Editing Ganges (section)

===The Purifying Ganges===
[[Image:BathingGhatBanares1885.jpg|right|thumb|Women and children at a bathing [[ghat]] on the Ganges in Banares (Varanasi), 1885.]]
Hindus consider the waters of the Ganges to be both pure and purifying.<ref name=eck1982-p216-217>{{Harvnb|Eck|1982|pp=216–217}}</ref> Regardless of all scientific understanding of its waters, the Ganges is always ritually and symbolically pure in Hindu culture.<ref name=eck1982-p216-217/> Nothing reclaims order from disorder more than the waters of the Ganga.<ref name=eck1982-p217>{{Harvnb|Eck|1982|pp=217}}</ref> Moving water, as in a river, is considered purifying in Hindu culture because it is thought to both absorb impurities and take them away.<ref name=eck1982-p217/> The swiftly moving Ganga, especially in its upper reaches, where a bather has to grasp an anchored chain to not be carried away, is especially purifying.<ref name=eck1982-p217/> What the Ganges removes, however, is not necessarily physical dirt, but symbolic dirt; it wipes away the sins of the bather, not just of the present, but of a lifetime.<ref name=eck1982-p217/>

A popular paean to the Ganga is the ''Ganga Lahiri'' composed by a 17th-century poet Jagannatha who, legend has it, was turned out of his Hindu [[Brahmin]] caste for carrying on an affair with a Muslim woman. Having attempted futilely to be rehabilitated within the Hindu fold, the poet finally appeals to Ganga, the hope of the hopeless, and the comforter of last resort. Along with his beloved, Jagannatha sits at the top of the flight of steps leading to the water at the famous ''Panchganga'' [[Ghat]] in Varanasi. As he recites each verse of the poem, the water of the Ganges rises one step until in the end it envelops the lovers and carries them away.<ref name=eck1982-p217/> "I come to you as a child to his mother", begins the ''Ganga Lahiri''.<ref name=eck1982-p218>Quoted in {{Harvnb|Eck|1982|p=218}}</ref> <blockquote> I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.<br />I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.<br />I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.<br />I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.<br />I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.<br />Do with me whatever you will.<ref name=eck1982-p218/></blockquote>