narmadā cālīsā

A Hindi chalisa to the Narmada which is precise about where and when she began. She came out at Amarkantak; her mount is the makara and she sits on a lotus flower; and her birth is dated as a birthday would be — the seventh of the bright fortnight of Magha, a Sunday, with the sun in Capricorn and the moon in Ashvini. That is Narmada Jayanti, and the verse is the reason the day is kept. What it promises is the ordinary river theology, that sins fall away at the sight of her, and that recitation and giving performed on her bank bring knowledge; but the Narmada's own claim, that seeing her does what bathing in the Ganga does, is what the whole poem is arranged around.