Banganga in Mythology
According to local legend, it sprang forth when the Hindu god Ram, the exiled hero of the epic Ramayana, stopped at the spot five thousand years ago in search of his kidnapped wife Sita.
As the legend goes, overcome with fatigue and thirst, Rama asked his brother Lakshmana to bring him some water. Laxman instantly shot an arrow into the ground, and water gushed forth from the ground, creating a tributary of the Ganges, which flows over a thousand miles away, hence its name, Banganga, the Ganga created on a baan (arrow).
The Banganga also houses the 'Shri Kashi Math' and 'Shri Kaivalya or Kawle Math' of the Goud Saraswat Brahmins at its banks and samadhis of their various past heads of the Math.
The area also has a Hindu cremation ground which after 2003, received a makeover to house a Gas crematorium.
The area still has an old Hindu cemetery consisting of samadhi shrines of various Advaita gurus, such as Sri Ranjit Maharaj (1913–2000) and his guru Sri Siddarameshwar Maharaj (1888–1936).
Read more about this topic: Banganga Tank
Famous quotes containing the word mythology:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)