GANGES
The Ganges is 2,704 kilometers (1,680 miles) long and has a drainage area of 1,016,124 square kilometers (392,328 square miles), It flows from the Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south and directly affects the lives of 400 million people. The Ganges Plain which was covered by a shallow sea as recently as 10,000 years ago. A third of India's people live in the Ganges Plain, where the population averages over 520 people per square kilometer (1,300 people per square mile), one of the highest in the world.
The Ganges River basin, India's largest, includes approximately 25 percent of the nation's area; it is bounded by the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya Range to the south. The Ganges has its source in the glaciers of the Greater Himalayas, which form the frontier between India and Tibet in northwestern Uttar Pradesh. Many Indians believe that the legendary source of the Ganges, and several other important Asian rivers, lies in the sacred Mapam Yumco Lake (known to the Indians as Manasarowar Lake) of western Tibet located approximately 75 kilometers northeast of the India-China-Nepal tripoint. In the northern part of the Ganges River basin, practically all of the tributaries of the Ganges are perennial streams. However, in the southern part, located in the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, many of the tributaries are not perennial. [Source: Library of Congress *]
Hindus call the Ganges the Ganga, the name of goddess it is named after. Greek Mariners may have sailed to the Ganges delta. Ptolemy placed river correctly on his A.D. 150 map. The Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, Prussians, Flemish, and Danes all built outposts on the lower sections of Ganges. The first settlement was established by the Portuguese in 1537; the French didn't leave until 1951. Cruising the Ganges are bluff-board bufa boats with high stern and triangular rudders. The bamboo rudders are hardly ever used; boats float through the current, often, stern first or sideways. On the banks of the Ganges and other river you will see dhoti-clad men doing yogic push ups, wrestling or swing huge stone-headed clubs over their head. At Hindu temples along the Ganges pilgrims bathe in the water, make offerings, touch the temple walls, ask advice of sadhus, receive blessing from priest and gather water in jugs to take home.
George Black wrote in The New Yorker: “To hundreds of millions of Hindus, in India and around the world, the Ganges is not just a river but also a goddess, Ganga, who was brought down to Earth from her home in the Milky Way by Lord Shiva, flowing through his dreadlocks to break the force of her fall. The sixteenth-century Mogul emperor Akbar called it “the water of immortality,” and insisted on serving it at court. In 1615, Nicholas Withington, one of the earliest English travellers in India, wrote that water from the Ganges “will never stinke, though kepte never so longe, neyther will anye wormes or vermine breede therein.” The myth persists that the river has a self-purifying quality—sometimes ascribed to sulfur springs, or to high levels of natural radioactivity in the Himalayan headwaters, or to the presence of bacteriophages, viruses that can destroy bacteria. [Source: George Black, The New Yorker, July 25, 2016]
Hindu Holy Rivers
Hindus regard India as the Holy Land. There are seven holy rivers in India, of which the Ganges is the holiest and most well known. They are all associated with Shiva. According to one legend, Shiva leaped in the water of the Ganges as it fell from heaven to the earth. The water matted his hair and divided into the seven holy rivers.
Rivers are regarded as sacred and treated with deep reverence because of their purifying effect. Bathing in a sacred river and/or drinking its waters can wash away a lifetime's worth of sins and being cremated on the shores of holy river and having your ashes thrown in the river can allow you to escape the cycle or reincarnation of be delivered directly to heaven.
For many Indians the Narmada River is just as sacred as the Ganges. Lepers have claimed to be cured after taking a dip in it. Every year thousand of Hindu pilgrims perform a pradakshina of the Narmanda and walk every inch of both banks. The Brahmaputra in Hindu cosmology is the only male river.
See Separate Article: HINDU BELIEFS ABOUT SACRED RIVERS, MOUNTAINS AND SCIENCE factsanddetails.com
Also See Separate Articles on VARANASI and RISHIKESH
Ganges and Hinduism
For Hindus the Ganges is the sacred river known as Gangaji, or Mother Ganges. It is comprised of amrita (“the nectar of immortality”) that flows to earth from heaven. Hindus believe that bathing and/ or drinking it waters can wash away a lifetime's worth of sins. Being cremated on its shores and having one’s ashes thrown in the river can allow one to escape the cycle or reincarnation of be delivered directly to heaven.
