The River and Waters

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Among the many symbols of India endowed with spirituality, water is

the most sacred, at once the purifier and the origin of the mystery.

It is the real and imagined source of life. River and Waters have

always been associated with The Goddess. The Goddess and waters are

one in their prime value of fertility and birth. This is especially

true in those other ancient culture like Egypt, Mesopotamia, where

life creating waters are embodied as Goddess. Goddess Isis ( Egypt )

too begins as River Goddess.

 

Katha Upanishad

"He who is born of old was born of water. Right from Waters, the

soul drew forth and shaped a person…"

 

Rig Veda 1.23.18-19

 

" I call the waters, goddesses, where our cows drink: may

oblations

be give to the streams. Elixir is in the waters : healing balms are

in the waters; gods be swift to praise them"

 

Rg Veda 10.17.10

 

"May the water, mothers, purify us; clarifiers of ghee, may then

clean us with ghee, for the goddesses carry off all impurity: So I

arise from them purified and bring"

 

Rg Veda 10.9.1-6

 

These waters, indeed, are refreshing : help us to look upon strength

and great joy. Like loving mothers, give us here ( a portin ) of your

most auspicious fluid… Oh! Waters, you refresh and rejuvenate

us… May

the water, goddesses, be for our happiness and protection, and for

drinking. May they pour forth happiness and welfare… I beg the

waters, sovereigns ruling over wealth and human beings for healing

balm. "

 

Water as primordial womb

 

Rg Veda 10.121.7-8

 

Indeed, when the great waters came, bearing the universe as an

embryo/germ, producing Agni, then arose the gods' one life breath

...

who with might surveyed the waters containing power and producing

sacrifice"

 

Rg-Veda 19.82.5-6

 

What which is beyond heaven, beyond this earth, beyond the gods and

asuras – what first embryo/ germ, wherein all the gods beheld

each

other, did the water hold? The waters held that very first embryo/

germ where all the gods came together, that one in which all worlds

abide, placed on the navel of the Unborn

 

Rg Veda 10.121

 

The waters, producing an offspring, set into motion in the beginning

an embryo/germ.

 

Rg Veda 10.129.1-3

 

There was not nonexistence nor existence then : there was not air nor

the heaven that is beyong. What did it cover up? Where? In whose

protection? Was water there, unfathomable, profound? There was not

death nor immortality then, There was not a beacon of night or day.

That One, having no wind, breathed by its own power. Other than that,

there was not anything beyond. In the beginning, darkness was hdden

by darkness. All this was water indistinguishable.

 

Taittiriya Samhita 2.1.5.4

 

The Plants are the waters, man is what is not, the waters indeed give

him existence from nonexistence; therefore they say, both he who know

thus and he who does not , the waters, indeed give existence from

nonexistence.