The Ganges River and Its Mysterious Factor X

Hindus have always believed that water from India's Ganges River has extraordinary powers. The Indian emperor Akbar called it the "water of immortality" and always traveled with a supply. The British East India Co. used only Ganges water on its ships during the three-month journey back to England, because it stayed "sweet and fresh."

Indians have always claimed it prevents diseases, but are the claims wives' tales or do they have scientific substance?

In the fourth installment of a six-part series ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), independent producer Julian Crandall Hollick searched for the "mysterious X factor" that gives Ganges water its mythical reputation.

He starts his investigation looking for the water's special properties at the river's source in the Himalayas. There, wild plants, radioactive rocks, and unusually cold, fast-running water combine to form the river. But since 1854, almost all of the Ganges' water has been siphoned off for irrigation as it leaves the Himalayas.

Hollick speaks with DS Bhargava, a retired professor of hydrology, who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down Ganges in the plains of India. In most rivers, Bhargava says, organic material usually exhausts a river's available oxygen and starts putrefying. But in the Ganges, an unknown substance, or "X factor" that Indians refer to as a "disinfectant," acts on organic materials and bacteria and kills them. Bhargava says that the Ganges' self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world.

Hollick's search for a scientific explanation for the X factor leads him to a spiritual leader at an ashram and a biologist in Kanpur. But his best answer for the Ganges' mysterious substance comes from Jay Ramachandran, a molecular biologist and entrepreneur in Bangalore.

In a short science lesson, Ramachandran explains why the Ganges doesn't spread disease among the millions of Indians who bathe in it. But he can't explain why the river alone has this extraordinary ability to retain oxygen.

excerpt from soundbyte;


Mr. D.S. BHARGAVA (Retired Hydrology Professor): Right from very ancient times people have been thinking that the Ganga have got some special properties, which other rivers do not have. One such special property is that when you store Ganga water in a close container, it doesn't putrefying.

     

HOLLICK: In other words, there's oxygen in the water, a lot of oxygen. So organic materials such as human waste or vegetable(ph) matter.

Mr. BHARGAVA: Then they were put in the Ganges, it is assimilated by the Ganges in a very short time compared to other rivers. I'm not saying that it immediately vanishes, but what I'm trying to say is that it's assimilated(ph) ability is about 15 to 25 times more than any other river. These are some of the very important special properties of the Ganga, which any of the river doesn't have.

HOLLICK: D.S. Bhargava spent a lifetime doing experiments up and down Ganga in the plains. Organic material usually exhausts the available oxygen. It outlives it and then starts putrefying, but not in Ganga.

Mr. BHARGAVA: There are some material present in the Ganga water, which prevent their survival.

HOLLICK: To prove this, Bhargava did a simple experiment.

Mr. BHARGAVA: We took two beakers. In one, Ganga water as it is, other one we boiled the Ganga water, then cooled it and then refilled it. In bottles because we record(ph) it as evidence.

HOLLICK: In the bottled water, the pathogens survived. In the un-boiled Ganga water, they died.

Mr. BHARGAVA: There is some material, which is acting up on the bacteria and not letting them survive. So this material will be there for have disinfecting.

HOLLICK: Bhargava have conducted the simple experiment at Varanasi and the plains.

Mr. BHARGAVA: So this shows that a material which is responsible for preventing the pathogens to survive, they're not coming from the Himalayas. This material is picked up on the bed. It is picked up on the bed.

HOLLICK: Bhargava claims that Yamana, which flows less than 100 miles away and will eventually merge with Ganga to Allahabad, simply doesn't have this property. What it is, he doesn't know. He's never been able to isolate it.

Mr. BHARGAVA: And it is a mysterious material; sometimes I call it a magic kind of material.

HOLLICK: And there's little matter of the river's extraordinary ability to retain oxygen, by Bhargava's calculations, 25 times higher than Yamana or any other river in the world.

The question is, why does it have such a high rate of oxygen?

Mr. BHARGAVA: Right. How does the river purify itself? And why does it have such as high rate of self-purification? That means a high rate of natural purification compared to any other river.