Rule with mixing Ganga Jala

[Guest guest]

<b>Rule with Ganges water. If you have pure ganga jala and you mix plain water

into that

it all becomes Ganga water; BUT, if you have plain water and you mix in Ganga

water then

it's all plain water. You must start with Gangapani. </b><i>(Ref. Pandit

Vidyadhar Shukla,

Chief Brahmin Priest of Thailand & President of the Planetary Gemologists

Association</i>

[Guest guest]

Namaskar. I apologize for the delay in posting this reply. I thought I

had at the time (shortly before I went on vacation), but I do not see

it, I can only assume I did not post it.

 

The rule that Richard cited, "If you have pure ganga jala and you mix

plain water into that it all becomes Ganga water; BUT, if you have

plain water and you mix in Ganga water then it's all plain water. You

must start with Gangapani. (Ref. Pandit Vidyadhar Shukla, Chief

Brahmin Priest of Thailand & President of the Planetary Gemologists

Association" has an analogue in Islam.

 

A Muslim colleague returning from Hajj showed me a bottle of Zamzam

water, which is supposed to have miraculous powers. She explained that

as one used up the water in the bottle, one can add ordinary tap water

and the tap water becomes Zamzam. But the converse is not true - One

cannot add Zamzam to a container of water and thereby make it Zamzam.

 

What I find so fascinating is that this lore of Zamzam may reflect a

stratum of Vedic culture that antedates Islam. Indeed, it has been

posited that Zamzam was originally Zamza, and that Zamza was

originally Ganga. (Perhaps irrelevant is that in a form of cursive

Imperial Aramaic [two thousand five hundred years ago, give or take),

the letters for Z and G were almost mirror-images of each other.)

 

P E Miller