All such people congregate here without any invitation, and the centuries-old tradition still continues. Faith is the most important driving force for the pilgrims at Kumbh Mela. With an unflinching trust in something sublime and spiritual, these pilgrims come from all walks of life as well as from all over the world. Despite several hardships like sleeping in the open air in near freezing weather, rain and unbearable tropical heat of the Indian summer, the devotees flock here solely for one purpose—to have a bath in the sacred river during the Kumbh Mela. The pilgrims form a veritable ocean of humanity that flows onto the banks of the river and celebrate the greatest spiritual festival ever held in the history of the world. The huge gatherings of Kumbh have gained international fame as the world’s most imposing display of faith and devotion.
Mark Twain was an eye witness to the last Kumbh of the nineteenth century that was held on the banks of the Ganga in Allahabad. Even though Mark Twain was an atheist himself, his remarks present an interesting insight into the spiritual festival of India. He said:
It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination, marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.
The festival of Kumbh is celebrated at four different places—Allahabad (Prayag), Hardwar, Ujjain and Nashik. Each Maha Kumbh occurs after a cycle of twelve years. Thus the gathering occurs four times every twelve years and rotates among all the four locations. After six years the half Kumbh, known as the Ardha Kumbh Mela, occurs at these holy places. The Ardha Kumbh Mela is believed to have originated at these places to preserve the existence of Hinduism against the onslaught of Islam. The half Kumbh of Prayag is the most popular among all half Kumbhs, which is as crowded as the great Kumbh itself. The half Kumbh Mela of Prayag in 2007 was attended by more than fifty million people, thus making it one of the largest gatherings anywhere in the world. The full Kumbh is popularly known as Maha Kumbh Mela or the great festival of Kumbh.
The Ganga and the Kumbh Mela are closely associated with each other. Hardwar and Prayag, both situated on the banks of the Ganga, are among the chief venues. The other two Kumbh Mela sites, Ujjain and Nashik are situated on the banks of the Shipra and Godavari rivers respectively. There is a special provision of auspicious planetary alignment concerning the Kumbh Mela, and the festival is celebrated at the time of the same astronomical and planetary combination every twelve years. These planetary positions are said to sanctify and medicate the waters of the river and infuse it with the qualities of nectar that bestows immortality. The Hindus believe that the planets and the heavenly bodies at the time of Kumbh, charge the waters of the rivers with extraordinarily positive and healing effects.
At Allahabad, the Kumbh Mela is celebrated in the month of January–February, when Jupiter is in Aquarius and the Sun enters Aries. Aquarius is also known as Kumbh in Sanskrit. The Amavasya or the new moon of the month of Magha is an especially auspicious day when millions bathe in the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna. There are two other important days to take a dip in the holy river when Jupiter conjugates with Aries on Makara Sankranti and the other on Basanta Panchami when the spring heralds. The biggest and the most auspicious among all Maha Kumbh is always at Prayag. This is because Allahabad is situated at the centre of India, and the Sangam, the confluence of rivers like the Ganga, the Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati, is considered to be particularly holy.
The Hardwar Kumbh is held in between mid–February to mid–April, when the Sun passes to Aries and Jupiter is in Aquarius. At Hardwar, there are three auspicious days for taking bath, the first being on Sivaratri, the second on the new moon day of the month of Chaitra (March), and the third on the first day of Vaishakha when Jupiter lies in Aquarius and the Sun in Aries. According to Naradiya Purana, an auspicious occasion of ritual bathing used to take place at Hardwar every twelfth year, and that sacred time for bathing in the Ganga occurred during a special astronomical conjugation. The traditional belief of nagas further asserts that the Hardwar Kumbh has existed since time immemorial and was rejuvenated by Sankara. Many experts also believe that the festival of Kumbh was originally observed only at Hardwar and it was named after the zodiac sign Aquarius. The festival occurs mainly at the time when Jupiter is in Aquarius, which represents, in astrology, the water carrier. The sacred bath of the gathering takes place at Har-ki-Pauri, where the ghat was constructed by King Vikramaditya in memory of his brother Bhartrihari. It is believed that Bhartrihari came to Hardwar and meditated on the banks of the holy river, and after his death the king constructed a ghat in his name, which later came to be known as Hari-ki-Pauri. The sacred bathing site is also known as Brahmakund.
