The earth was thirsty, and the people were in despair.

For long ages a great river had flowed only in heaven, high above the clouds, where no human hand could reach it. Her name was Ganga, and her waters were said to be so pure that a single drop could wash away the sorrows of a lifetime. But up in the sky she did the earth no good at all.

A prince named Bhagiratha decided to change that. He climbed into the mountains and prayed — not for a day, not for a year, but for years upon years — asking the gods to send the heavenly river down to the dry world below. He prayed until at last the sky answered.

But there was a problem. Ganga was enormous. If she simply fell from heaven to earth, her crash would shatter the ground and flood everything. The whole world would be washed away.

So Lord Shiva stepped forward. "I will catch her," he said.

Ganga came roaring down from the heavens, a torrent so vast it seemed the sky itself was pouring out. But Shiva stood calm beneath her and let the whole mighty river land in the tangle of his long matted hair. There she wound and twisted through his locks, her wildness slowed and gentled, until she came out not as a crashing flood but as a clear, singing stream.

Down the mountains she ran, sparkling over the stones, spreading into the plains. Wherever she touched, the dry land turned green. Farmers wept with joy. Children splashed in her cool water. Pilgrims came from far away just to dip their hands in her current and feel their hearts grow light.

From that day she was the most loved of all rivers. People called her Mother Ganga, and they believed her water could make anything clean again.

"Among all the rivers," Krishna told Arjuna, "I am the Ganga."

Of every river that flows across the earth, he chose the one that had fallen from heaven itself — the one that makes things pure. Wherever water runs cool and clean and gives life to the land, Krishna said, a small shine of the divine runs with it.