Kumbha
Mela
Presence Empower Humanity’s
Grandest Religious Observance
The tens of millions of hindus who came to the Kumbha
Mela at Haridwar this year were nearly all of
modest means.
After days of travel, many spent a mere 24 hours in the holy
city at the gateway to the Himalayas.
They chanted Jai
Ganga
Ma—“Hail Mother Ganga”—took their sacred bath in the frigid
river, collected a pot of holy Ganga water and then headed home.
One typical pilgrim, an illiterate woman,
traveled with her family
by crowded bus from West
Bengal, slept in the open and ate at
the free feeding tents. “We are poor, but we
have enough. I asked
God not for money but for peace and
salvation”—so easily did this
humble villager capture the essence of the
world’s greatest act of
pilgrimage, the Kumbha Mela.
For her and millions of others, the religious
ritual of pilgrimage—
one of the five obligatory duties of every
Hindu—began with the
first plans to attend, and encompasses the
entire process of getting
ready, freeing oneself from worldly affairs,
traveling to the site, taking
the bath, meeting the sadhu-mendicants or
just observing them
from a distance, and the return home. At
nearly every mela,
pilgrims
have been killed in one mishap or another, so
each who came
duly considered the possibility, however
small, that they might not
return. For the true devotee, pilgrimage is among
the most profound
religious practices, one in which material
gain—so often the motivation
for their prayers at local temples—is
superceded by higher
aspirations.
The Kumbha Mela takes place every three years
in rotation at
Haridwar, Prayag (Allahabad),
Nasik and Ujjain,
according to the
placement of Jupiter in the Zodiac. A modern
innovation, there are
also popular half-melas, ardha-kumbhas,
every six years at Haridwar
and Prayag. It is at Prayag, where the Yamuna River
joins the Ganga,
that the largest number of human beings in
history gathered—15
million on February 6, 1989. Haridwar, logistically less convenient,
managed ten million on April 14, 1998. Still, that’s five times this
year’s two million Muslim pilgrims who
journeyed to Mecca
for the
Haj, the second largest gathering.
Every religion, as a matter of doctrine or
custom, engages in the
practice of pilgrimage to holy places. Among
the world’s prime deschapter
tinations are Bodh Gaya, where Buddha
attained enlightenment;
Jerusalem, sacred to three religions; Lourdes
in France; Amritsar;
the Ise Shrine in Japan;
and the various Jain sites throughout India.
The Kumbha Mela is unique for its sheer size,
and for being a
meeting both of ascetics and lay people. Some
of the ascetics are
naga sadhus, naked monks who practice the severest
austerities and leave the mountains and
jungles
only for the mela. Just the sight of them—and
there are thousands—is a blessing to the lay
pilgrims.
Within the several-month period of the mela are set auspicious
bathing days, usually coinciding with
festivals of the period. Most
important are the days for the shahisnan, “royal bath,” in which
the holy men, naga sadhus first, go in procession to the river.
Asked the origin of the event, nearly every
pilgrim will narrate the
ancient story from the Puranas of the time when the devas (gods
or angels) and the asuras (their rivals) cooperated to “churn the
Ocean of Milk”—an act which promised
to yield countless treasures.
With Mount Meru
as the post and the serpent Shesha as the churning
rope, they set about their task. They agreed
to share the most
coveted result—the pot (kumbha) of nectar (amrita), by consuming
which anyone would become immortal. As they
churned mightily,
the first substances to be released were
deadly fumes and gases.
These Lord Siva took upon Himself to consume
and neutralize, thus
saving the world’s inhabitants from certain
death. These poisons
turned His throat blue and resulted in His
name, Nilakantha. After
many aeons of churning, the ocean yielded a
series of treasures,
the last of which was Dhanvantari, the great healer, who held in his
hands the desired chalice of ambrosia.
