Verse 9

⁹So be it, said Siva, who is the good of all the worlds, to what the king had asked; and carefully he took the Ganga on himself, whose water is made pure by Hari's feet. ¹⁰Bhagiratha, that royal sage, led her, the cleanser of the world, to where the bodies of his own fathers lay, burnt away to ash. ¹¹Running behind him as he went ahead in a chariot swift as the wind, making the lands clean as she came, she poured herself over the burnt sons of Sagara. ¹²At the mere touch of her water the sons of Sagara went to heaven, struck down though they had been by a brahmin's rod, and with nothing left of them but the ashes of their bodies.

¹³If the sons of Sagara went to heaven because ash that had been their limbs was touched by her, how much more those who serve the goddess with trust and hold to their vows. ¹⁴What has been told here of the river of heaven is no great wonder. She rises from the lotus feet of the Endless and cuts the round of birth through. ¹⁵Setting the mind on him with trust, spotless sages have let go of the three strands, hard as they are to let go, and passed at once into being of his own nature.