The seven Shaiva akhadas at Kushavarta

Each of the seven has a long name and a short one, and the long names say something about the order.

• Shri Panch Dashnam Juna Akhada — the Juna akhada. Juna means old.
• Shri Panch Dashnam Avahan Akhada — the Avahan akhada. Avahan is a calling, the invocation that asks a god to come.
• Shri Panch Agni Akhada — the Agni akhada. Agni is fire.
• Shri Panchayati Atal Akhada — the Atal akhada. Atal is what cannot be moved.
• Shri Taponidhi Anand Akhada Panchayati — the Anand akhada. Anand is joy, and taponidhi is a store of tapasya. तपस्या tapasya is penance, the hard discipline a sadhu takes on.
• Shri Niranjani Akhada Panchayati — the Niranjani akhada. Niranjan is the one without stain.
• Shri Panchayati Akhada Mahanirvani — the Mahanirvani akhada. Mahanirvan is the great release.

Two words come back again and again. Panchayati means run by a panchayat, a council, and it is in the names of four of the seven. दशनाम dashnam is the ten names. A sannyasi of these orders takes one of ten names after his own — Giri, Puri, Bharati, Saraswati, Tirtha, Ashram, Vana, Aranya, Parvat and Sagar — and the whole family of them is the Dashnami, the sannyasis of the ten names. A sadhu whose name ends in Giri or Puri or Bharati is one of them, and you can hear it in his name.

The Shaiva akhadas trace themselves back to Adi Shankaracharya, who gathered the sannyasis into orders, and an akhada was set up for two things at once, to learn the old texts and to train to fight.

The Juna akhada tells its own beginning like this. It was founded by Dattatreya, and later Shankaracharya put it in order as part of the sannyasi tradition, to keep alive the teaching that all is one and to train sadhus who could hold their own in a fight as well as in tapasya. Its seat is at Varanasi, at Hanuman Ghat, and from there it arranges its part in the Kumbh. It is not one monastery but a whole network of maths and lineages across the country, with more than twenty thousand sadhus in it, many of them in the Himalayan foothills. Such a monastery is called a मठ math, the seat of a religious order. Juna is known for its nagas, and it has an order for women too, the Sannyasini Shri Panch Dashnam Juna Akhada.

The Juna akhada is led by a mahant or by an acharya mahamandaleshwar. A महंत mahant is the head of an akhada or of a math, and an आचार्य acharya is the teacher at the head of an order. A महामण्डलेश्वर mahamandaleshwar is one of the senior heads of an akhada, who leads it in its teaching and its ceremonies. The Mahanirvani akhada has women among its mahamandaleshwars.

Each akhada has a seat of its own somewhere else in the country, and comes to Trimbakeshwar from it. These are the seven, with where each has its home and where each camped in the town in 2015.

The Juna akhada has its seat at Hanuman Ghat in Varanasi, and its camp at Trimbakeshwar was on Nilparvat, the hill above the town.

The Avahan akhada has its seat at Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi, and camped at the foot of Nilparvat. It keeps the Chhari Yatra, a procession that carries the chhari, the staff that stands for the order’s authority. For this Kumbh it asked the authority for a compound wall around its ground, and got it.

The Agni akhada has its seat at Rajghat in Varanasi, and camped near the Nivruttinath temple. The Niranjani akhada has its seat at Daraganj in Prayag, and camped at Dodadwadi. The Niranjani and the Agni akhadas have not published an account of themselves.

The Atal akhada has its seat at Kankhal in Haridwar, and camped at the first step of the stairway up to Gangadwar on Brahmagiri.

The Anand akhada has its seat near Sarnath, outside Varanasi, and camped near Ganapat Bari on the Jawhar road. In September 2026 its head spoke for the sadhus at Trimbakeshwar, thanking the government for the money set aside for the ten akhadas and asking that the work on their grounds begin by the end of the month.

The Mahanirvani akhada has its seat at Daraganj in Prayag, and camped at Prayagtirth.

The ten akhadas at Trimbakeshwar, the seven Shaiva and the three Udasin, each have ground of their own in the town, and for this Kumbh the authority has approved works on it: roads, toilets and bathrooms, a flagpole for the akhada’s flag, a compound wall and a kitchen. The works were approved in December 2025 and then enlarged, on the Chief Minister’s direction, to a limit of five crore rupees for each of the main akhadas, with seven of the works changed on the suggestions of the akhadas’ mahants before the new total was approved in July 2026. The camps themselves, at Tapovan for Nashik and in the town for Trimbakeshwar, are on Sadhugram.

The Shaiva akhadas are led into the water by their naga sannyasis, the ones who go without clothes and cover themselves in ash, and in the processions the nagas carry their spears and swords. Naga sadhus says who they are, why they go without clothes, and how a sadhu becomes one. A visitor who wants to see them goes to Trimbakeshwar, not to Nashik.

The bathing is at Kushavarta, the square kund in the middle of Trimbakeshwar with steps on all four sides, and on a bathing day the akhadas come to it through the lanes of the town from their camps, each by its own route, and go on from the kund to the Trimbakeshwar temple. A कुण्ड kund is a tank or pool with stone sides and steps, fed by the river or a spring. The peshwai has the routes turn by turn, and the shahi snan has the days. Each akhada has ground of its own in the town for this Kumbh, and in 2015 the camps were on Nilparvat and below it, out at Prayagtirth, near the Nivruttinath temple, at Dodadwadi, on the Jawhar road and at the foot of the steps up to Gangadwar. A visitor may walk through a camp, watch, and make a small offering, and should not photograph a sadhu who has not agreed to it.