What is Kushavarta Kund?

This is what the Gautami Mahatmya tells about Kushavarta.

कुश kusha is the stiff grass also called darbha, the grass a rishi sits on and prays with, and Kushavarta is the pool named for it. When Gautama had brought the Ganga down out of Shiva’s hair and onto Brahmagiri, he stirred the river with kusha grass as he led her, and the place he stirred her in is Kushavarta. Nobody can tell the whole of its greatness. Just to remember it is to have what you came for. Whoever bathes here and gives gifts here has done what satisfies the ancestors.

The Śiva Purāṇa has the kund made by Gautama’s own hands, and this is how it tells it. The river came down off Brahmagiri and first showed herself at Gangadwar, the door of the Ganga, high on the hill, and Gautama and the rishis bathed there. Then, a little below Gangadwar, Gautama dug a ditch, with the river’s own permission, and the river flowed out through it for his sake, and the ditch became Kushavarta, a tirtha known everywhere. A तीर्थ tirtha is a place of pilgrimage, and in the oldest sense a crossing place on a river.

Every Monday the god comes to the kund. In the afternoon the image of Trimbakeshwar is put into a palanquin at the temple and carried through the lanes to Kushavarta, puja is done at the water, and the palanquin goes back the way it came, with people following it the whole way. The Trimbakeshwar temple has the palanquin, and the purohits of the town organise it. A पुरोहित purohit is the priest who performs a rite for a family and makes the offerings in the family’s name, and the priests at Trimbakeshwar has who they are. At the full moon of Kartik, when the god goes out in his chariot, there is puja at Kushavarta again.

The kund has a title of its own. तीर्थराज tirtharaj is the king of tirthas, and Kushavarta was given the title of Tirtharaj at a ceremony held for it.

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. In a Simhastha year the Shaiva and Udasin akhadas bathe at Kushavarta, and the naga sadhus among them, while the Vaishnav akhadas bathe at Ramkund in Nashik, and why the Kumbh is at two places has that arrangement. The Kumbh period itself opens with a flag going up at Ramkund and at Kushavarta, and the flag hoisting has that.

Kushavarta is the central holy place of the Kumbh at Trimbakeshwar, the place the Kumbh rites are performed. It is about seventy-five feet a side, and the lanes into it are narrow, and the approach roads to the kund, the bathing steps and a new flagpole at the kund are among the works for this Kumbh. The works for this Kumbh has the list, and the dates for this Kumbh are on the main Kumbh page.

The kund is twenty-one feet deep, and it was built in 1750 over the springs that feed it.

In the 1880s a pilgrim’s ordinary round at Trimbakeshwar began here. He bathed in Kushavarta, and after bathing he went to worship at the temple, and a feast to the temple brahmins finished the round. A श्राद्ध shraddh is the rite for a family’s dead, and for a pilgrim who had come to perform one the round was longer, and Tripindi Shraddh has it.

Come into the middle of the town and the kund is there, a square of water with the steps going down into it on all four sides and the wall round the outside, the lanes running off it, and the temple a little way beyond. People come down the steps to bathe, and they bathe here first and go on to the temple after.

On a Monday afternoon, stand by the kund and the palanquin comes to you, through the lanes from the temple, with the people behind it. When the puja at the water is done and it starts back, go with it. That is the way to the temple, and the Trimbakeshwar temple is where it is going. The hill above the town, where the river rises, is Brahmagiri.