Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
bidden, for example, or felling trees on certain banks. The river mouth is considered to be
the most significant part of the Yalbynya, where local people throw money on passing.
In southeastern Europe, the waters of the Danube play an important part in traditional
funeral customs practised by Bulgarians and Romanians living along the river's lower
reaches. The river has considerable symbolic value for the idea of death as a long journey
to the nether world and is incorporated into often elaborate memorial rituals. 'Freeing the
water' of the deceased is a rite that provides water to the dead person for use in the af-
terlife. The ritual, which varies in detail from village to village, usually involves a child
bringing river water to certain houses. In the Bulgarian village of Leskovec, the child is a
girl who then returns to the Danube with several women where they lay down a tablecloth
on the riverbank and set out a meal consisting of boiled wheat and wine. The women light
a candle and hang gifts for the child on a forked stick taken from an apple tree. The girl
puts her right foot in the river and asks three times for the ceremony to be witnessed, at
which point a hollowed pumpkin containing a candle, some wheat, and a piece of bread is
launched from the riverbank. When the pumpkin floats away down the Danube, the water
will reach the deceased, but should the pumpkin turn over, the deceased will be angry.
Rivers feature among the most important types of sacred place in Hinduism. About 3,000
years ago, rivers were revered by the Aryan people of the Vedic period in the region that is
now India, and evidence from archaeological excavations suggests that the Hindu practice
of mass bathing in rivers on auspicious occasions dates back to (and derives from) a sim-
ilar practice in the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley, up to 2,000 years before that.
Indeed, the words 'Hindu' and 'India' are derived from the Indus.
Virtually all Indian rivers are revered as deities, but the Indus is commonly referred to as
one of the seven holy rivers of India, the others being the Ganges, Yamuna (or Jumna),
Sarasvati, Godavari, Narmada, and Kaveri. However, the Indus and the Kaveri are occa-
sionally replaced by the Tapti and the Kistna. The rivers are often thought of as the veins
in the earth's body, and many specific places along a river's course are particularly sacred,
including the source, mouth, and confluences. The most sacred of all India's holy rivers is
the Ganges.
The Ganges
The connections Hindus have with the Ganges provide one of the most striking examples
of the sanctity of rivers. Indeed, in India 'Ganga' is both the name of the River Ganges and