The Ganges is named after Ganga, a river goddess who descended from heaven and had her fall broken by Shiva’s hair. She is the second wife of Shiva. Her sisters are Yamuna, Godavari, Saraswati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri. Prayers honoring all these holy relatives are recited in the holy river when the bathers submerge themselves to be purified. The Ganges is sometimes referred to as "the liquified from of God." Religious people used to offer "scientific proof that no bacteria or microbe could survive more than a few moments in the holy river.
Ganga represents fertility because she provides water for land and is considered a second wife of Shiva. She is often depicted with a bowl of water in one hand and lotus flower in another, sitting on a makara, a legendary sea monster.
The Ganges is regarded as the link between heaven and earth. In one Hindu story, the Ganges fell from the foot of Vishnu, the preserver, and traveled across the Milky Way before getting lodged in the foot of Shiva, the destroyer and restorer. On top of mythical Mount Meru in the Himalayas, Shiva calmed the river and let it fall to earth.
In another story, the Ganges River was created by the goddess Ganga to wash away the condemned souls of King Sagar's 60,000 sons who had been burned to a crisp by the gaze of the sage Kapali. The sons had cursed Kapali of stealing their father's horse (which had placed in the sage’s ashram by the mischievous thunderstorm god Indra). Ganga was summoned by King Sagar and the god Shiva was called in to catch Ganga, lest she wash away the entire earth. Shiva ensnared her in his hair — the Himalayas — and she remained their until she managed to escape near Gangotri, where upon she dropped from the mountains and flowed to the sea redeeming the souls of the Sagar's 60,000 sons.
Faxian on the Ganges
Between A.D. 399 and 414, the Chinese monk Faxian (Fa-Hsien, Fa Hien) undertook a trip via Central Asia to India to study Buddhism, locate sutras and relics and obtain copies of Buddhist books that were unavailable in China at the time. He traveled from Xian in central China to the west overland on the southern Silk Road into Central Asia and described monasteries, monks and pagodas there. He then crossed over Himalayan passes into India and ventured as far south as Sri Lanka before sailing back to China on a route that took him through present-day Indonesia. His entire journey took 15 years.
According to “A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms”: “Fa-Hsien stayed at the Dragon vihara till after the summer retreat, and then, travelling to the south-east for seven yojanas, he arrived at the city of Kanyakubja (Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, India), lying along the Ganges. There are two monasteries in it, the inmates of which are students of the hinayana. At a distance from the city of six or seven le, on the west, on the northern bank of the Ganges, is a place where Buddha preached the Law to his disciples. It has been handed down that his subjects of discourse were such as "The bitterness and vanity (of life) as impermanent and uncertain," and that "The body is as a bubble or foam on the water." At this spot a stupa was erected, and still exists. Having crossed the Ganges, and gone south for three yojanas, (the travellers) arrived at a village named A-le, containing places where Buddha preached the Law, where he sat, and where he walked, at all of which stupas have been built. [Source: “A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms” by Fa-Hsien (Faxian) of his Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414), Translated James Legge, 1886, gutenberg.org/ /]
“Going on from this to the south-east for three yojanas, they came to the great kingdom of Sha-che. As you go out of the city of Sha-che by the southern gate, on the east of the road (is the place) where Buddha, after he had chewed his willow branch, stuck it in the ground, when it forthwith grew up seven cubits, (at which height it remained) neither increasing nor diminishing. The Brahmans with their contrary doctrines became angry and jealous. Sometimes they cut the tree down, sometimes they plucked it up, and cast it to a distance, but it grew again on the same spot as at first. Here also is the place where the four Buddhas walked and sat, and at which a stupa was built that is still existing." /
Bathing in the Ganges
Hindus bath in, drink and throw the cremated ashes of the dead in the Ganges. Sprinkling holy water from the Ganges over one's head is believed to wash away sins, purify unclean souls and heal the sick. Bathing in the Ganges even once is supposed to ensure salvation. If a person dies in the Ganges or a has a few drops of Ganges placed on his tongue as he breaths his last breath it is believed he will achieve absolute salvation, escape the toil of reincarnation and be transported to Shiva's Himalayan version of heaven.
