The Descent, and Shiva's Hair

Ganga's central myth is that of her descent from heaven to earth. The sage Bhagiratha, seeking to release the souls of his ancestors, whose ashes lay unblessed, performs great austerities to bring the celestial river down to earth. But the force of her fall from the sky would shatter the world, and so Shiva agrees to receive her first upon his head: Ganga descends into the tangle of his matted hair, which breaks and tames her torrent, and she is released from it in gentler streams to flow across the land and give the ancestors rest. This is why Shiva is often shown with the goddess flowing from his hair, and why Ganga is bound to the Himalayan world of Shiva.

In the Mahabharata she is also the mother of the hero Bhishma, whom she bears to the mortal king Shantanu. To Hindus today Ganga remains a living mother-goddess, invoked daily; the modern concern for the pollution of the physical river has, if anything, intensified the sense of her as a sacred person to whom a duty of care is owed.