All the larger rivers of India are looked upon as abodes and vehicles of the divine essence, and therefore as possessed of power to cleanse from moral guilt. Their banks, from source to sea, are holy ground, and pilgrims plod their way along them to win merit--a merit that is measured by the years of travel and the sanctity of the stream. Of all the great rivers in this ancient land, the Ganges is the noblest. Mother Ganga, stands supreme. No water such as hers for washing away the stains of the most heinous crimes. She has bands of priests who call themselves her "Sons," and who conduct pilgrims down the flights of steps that line her banks, aid them in their ablutions, and declare them clean. To die and to be buried near the stream is in itself sufficient to win an entrance to the realms of bliss. "Those who, even at a distance of a hundred leagues, cry Ganga, Ganga, atone for the sins committed during three previous lives." In short, the hold the river has obtained upon the affections and imaginations of the Hindus is marvellously firm and lasting. Of course a river so renowned has its wreath of myths and legends, characterised, in this instance, by the prodigality of the Eastern mind. It is not necessary to linger over these, save in so far as to note that they ascribe a divine origin to the sacred stream; the sense of power and movement issuing from the world of the unseen is no less strong than that aroused by the Nile; though it finds strangely different modes of expression, its essential character is the same. Interesting and typical is the Hindu belief that the spot where flow together the waters of the Ganges, the Jumna and the Sarasvati is one of the most hallowed in a land of holy places. "These three sacred rivers form a kind of Tri-murti, or triad, often personified as goddesses, and called 'Mothers.'" With such facts in view, it would be hard to exaggerate the influence of rivers on the development of the Hindu's speculation and practice, and more especially of his mysticism. Such intuitions and beliefs find their full flower in the conception of the river of life--the stream, pure as crystal, that, with exulting movement onward, brings to men the thrill of hope and the inspiration of progress to a world beyond. It pulses and swings in the glorious sunshine--it reflects the blue of heaven--it sweeps superbly with unsullied current past every obstacle, and bursts through every barrier: at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.