Every morning Hindus gather on the shores of the Ganges to bathe and pray for liberation from the world. The pouring of marigolds into the Ganges is a traditional peace offering. The river carries the petals to the oceans and the far corners of the world, carrying the promise of peace with them. Many people collect water from the Ganges in bottles. Some devoted Hindu take Ganges water to drink when they travel abroad.
According to the maharajah of Varanasi. "It is only after my ritual bath and while Iam eating that I cannot touch anyone other than members of my household who have performed the same purification rituals. To do so would make me ritually impure. But goodness does not come only by touching and eating with people; it comes from much more.” [Source: John Putman, National Geographic October 1971]
Route of the Ganges
The Ganges cuts a gorge through the southern Himalayas before entering the Gangetic Plain at the city of Haridwar. Continuing south and then east, it winds through the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India and is joined by its major tributary, the Yamuna, at the city of Allahabad. The Yamuna, the Ganges' companion river, also originates in the Himalayas. For much of its length, it flows 80 to 120 kilometers (50 to 75 miles) west and later south of the Ganges. After merging with the Yamuna, the Ganges continues in a southeasterly direction, gathering numerous tributaries along the way. [Source: Geo-Data: The World Geographical Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]
The source of the Ganges is near the Himalayan town of Gangotori. Amaranth in Kashmir, regarded as the source of the Ganges, is a major pilgrimage site. The river formally begins at 13,000-foot-high junction of two glacier-fed mountain streams. From here the river plummets about 3,350 meters (11,000 feet) in 320 kilometers (200 miles) to the Ganges Plain near the city of Hardwar. The Ganges Plain is an alluvial pain between 10 and 100 miles wide. The Ganges often floods here and changes it courses but provided rich alluvial soil for farmers. After coming down out the mountains the Ganges drops 1000 feet in its final 1,160 mile journey to the Bay of Bengal.
The Ganges Canal begins in Hardwar and flows into the Yamuna River, irrigating the land in a region known as the Doab. The Ganges Plain is crisscrossed by hundreds of other canals and irrigation channels used mainly to raise crops during the winter. During the monsoon season the river and plains flood after heavy rains and the silt left behind helps fertilize the winter wheat grown during the next dry season.
The Ganges has shifted its course many times over the years. In Bangladesh it branches into many streams and rivers to the south and this marks the beginnings of the enormous Ganges Delta, most of which is found within Bangladesh. Near the border of Bangladesh and India, the Ganges splits in two. Part of it (the Padma) flows into the Brahmapputra which forms a massive delta that empties in the Bay of Bengal. The other part becomes the Bhagirathi River, which travels through Kolkata, where it is renamed the Hooghly River. [Source: Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Physical Geography, Gale Group, Inc., 2003]
Ganges Hydrology
The Ganges is at its lowest in February, when water in the Himalayas is locked up in snow and ice. The river is at its highest in June when it is swollen from snow melt and early monsoons rains and September after the monsoons. During the monsoon the river runs dark brown with silt. During the dry season the earth cracks open around the river in 115 degrees heat.A lot of water is removed for irrigation. So much water from the Ganges is used it sometimes dries out before reaching the sea. So much is removed from the Ganges that the unique ecosystem of the Sundarband wetlands is seriously threatened.
