The so called myth about mysterious properties of Ganga has now been validated as a fact by Indian researchers from Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH) .The scientists have discovered various bacteriophages in water of the Ganga river which is much revered in Hinduism for it’s purity.

Bacteriophage is a type of virus that hosts on various bacterias . It basically is a parasite for bacterias that eats them up. Due to their abundant presence in the water of Ganga, inspite of it being swarming with every possible kind of waste is not contaminated!i.e most of the harmful bacterias and viruses have been dealt with by these Bacteriophages. This renders Ganga exemplary healing properties and scientists are now further researching on methods to incorporate them in medical science.

The Indian Science Journal quotes Dr. Shanmugam Mayilraj, Senior Principal Scientist at the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh saying“Analysis of the fresh water sedimentary metagenome-viromes revealed that the holy river Ganges not only house novel viromes, but also include unexplored double stranded DNA viruses.”

All of these explains the age old belief according to which Ganga was believed to be the supreme purifier of all beings .It was also believed that it’s mere presence renders holiness to a place and a bath in Ganga rids one of all his ‘sins’ or ‘doshas’.The belief also extended to stating that Ganga has divine healing properties.Ganga can never be tainted or made impure as it contains ‘Brahma Dravya’ or special properties but shall purify whoever it touches. Well, this “Bacteriophage” is the explanation for all of these age old beliefs advocated by Hindu mythology.

In the olden days Sanskrit was the language of common use.In Sanskrit the word Dosha had multiple meanings one of them being ‘ill’ or ‘diseased’. The water may have been advocated as the one that makes a person ‘Doshamukta’ i.e devoid of all faults or errors in the sense that the water has healing properties and is capable of getting rid of most of the diseases.These Bacteriophages were the ‘Bramha Dravya’ that Hindu sages have told us about and Ganga can never be made impure because of them.

It is really startling for the modern world to find out that this age old belief which was dismissed by many of us as a myth has strong roots in scientific facts.But what is even more astonishing and humbling is that this newly discovered knowledge was already available to humankind thousands of years ago.This reminds us that no matter how much developed we think of ourselves to be,there are still infinite things in the universe we are yet to discover and understand!

Source:The Indian Express

The Indian Science Journal