"A Holy Dip During the Solar Eclipse . . . Can Gain Salvation"

Those are the words of a Hindu priest, explaining how special January 15th’s solar eclipse (visible in southern India and other parts of the Eastern Hemisphere) is. Yes, doing a cannonball into the Ganges River while the moon is located between you and the sun can gain you eternal salvation.

I guess it’s better than staring at the sun and thinking it’s a vision of Mary.

A solar eclipse is a fairly simple and commonplace phenomenon. As we know, the moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun. Once a month, the moon is located in its orbit at a point between the Earth and the Sun. Partial and total eclipses are fairly frequent; 2010 will include an annular eclipse of the sun in January (er, the 15th) and a total eclipse in July. There will also be a partial lunar eclipse in June and a total lunar eclipse in December. Find out about other years HERE.

Eclipses are only visible to the people in the shadow at the time they occur. Thanks to the Earth’s axial tilt, the location not only varies in longitude (as the planet turns) but also in latitude (distance from the Equator). So, while eclipses are fairly frequent worldwide, they’re not all that common in any one place, and seem like special events.

ABC News reports that last week’s solar eclipse, a full “ring of fire” (annular) eclipse, lasted a full 11 minutes. There will not be another eclipse of such length until December 23 . . . 3043. So, this particular eclipse was rather special. But the fact remains that the Saros cycle, used to predict the timing of eclipses both solar and lunar, has been known to humans since the ancient Babylonians, in the last few hundred years BCE:

The Saros cycle is an eclipse cycle with a period of 223 synodic months (approximately 6585.3213 days, or nearly 18 years 11 days), that can be used to predict eclipses of the Sun and Moon. One cycle after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur.

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The earliest discovered historical record of the Saros cycle is by the Chaldeans (ancient Babylonian astronomers) in the last several centuries BCE, and was later known to Hipparchus, Pliny, and Ptolemy, but under different names.

In this light, what do you think of Hindu priest Babu Ram Sashtri’s comment?

Taking a holy dip [in the Ganges River] during the solar eclipse is a very pious act. It is very auspicious, it is very fruitful and it can get one salvation!

Ridiculous, no? There is no excuse in this day and age for thinking that the location of the moon between you and the sun means anything at all. It’s what happens when objects in space orbit one another.

That doesn’t stop 2,000,000 people from ritually bathing in the Ganges daily.

River Ganga (Ganges) of India has been held in high esteem since time immemorial and Hindus from all over the world cherish the idea of a holy dip in the river under the faith that by doing so they will get rid of their sins of life.

Simply by getting oneself to a particular place, one can wash off “sins” with magical water. That’s not quite as simple as the “someone else’s sacrifice” of Christianity, or the “some animal sacrifice” of Judaism, but it’s still a way of sloughing off responsibility for one’s own behavior. And doing it when the moon is between you and the sun, well apparently that absolves you from anything you haven’t done yet!

If Hindus truly believe that sin is removed by washing in the Ganges, why do they have prisons? Why not simply drop convicts in the river and cleanse them, then set them free? Would a rape victim then forgive her attacker, since he no longer had sin? Would a mother forgive the man who killed her son while mugging him, since his sins were washed away?

It seems likely that the only thing one might get from bathing in the Ganges River is wet . . . and possibly a nasty E.Coli infection:

Water quality of the river Ganga in Haridwar is below the standards set by the Central Pollution Control Board for bathing, a recent study by an NGO says.

Water has been polluted due to continuous discharge of untreated waste and effluents from various drains directly into the river Ganga, a Dehra Dun-based NGO People’s Science Institute said in its study.

Sewage treatment plant (STP) at Jagjeetpur releases about 129 million litres daily (MLD) into the Ganga with a fecal coliform concentration of about 34 million/100ml.

I guess the Ganges is not that sacred after all. It, like people who think washing in magic water makes past unethical behavior OK, appears to be full of . . . sewage.

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