Concept
Sacred waters are sacred natural sites characterized by tangible topographical land formations such as rivers, lakes, springs, reservoirs, and oceans, as opposed to holy water which is water elevated with the sacramental blessing of a cleric. These organic bodies of water have attained religious significance not from the modern alteration or blessing, but were sanctified through mythological or historical figures. Sacred waters have been exploited for cleansing, healing, initiations, and death rites. Ubiquitous and perpetual fixations with water occur across religious traditions. It tends to be a central element in the creations accounts of almost every culture with mythological, cosmological, and theological myths. In this way, many groups characterize water as "living water", or the "water of life". This means that it gives life and is the fundamental element from which life arises. Each religious or cultural group that feature waters as sacred substances tends to favor certain categorizations of some waters more than others, usually those that are most accessible to them and that best integrate into their rituals. While all rivers in Hinduism are sacred, the Ganges River (Ganga) is particularly revered. In the Vedic myths, the goddess Ganga descended upon the earth to purify and prepare the dead. The Ganges in India is seen as the physical embodiment of this goddess. Since the river waters are as both inherently pure themselves and having major purificatory qualities, people come to bathe in them, drink from them, leave offerings for them, and give their physical remains to them. The Ganges is said to purify the soul of negative karma, corporeal sins, and even impurities from previous lives. At sunrise along the Ganges, pilgrims descend the ghat steps to drink of the waters, bathe themselves in the waters and perform ablutions where they submerge their entire bodies. These practitioners desire to imbibe and surround themselves with the Ganges’s waters so that they can be purified.