Why does the Kumbh come to Nashik?

This is what Nashik tells.

When the gods and the asuras churned the ocean, the jar of amrit came up out of it, and it was snatched and carried off, and Samudra manthan tells the whole of that. अमृत amrit is the drink that makes whoever drinks it deathless. At the churning, some drops of the amrit fell to the earth, at four places. Nashik is one of the four. And at Nashik the place the drops fell is Ramkund, and because they fell there the water of the pool has a standing of its own.

Ramkund is the pool cut into the left bank of the Godavari at Panchavati, the old part of the city, at the place where the river turns south. Ram bathed here through the years of the exile, and the pool is named for him, and Ramkund is the page about it. It is the pool families come to through the year with the ash and bone of someone they have lost. And at a Kumbh it is the centre of everything at Nashik. The bathing is there, and the flag hoisting that opens the Kumbh period is there too.

The second answer is the river itself. The Godavari rises on Brahmagiri, the hill above Trimbakeshwar. People say she disappears into the hill and comes out again at Kushavarta, and from Kushavarta she comes down through the hills to Nashik and then runs east across the whole country to the sea. And she is the दक्षिण गंगा Dakshin Ganga, the Ganga of the south. The name comes from the story of how she came down, the way the Gautami Mahatmya tells it — the Ganga herself, out of Shiva’s hair, brought to the south by a rishi.

The Ganga was in Shiva’s matted hair, and Parvati wanted her out of it. Her son Ganesha arranged for a rishi called Gautama, who lived on Brahmagiri, to be the one who had to ask for her, and Gautama did penance on Kailash until Shiva gave her to him, and Gautama carried her down onto the hill in his own matted hair. Gautami, after the man who brought her, is the first of the six names Shiva gave her. The source of the Godavari tells the whole of that story, from the drought to the water coming out of the hill, and Why it is called Simhastha has what Shiva said about bathing in her.

The third answer is the year. The Kumbh comes to Nashik and Trimbakeshwar when Jupiter goes into Leo, which is why it is called the Simhastha, and Why it is called Simhastha is the page about that. Jupiter takes about twelve years to come back to Leo, and the twelve-year cycle is the page about that.

This is what Nashik tells about the year. Jupiter was in Leo when the Godavari herself came down, and while Jupiter is in Leo, for about a year, all the rivers and the seas and the tirthas of the country come with the rishis and stay on her bank, and What the old texts say has the whole of what Nashik tells. A तीर्थ tirtha is a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river.

The two towns are about 30 km apart on the same river, Trimbakeshwar at the source and Nashik downstream, and the one Kumbh happens at both in the same year. At Trimbakeshwar the bathing is in Kushavarta. A कुण्ड kund is a tank or pool with stone sides and steps, fed by the river or a spring. Trimbakeshwar is also one of the twelve jyotirlings. A लिङ्ग ling is the form Shiva is worshipped in, an upright stone in the shrine. A ज्योतिर्लिङ्ग jyotirling is a ling of light, one of the twelve lings of Shiva that are counted above all the others, in twelve temples in twelve different places.

The Ramayana connection has Nashik’s own place in the Ramayana, and what Nashik tells about Panchavati and the exile.

The sadhus who come to a Kumbh come in their akhadas, and at this Kumbh they are divided between the two towns. 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 Vaishnav akhadas bathe at Ramkund and the Shaiva and Udasin akhadas at Kushavarta, and why the Kumbh is at two places has that arrangement. The naga sadhus says who you will see at Kushavarta.

At Nashik, come down to the river through Panchavati, past the Kalaram temple, and the bank opens out. Ramkund is the stone-sided pool at the bottom of the steps, with the river running past it. The Kapaleshwar temple is on the rise above you, the Ganga Godavari temple is beside you with its door shut unless it is a Kumbh year, and across the water is Sunder Narayan’s. This is the pool the drops fell in, and this is where the bathing is in a Kumbh year.

At Trimbakeshwar, Kushavarta is in the middle of the town, with the steps going down into the water, and this is where the other half of the Kumbh is. The Godavari at Nashik is the river the two are on.