āratī bhagavāna gaṃgādhara

This is an āratī to Śiva rather than to the river, and the refrain settles it — hara hara hara Mahādeva, closing every stanza. Gaṅgādhara is the name of Śiva as the one who bears Gaṅgā in his hair, and the opening line hails him three ways at once: Om jaya Gaṅgādhara, jaya Hara, jaya lord of Girijā. What follows is a landscape rather than a list of attributes, and an unusually lyrical one for the form. On the ridge of Kailāsa, in the grove of wish-fulfilling trees; the swarm of bees humming in the deep thicket; the cuckoo calling and the graceful geese at play on the water. The record had been filed under Goddess Ganga on the strength of the river's name inside the god's, the same way the Somasundara hymn was filed under Chandra for the soma inside it.