The asuras immediately demanded their share
of the prize, but
the devas reneged on their agreement, knowing
that if their rivals
were to drink the nectar they would be
eternally unbeatable, and
too great a power to keep in check. The
asuras, sensing their position,
snatched the kumbha and fled. With the asuras momentarily
distracted by Lord Vishnu, the devas
retrieved the pot and fled. In
their haste they let one drop of nectar fall
at Haridwar, Prayag, Ujjain
and Nasik.
“Since the beginning,” explains Sri Mahant
Rudra Giri Ji, of the
Atal Akhara, “the Kumbha Mela was attended by
350 million devas
and 88,000 rishis. It was started to promote and propagate our ancient
heritage. Even now these devas and rishis
participate.” A few
of the angelic beings, devas, are able to
return with each pilgrim to
their home, carried, in a mystical sense, in
the pot of Ganga water
that each pilgrim collects and places on his
home altar. Thus the
blessing of the pilgrimage is extended
months, even years, beyond
the actual event.
Esoterically, it is taught that the kumbha represents higher consciousness,
the sahasrara
chakra. The amrita that it holds symbolizes
mankind’s attainment of that higher
reality—the true source of
immortality.
According to researcher Subhas Rai, the
cosmic alignments associated
with the festival are chosen so as to
increase the efficacy
of the pilgrims’ bathing. He believes the
combined power of river
Ganga and the auspicious planetary positions
generates unique purifying
power.
Pilgrimage to sacred rivers is an ancient
practice, believed by historian
S.B. Roy to exist in India as far
back as 10,000 bce. Megasthanes,
the 4th
century bce Greek visitor to India, described what
could have been a Kumbha Mela, but the
likeliest first reference is
by the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang, who
resided in India
from
629 to 645
ce. He wrote that King
Harshavardhan attended, on every
fifth year of his reign, a month-long,
“ageless festival” at Prayag
that attracted up to half a million people
from all walks of life.
When references to the Kumbha Mela appear
clearly in the 14th
century, the mela has all of its modern characteristics—the places,
the bathing, the hoards of pilgrims and
legions of mendicants. Many
believe its organization to be the work of
Adi Shankara, the great
8th-century Indian saint, though nothing in his
writings supports
the assertion. By the 14th century the presence of large numbers
of militant sadhu orders was also a clear
feature, especially after the
wholesale slaughter of Mela pilgrims in 1398 by Muslim general Tirmur,
shortly after he leveled Delhi because the reigning sultan was
“too tolerant” of Hindus. Similar martial
monastic orders have developed
in other religions, such as the 12th-century Christian Knights
Templar and Hospitalers in Europe—also
to protect pilgrims against
Muslim oppression—the Shao Lin monks of Kung
Fu martial arts
fame in China,
the Buddhist monastic police of Tibet
and the Zen
master archers and swordsmen of Japan. Sadly,
through the centuries
mendicant militancy has led to frequent
murderous Kumbha
Mela battles over who gets to bathe closest
to the supremely auspicious moment—the very
issue which caused this year’s fight.
Many orders of sadhus gather at the Mela. A
large portion are members of a dozen or
more orders called akharas, the most prominent being the Juna and
Niranjani—the two
who tangled this year. Others include the
Agan, Alakhiya,
Abhana, Anand, Mahanirvani
and Atal. Most orders are Saivite, three are
Vaishnavite and a few are Sikh orders patterned
after the Hindu monastic system. Akhara is Hindi for a “wrestling arena,” and can
mean
either a place of verbal debate, or one of
real fighting. Each akhara
may contain monks
of several different Dasanami orders—the ten
designations—Saraswati, Puri, Bana, Tirtha,
Giri, Parvati, Bharati, Aranya,
Ashrama, and Sagara—regularized by Adi
Shankara
in the
8th century. Thus,
the akharas overlap with the Dasanami system. There are
also sannyasi
orders, such as the Nathas, that exist
outside the Dasanami
system. The akharas’ dates of
founding range from the sixth to the
fourteenth century. The development of the akharas
and the Kumbha Mela took place over the same
time span and are likely related. Akharas
may include thousands, even tens of
thousands, of sadhus. Several akharas run hundreds of
ashrams, schools and service institutions.
