Ganges River, Hindi Ganga, great river of the plains of northern India.Although officially as well as popularly called the ganga in Hindi and in other Indian languages,internationally it is known by its conventional name, the Ganges. from time immemorial it has been the holy river of Hinduism. For most of its course it is wide and sluggish stream , flowing through its importance, its lengh of 1,560 miles is relatively short compared with the other great rivers of Asia or of the world.Rising in the Himalayas and emptying into the Bay of bengal, it drains a quarter of the territory of india, while its basin supports hundreds of millions of people. T he Gangetic Plain, across which it flows, is the heartland of the region known as Hindustan and has been the cradle of successive civilizations from the mauryan empire of Ashoka in the 3rd century bce down to the Mughal Empire, founded in the 16th century.
