THE GANGES初次見到⋯⋯恆河

VARANASI IN INDIA, also known as Benares, is one of the world’s most ancient living cities. It was there, five years ago, that I first saw the Ganges, sacred to a billion Hindus and arguably the most important river on Earth because it supports a tenth of its population.

I took a boat on the Ganges before dawn. All life was here – bathing, washing clothes, praying, burning the dead; old women knee-deep in the muddy water; an ear-shattering riverside yoga lesson transmitted by loudspeaker; the tilted spire of a collapsed Shiva temple; heaps of wood for the day’s cremations; a religious procession led by a guru with a shiny trident; swifts and herons feeding on insects and fish.

Seeing the river for the first time inspired me to ask why the Ganges remains so central to Indian life, both spiritually and physically, why it’s facing a crisis of pollution and neglect, and what can be done to save the river as others – including the Thames in London and the Rhine in Europe – have been rescued before.

Thousands of years ago, many cultures worshipped rivers as life-giving spirits and goddesses. To this day, this river is still revered as a living goddess, known as Ganga Ma (‘Mother Ganges’). You can still see Indians praying and greeting the sun on the banks exactly as described by the merchant Ralph Fitch in the time of Shakespeare, or by travelling Muslim and Chinese scholars more than a millennium ago.

From Varanasi, I went upstream to Allahabad – where the Yamuna, which flows past Delhi and the Taj Mahal, meets the Ganges – to join the tens of millions of pilgrims who bathed in the river for the Kumbh Mela religious festival. By most calculations, it was the largest gathering of people on Earth. 位於印度的瓦拉納西又稱作貝拿勒斯，是全球現存最古老的城市之一。五年前，我在這座古城首次見到恆河。對十億印度教徒來說，這是一條非常神聖的河流；恆河也可以說是地球上最重要的河流，因為地球上有十分之一的人口都是倚靠這條河流而生活。

我在黎明前乘船在恆河上觀看岸上風光。沿著河岸有人在沐浴、洗衣服、祈禱、火化先人遺體等；河水混濁，但有老婦人走到水深及膝之處；河畔瑜伽班的導師用揚聲器來指導學員，聲音震耳欲聾；一座濕婆神廟倒塌了，廟宇的尖頂向一邊傾斜；河岸某處放著一堆一堆的木柴，預備當天火化遺體之用；一位手持閃亮三叉戟的宗教上師正領著一群信徒列隊前行；雨燕和蒼鷺在捕食昆蟲和魚。

首次見識到恆河風光，不禁令我思索：為何直到現在，這條河對於印度人來說，無論在精神上還是現實生活上仍然無比重要？為何沒有人重視恆河面對的污染危機？要怎樣做才可以像以往挽救倫敦泰晤士河與歐洲的萊茵河一樣，令恆河免於污染的厄運？

數千年前，許多文化都將河流視為賜予生命的神靈和女神。直到今天，恆河依然被尊為活著的女神，當地人稱之為Ganga Ma，意思就是「恆河母親」。莎士比亞時代的商人Ralph Fitch，以及千多年前穆斯林與中國前來留學的士人記下了印度人如何在恆河岸邊祈禱與禮敬太陽的情形，這種情景，你今天仍然可以見得到。

我從瓦拉納西沿恆河往上游的安拉亞巴德去，恆河與流經德里及泰姬瑪哈陵的亞穆納河在此地匯流。我在這裡與數以百萬計前來恆河沐浴的朝聖者一起，慶祝印度教的大壼節。根據不少統計數字所顯示，這是全球最多人聚集參與的活動。