaven.[239] The three regions, viz., (Earth, Heaven, and the nether place called Patala) are adorned by the three courses of this sacred stream.  The man who uses the waters of that stream becomes certainly crowned with success.  As the solar ray is to the deities in heaven, as Chandramas is to the Pitris, as the king is to human beings, even such is Ganga unto all streams.[240] One who becomes bereaved of mother or father or sons or spouses or wealth does not fell that grief which becomes one’s,