The bath at Ujjain on the bank of the Shipra is fixed for summer in the month of Vaishakha, when Saturn is in Libra, the Sun and Moon in Aries and Jupiter in Leo. The Kumbh Mela of Ujjain is also called Simhastha Kumbh, signifying the movement of the planets into the zodiac of Leo. The festival of Kumbh is mainly associated with the river Ganga, both in its origin and its character. The Shipra, also known as the Kshipra, is a sub tributary of the Ganga. It rises in the Vindhya range and flows into Central India to join the Chambal river, which is a tributary of the Yamuna. Shipra is believed to be a highly sacred river mostly because after every twelve years the Kumbh Mela takes place on the elaborate ghats of the river.
The holy city of Ujjain, the place of one of the twelve jyotirlingas, is situated on the right bank of Shipra, and it forms the western boundary of Madhya Pradesh.
Literally, Ujjain means a ‘city of victory’. This is the place of Mahakal, and one of the ancient and most revered cities in India. Shipra was a perennial river in the earlier times but now the river stops flowing a couple of months after the monsoon.
During the period of the Kumbh Mela the state authorities stores sufficient water in the river so that the pilgrims can have the ritual holy dip in the river. In 2004, more than thirty million people attended the Simhastha Kumbh Mela, and more than twenty-five million people took a dip in the Shipra river as part of the shahi snan (royal bath) on the auspicious day.
At Nashik, the Kumbh Mela takes place during the rainy days of the month of Shravan (July), when the Sun and Moon are in Cancer and Jupiter is in Scorpio. The holy cities of Nashik and Triyambakeshwar, in the state of Maharashtra, host the huge gatherings of Kumbh on the banks of the Godavari river. According to Naradiya Purana, the Godavari has been identified with the Ganga, and has been named as Daksina Ganga or the South Ganga. The sage Gautama is said to have brought this Ganga in the form of the Godavari, hence it is generally referred to as Gautami as well. It is stated in the Brahma Purana that to the south of the Vindhyas, Ganga is called Gautami. There is a temple on the Rama ghat at Nashik on the banks of the Godavari. In ancient times, people believed that the original water of the Ganga comes from the very temple. The event at Nashik is somewhat a local affair attended by only nagas, saffron clad sadhus, and people from western India—mainly Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The source of the Godavari is located near Trimbak in the northeast of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, and the river follows a southeasterly course for 1,400 kilometres to its mouth on the Andhra Pradesh coast. The Godavari river basin area is second in size only to the Ganga. The delta of the river, on the east coast, is also one of the main rice-growing areas of the country. The Ganga of the South discharges moderate quantities of water because of the medium levels of annual rainfall in the area it traverses through.
According to the Shiva Purana and the Varaha Purana, bathing in the Godavari at Nashik is highly meritorious when the Sun and Jupiter are in Leo. The Brahma Purana says that pilgrimage to thirty-five million holy places that exist in the three worlds are equal to a single bath in the Godavari when Jupiter is in Leo. Also, bathing in the Bhagirathi everyday for sixty thousand years confers the same merit as a single bath in the Godavari at that auspicious time.
The history of the Kumbh Mela dates back to the origin of the written history as mentioned in the Hindu scriptures. According to historians, the origin of the Kumbh Mela dates back to over 5,000 years. Naga saints are believed to have made pilgrimages to Prayag as far back as the 3400 BC. Then from 1300 BC, Hindu history asserts that ritual bathing days for pilgrims were selected by the group of holy men headed by astrologers and sages. Various such records have been mentioned in the ancient scriptures and Puranic literature.
