Story of Lord Shiva and Goddess Ganga

In most of images and sculpt of Lord Shiva have the matted hair inside Goddess Ganga. The Indian King Sagar who is believed as a Powerful King, has decided to perform Ashwamedha Yagna. In this Yagna, he decided to sacrifice a horse to his supreme God. By seeing this, King Indra who is known as King of Heaven became jealous of this powerful king Sagar and he steals the sacrificial horse and keeps it in Ashramam where a sage name Kapil is there, who is meditating for many years silently. Therefore, King Sagar made his 60000 sons to search the ritual horse and finally they could find it in the sage ashramam and they even took sage. As sage meditation has got disturbed so he is in angry and started destroying all the sons of King Sagar. The grandson name Anshuman has requested him to forgive.

                Sage even suggested making their souls purify and nivarana, they need to get Goddess Ganga from heaven on to the earth. Therefore, the souls of him and ancestors will get purified. Anshuman’s son, King Dilip requested Lord Brahma to help them in bringing Ganga on to the earth from heaven. But he was failing and therefore, this responsibility has been given to his son Bhagirathi and Bhagirathi pleased Lord Brahma to order Ganga to come on to the earth. Finally, this created an insulting feeling in the Ganga and she started flowing very force to wash and destroy complete earth.

             

                  By seeing it, Lord Brahma has warned Bhagirathi to pray Lord Shiva, as Ganga cannot be hold by earth and Shiva can hold her by his matted hair. She was very much anger and tried to drown and destroy even lord Shiva but He tied her so strongly that she could not come out. Hence, she became helpless.

              

               

Actually, Lord Shiva Want to teach her a nice lesson, but as Bhagirathi has prayed to Shiva, so he releases Ganga as 7 streams. That are Bhagirathi, Mandakini, Jahnavi, Bhilangana , Alakananda, Bhilangana, Rishiganga and Saraswati. Therefore, the souls of Bhagirathi’s ancestor’s souls released with her purity.