Читать книгу The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2) - William Crooke - Страница 29

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But all rivers are not beneficent. Worst of all is the dread Vaitaranî, the river of death, which is localized in Orissa and pours its stream of ordure and blood on the confines of the realm of Yama. Woe to the wretch who in that dread hour lacks the aid of the Brâhman and the holy cow to help him to the other shore. The name of one stream is accursed in the ears of all Hindus, the hateful Karamnâsa, which flows for part of its course through the Mirzapur District. Even to touch it destroys the merit of works of piety, for such is the popular interpretation of its name. No plausible reason for the evil reputation of this particular stream has been suggested except that it may have been in early times the frontier between the invading Aryans and the aborigines, and possibly the scene of a campaign in which the latter were victorious. The Karamâ tree is, however, the totem of the Drâvidian Kharwârs and Mânjhis, who live along its banks, and it is perhaps possible that this may be the real origin of the name, and that its association with good works (karma) was an afterthought.

The legend of this ill-omened stream is associated with that of the wicked king Trisanku, to whom reference has already been made. When the sage Visvamitra collected water from all the sacred streams of the world, it fell burdened with the monarch’s sins into the Karamnâsa, which has remained defiled ever since. By another account, the sinner was hung up between heaven and earth as a punishment for his offences, and from his body drips a baneful moisture which still pollutes the water. Similar legends of the origin of rivers are not wanting in folk-lore. An Austrian story tells that all rivers take their origin from the tears shed by a giant’s wife as she laments his death.86 The same idea of a river springing from a corpse appears in one of the tales of Somadeva and in the twelfth novel of the Gesta Romanorum.87 Nowadays no Hindu with any pretensions to personal purity will drink from this accursed stream, and at its fords many low caste people make their living by conveying on their shoulders their more scrupulous brethren across its waters.