Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva

What the Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva is

Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva, the verse that begins 'gange cha yamune chaiva Godavari Sarasvati', is a single Sanskrit shloka spoken over water, naming seven rivers and asking them to be present in it. No author is known, and no Purana or smriti is given as its source; it has come down as an anonymous prayer of the household and the temple. It is built in the anushtubh pattern, four quarters of eight syllables each. The first line calls four rivers, Ganga and Yamuna joined by 'cha' and 'chaiva', 'and also', then Godavari and Sarasvati. The second line adds Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri. Every name stands in the vocative, so each river is addressed as a goddess who can hear. Only in the last quarter does the request arrive, carried by one verb, kuru, 'make': jale'smin sannidhim kuru, 'make your presence in this water'. The verse asks nothing for the speaker, neither health nor merit; it asks only that the rivers come. The Ganga Stotram page gives the longer hymn to the Ganga alone, attributed to Adi Shankaracharya.

Seven rivers called into one vessel

The verse has no tale of its own composition. Its setting is the act it accompanies. Tradition holds that a purifying bath is most complete in the waters of the holy rivers, and few people can stand in them each morning, so the rivers are invited into the bucket, the tank or the well instead. The same words are said in puja when water is set aside for worship. In the South Indian order of kalasha worship, the priest announces the rite of the vessel and then recites this verse over the water in the kalasha. The seven names cover the subcontinent. Ganga and Yamuna are the rivers of the north. Sarasvati, according to tradition, still flows, hidden underground, and joins the other two from below at their confluence at Prayag. Sindhu is the Indus, which rises in Tibet and reaches the Arabian Sea through Sindh. The Narmada, flowing west from Amarkantak to the Gulf of Khambhat, is traditionally counted as the line between north and south. South of it run the Godavari and the Kaveri, and the Kaveri, rising at Talakaveri in the Western Ghats, has long been called the Ganga of the South. One printed collection of hymns makes this the first of six verses in a Tirthastuti, which goes on to name Kurukshetra, Gaya, Prabhasa and Pushkara.

The mantra, in six scripts

Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva lyrics in full

One verse of two lines, as it is said over water at the bath and in worship.

All 1 verses, in Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English, each with its meaning. Choose a script:

The syllable people get wrong

In jale'smin, 'in this water', the mark after jale (the avagraha) shows that the first a of asmin has dropped away after the e, so the word is said in three syllables, ja-LE-smin, not 'jale asmin' with a fourth syllable, which would break the eight-syllable quarter.

When the Gange Cha Yamune Chaiva is chanted

Festival. The daily bath and kalasha worship

Questions