What is a Kumbh Mela?

कुम्भ kumbh is a pot. It is the pitcher, the कलश kalash, that is filled with water and set out at the start of any worship. मेला mela is a fair, a gathering, a meet. Put together they are the fair of the pot, and the pot is the one from the story of the churning of the ocean, the jar that held the amrit. अमृत amrit is the drink that makes whoever drinks it deathless.

Here is what is said about the pot, the way it is told at Nashik. At the mouth of the kalash is Vishnu. At its neck is Rudra, and at its base is Brahma. In the middle of it are the mother goddesses, and inside it are all the oceans, the seven continents and the earth, and the four Vedas. This is the pot that stands at every worship. The same word is used for the human body, which holds life the way a pot holds water.

Kumbh is also the name of the sign of the zodiac called Aquarius, the water carrier, and Haridwar’s Kumbh comes when Jupiter is in that sign.

At four places, on four rivers. Haridwar, on the Ganga, where the river comes out of the hills onto the plain. Prayag, at the सङ्गम sangam, the place where the Ganga and the Yamuna meet, with the Saraswati that nobody can see. Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, on the Godavari. And Ujjain, on the Kshipra. The four Kumbh places has what each of them is like.

It comes to each place once in about twelve years, because Jupiter takes about twelve years to go once round the zodiac and each place waits for Jupiter in a sign of its own, and the twelve-year cycle has the whole of that. For Nashik and Trimbakeshwar the sign is Leo, and when Jupiter enters Leo the Kumbh comes here, and why it is called Simhastha has that.

The sadhus come first. They come in their akhadas, and an अखाड़ा akhada is an order of sadhus with its own head, its own rule, its own property and its own place in the bathing order at a Kumbh. The word originally meant a wrestling ground. The akhadas that come to this Kumbh are of three kinds, and the akhadas has all of them by name and says what each kind is. At Nashik the Vaishnav akhadas bathe at Ramkund and the Shaiva and Udasin akhadas at Kushavarta in Trimbakeshwar, and why the Kumbh is at two places has that arrangement. They stay in a town of tents put up for them, and Sadhugram is that town.

The Kumbh period opens with a flag going up at the river, and the flag hoisting has that. Then come the bathing days. On the main ones the akhadas go down to the river in procession and bathe before everyone else, and after them the crowd goes in, and the shahi snan has the baths and the peshwai has the procession. What a snan is has why people bathe.

Between the bathing days there are religious talks and devotional singing, the feeding of the sadhus and of the poor, and gatherings where the sadhus sit and debate. Many people come to serve rather than to bathe. They run free kitchens, give money, and work as volunteers in the hospitals and the cleaning teams and as divers and lifeguards at the water. The government puts up the camp, the parking, the hospitals, the toilets and the water and electricity for the length of the fair, and takes them down again when it is over.

Because of the pot. Nashik tells that at the churning of the ocean the jar of amrit was snatched and carried off, and that drops of it fell at four places, and Ramkund is one of the four. Samudra manthan tells the churning in full, and why the Kumbh comes to Nashik tells what Nashik says about Ramkund.

The Simhastha. सिंहस्थ simhastha means standing in the lion, and the lion is Leo, the sign of the zodiac. It is the one Kumbh held in two towns, Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, a short drive apart on the same river. The authority that runs it calls the event the Nashik Trimbakeshwar Simhastha Kumbh Mela, and the law that set that authority up defines a Kumbh Mela as a religious fair held about every twelve years at Nashik and Trimbakeshwar. The Kumbh Mela Authority says what that body is.

The last Simhastha at Nashik and Trimbakeshwar was in 2015–16. The dates for this one, with what the authority has said about them, are on the main Kumbh page.

You go to the river. At Nashik that is Ramkund, on the bend of the Godavari at Panchavati, and at Trimbakeshwar it is Kushavarta, the kund in the middle of the town. A कुण्ड kund is a tank or pool with stone sides and steps, fed by the river or a spring, and why the Kumbh is at two places says what you find at each. On a bathing day you will see the akhadas come down to the water in procession, with their flags, and the crowd go in after them. What to carry to the river has the practical side of a day there.