In more recent times, the Chinese traveller Huien Tsang recorded his visit to Prayag in the seventh century, during the reign of Harsha Vardhana. He was the first to mention Kumbh Mela in his diary, and he includes an eyewitness report that states that half a million people had gathered on the banks of the Ganga at Allahabad during the month of Magha to observe a ten-week-long celebration.
According to Huien Tsang, the pilgrims assembled along with their king, his ministers, scholars, philosophers and sages. He also reports that the king distributed enormous quantities of gold, silver and jewels in charity for the purpose of acquiring good merit, and thus assuring a place in the heaven. The philosopher-saint Adi Sankara grouped the ascetics into ten sects at Prayag Kumbh in the eighth century. Sankara was one of the most prominent among all Indian philosophers and saints of recorded history. He popularised the visit to the Kumbh Mela among the common people. As a consequence of his efforts, the attendance began to grow to enormous proportions. Sankara placed special importance to the opportunity of Kumbh while looking at it in a wider perspective.
The French traveller Jean de Thevenot reports his encounter with the spiritual festival held in the mid-seventeenth century. He narrates an account of a large bathing festival, during which monks engaged in various forms of self-abnegation and austerity were highly regarded by the lay population for their piety.
The number of pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela has been steadily increasing. It rose to fifteen million in 1977, and by 1989, the attendance was in the range of twenty-nine million, almost double of the previous record.
The gathering of Kumbh served as an informal assembly of yogis and ascetics, almost like a kind of parliament of Hinduism for discussions on the spiritual doctrine and possible reform and has since remained a major attraction for the pilgrims. All gather in camps along the riverbank, including the naga sadhus who remain naked the year round, ascetics who practice the most severe physical austerities, hermits who leave their isolation for the spiritual gathering and true saints. In ancient times when communication was poor, there was a need of such a huge gathering of people from all walks of life to discuss and share various social, economic and spiritual issues.
The history of the Kumbh Mela in the medieval period is fairly bloodstained. The nagas, sustaining the complex military culture, turned the Kumbh Mela into warfare of soldiers. The regiments of soldier monks have assumed major symbolic importance during the Kumbh. On several occasions, such as 1760 and 1796 in Hardwar, 1789 in Nashik, 1826 and 1850 in Ujjain, and 1954 in Allahabad, the festival has been the site of violent, or near–violent, confrontation between the naga orders over rights to ceremonial precedence during ritual processions.
There are several records of armed fightings of monks with various groups at the Kumbh. The Shaivas appear to have dominated these huge gatherings through much of the medieval times. The Gosains were another powerful group. They retained substantial control over the Hardwar festival, including the right to tax pilgrims, police the gathering, and dispense justice. In 1760 at the Hardwar Kumbh, the Shaiva authority was challenged by the Vaishnavas, which turned into a fierce battle. The former prevailed and inflicted heavy casualties on the latter. The Shaivas and Gosains received challenge from the Vaishnavas and Bairagis at the Nashik Kumbh in 1789 again. As a result of the conflict, both parties suffered but the Vaishnavas were defeated again. At last, a complaint was registered on behalf of the Bairagis in the court of the Peshwa in Pune, which decided, in 1813, to assign separate bathing areas to each order. The Shaivas retained their dominance at Nashik until 1813. Meanwhile, the Shaivas and Gosains would experience a humiliating defeat in 1796 at the Hardwar Kumbh, the site of their overwhelming victory against Vaishnava and Bairagis thirty-six years earlier. Ironically, the instigators and victors in the 1796 conflict were not Vaishnavas but the armed Khalsa, the follower of Nanak better known today as Sikhs and it was believed to be the army of the pure. Later at the 1826 Kumbh in Ujjain, the Shaivas sustained an utter defeat at the hands of the Vaishnavas and Bairagis, who were assisted by the local Marathas. They also plundered the monasteries and temples in the vicinity of the city, and the Vaishnavas and Bairagis dominated the Ujjain Kumbh by 1850. Contemporary nagas, however, now have fewer altercations; an occasional incident happens such as the one at Hardwar in 1998.