Introduction
Himavan, "possessing snow", is the personification of the Himalaya mountain range, husband of Mena and the father of the goddess Parvati. In most Puranic accounts, Ganga is also his daughter, making her Parvati's elder sister.
Family
Family
Himavan and Mena's daughter Parvati underwent long austerity to win Shiva as her husband; Himavan is generally shown as supportive of the match, in contrast to Daksha's earlier rejection of Shiva as a son-in-law.
Ganga
Most Puranic sources make Ganga, the river goddess, an elder daughter of Himavan as well, so that she and Parvati are sisters, though the Ramayana's Bala Kanda, describing Vishwamitra's account, calls her the elder and Uma (Parvati) the younger daughter of the mountain in a similar vein.
As a mountain range
As a personified mountain, Himavan is also the father-in-law of Shiva and the grandfather of Ganesha and Kartikeya, and features in devotional geography as the abode from which the sacred rivers of northern India descend.