The Kumbha Mela is a time to elect new akhara leadership, discuss and solve problems,
consult with the other akharas, meet with devotees and initiate new
monastics. During
Muslim and British times, the mela gathering of pilgrims and sadhus was a significant force
in the preservation of Hinduism and the
continued identity of India
as a Hindu nation.
“Khumba weaves our nation into one,” said
Mahant Ganga Puri of the Mahanirvani Akhara.
One little-known purpose of the Mela is to
review smriti, the codes (shastras) of law and
conduct which govern Hindu society. Unlike
the Vedas
and other revealed scriptures, these
codes are meant to be adjusted according to
changes in time and circumstance. Rameshbhai
Oza explained, “The saints from all over India should
get together at the Mela to discuss
not only religious and spiritual matters, but
also the problems faced by the contemporary
society. Their solutions offer a new system
and a new smriti.” Ramesh is a world renowned
performer of kathak (preaching
through song and sermon on the life of Lord
Rama
and other Hindu heros).
Many are the motivations and benefits for
Hindus to attend the Kumbha Mela, the most
popular pilgrimage of the day. It is a time
to gain a new look on life, to purify oneself and to
regain the sense of Godly aspiration as the
central purpose for this earthly incarnation.
.
“ In
the midst of the Waters,
the
Lord is moving,
surveying
men’s truth and
men’s
lies. How sweet
are
the Waters, crystal
clear
and cleansing! Now
may
these great, divine
Waters
enliven me”!”
r
a
10,000
bce: Historian S.B. Roy postulates presence
of
ritual bathing.
600
bce: River melas are mentioned in Buddhist
writings.
400
bce: Greek ambassador to Indian King
Chandra
Gupta reports on a mela.
ca 300
ce: Roy
believes present form of melas
crystallizes.
Various Puranas, written texts
based
on oral traditions of unknown antiquity,
recount
the dropping of the nectar of immortality
at four
sites after the “churning of the
ocean.”
547: Earliest
founding date of an akhara,
the
Abhana.
600: Chinese
pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang attends
mela at
Prayag (modern Allahabad)
organized
by King
Harsha on a five-year cycle.
ca
800: Adi Shankara believed to have reorganized
and
promoted kumbha melas.
904: Founding
of Niranjani Akhara
1146: Founding
of Juna Akhara
1300: Kanphata
Yogi militant ascetics employed
in army
of King of Kanaj, Rajasthan
1398: Tirmur
lays waste to Delhi
to punish
Sultan’s
tolerance toward Hindus, proceeds
to
Haridwar mela and massacres thousands.
Hindu
ascetics arm themselves.
1565: Madhusudana
Sarasvati organizes fighting
units of
Dasanami orders.
1684: French
traveller Tavernier estimates 1.2
million
Hindu ascetics in India.
1760: Saivites
battle with Vaishnava sects at
Haridwar;
1,800 are killed.
ca
1780: British establish the order for royal
bathing
by the monastic groups (the same
order
is followed today).
1820: Stampede
leaves 430 dead at Haridwar
mela.
1906: British
calvary intercede in mela battle
between
sadhus.
1954: Four
million people, one percent of
India’s
population, attend mela at
Allahabad,
hundreds
perish in a stampede.
1989: Guinness
Book of World Records proclaims
20-million-strong
mela crowd
at Allahabad
on
February 6 “the largest-ever gathering
of
human beings for a single purpose,”
a
record soon broken by another Kumbha Mela.
1998: Haridwar
Mela attracts 25 million pilgrims
in four
months, ten million on April 14.
2001: Most
recent mela at Allahabad,
attended
by an
astonishing 70 million pilgrims.
2003: Most
recent mela at Ujjain and Nasik.
2007: Ardha-mela at Allahabad. Main bathing
date:
January 19.
2010: Next mela at
Haridwar. Main bathing
date:
April 14.
2013: Next mela at Allahabad.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My
humble salutations to Sadguru Sri Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami
ji, Hinduism Today dot com for the collection)
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