17. The Ganges River Flowers Through Shiva’s Hair
The Mahabharata and Ramayana tell of a sage whose deep meditation is disturbed by the 60,000 sons of King Sagara. In his anger, he reduces all of them to ash with his fiery gaze and banishes them to the netherworld. One of the descendants of these sons is anxious to bring them back, so he calls on the goddess Ganga to come to earth and restore them. Because the fall from her home on the Milky Way would shatter the planet, she broke her fall in the tangled knots of Shiva’s matted hair.