The discharge of the Ganges differs by source. Frequently, discharge is described for the mouth of the Meghna River, thus combining the Ganges with the Brahmaputra and Meghna. This results in a total average annual discharge of about 38,000 cubic meters per second (1,300,000 cubic feet per second). In other cases the average annual discharges of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna are given separately, at about 16,650 cubic meters per second (588,000 cubic feet per second) for the Ganges, about 19,820 cubic meters per second (700,000 cubic feet per second) for the Brahmaputra, and about 5,100 cubic meters per second (180,000 cubic feet per second) for the Meghna. [Source: Wikipedia +]
Hardinge Bridge, Bangladesh, crosses the Ganges-Padma River. It is one of the key sites for measuring streamflow and discharge on the lower Ganges.The maximum peak discharge of the Ganges, as recorded at Hardinge Bridge in Bangladesh, exceeded 70,000 cubic meters per second (2,500,000 cubic feet per second). The minimum recorded at the same place was about 180 cubic meters per second (6,400 cubic feet per second) in 1997. +
The hydrologic cycle in the Ganges basin is governed by the Southwest Monsoon. About 84 percent of the total rainfall occurs in the monsoon from June to September. Consequently, streamflow in the Ganges is highly seasonal. The average dry season to monsoon discharge ratio is about 1:6, as measured at Hardinge Bridge. This strong seasonal variation underlies many problems of land and water resource development in the region. The seasonality of flow is so acute it can cause both drought and floods. Bangladesh, in particular, frequently experiences drought during the dry season and regularly suffers extreme floods during the monsoon. +
In the Ganges Delta many large rivers come together, both merging and bifurcating in a complicated network of channels. The two largest rivers, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, both split into distributary channels, the largest of which merge with other large rivers before themselves joining. This current channel pattern was not always the case. Over time the rivers in Ganges Delta have changed course, sometimes altering the network of channels in significant ways. +
Development on the Ganges
George Black wrote in The New Yorker: “Below Gangotri, the river’s path is one of increasing degradation. Its banks are disfigured by small hydropower stations, some half built, and by diversion tunnels, blasted out of solid rock, that leave miles of the riverbed dry. The towering hydroelectric dam at Tehri, which began operating in 2006, releases a flood or a dribble or nothing at all, depending on the vagaries of the season and the fluctuating demands of the power grid. The first significant human pollution begins at Uttarkashi, seventy miles or so from the source of the river. Like most Indian municipalities, Uttarkashi—a grimy cement-and-cinder-block town of eighteen thousand—has no proper means of disposing of garbage. Instead, the waste is taken to an open dump site, where, after a heavy rain, it washes into the river. [Source: George Black, The New Yorker, July 25, 2016]
“A hundred and twenty miles to the south, at the ancient pilgrimage city of Haridwar, the Ganges enters the plains. This is the starting point for hundreds of miles of irrigation canals built by the British, beginning in the eighteen-forties, after a major famine. What’s left of the river is ill-equipped to cope with the pollution and inefficient use of water for irrigation farther downstream. Below its confluence with the Yamuna River, which is nearly devoid of life after passing through Delhi, the Ganges picks up the effluent from sugar refineries, distilleries, pulp and paper mills, and tanneries, as well as the contaminated agricultural runoff from the great Gangetic Plain, the rice bowl of North India, on which half a billion people depend for their survival.
“By the time the river reaches the Bay of Bengal, more than fifteen hundred miles from its source, it has passed through Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Kolkata, a hundred smaller towns and cities, and thousands of riverside villages—all lacking sanitation. The Ganges absorbs more than a billion gallons of waste each day, three-quarters of it raw sewage and domestic waste and the rest industrial effluent, and is one of the ten most polluted rivers in the world.
There is a 2016 New Yorker article about the Ganges — “What It Takes to Clean the Ganges” Reuters George Black, The New Yorker, July 25, 2016 newyorker.com
Impact of the Ganges’ Tehri Dam
Jyoti Thottam wrote in Time: “In a pine-scented Himalayan valley, Sushila Devi is a reluctant soldier in India's new war over water. Her village, Pipola, sits just southeast of the Tehri Dam, which bestrides one of the precursors of the Ganges River and is India's largest hydropower project. Since the dam was completed in 2006, the natural spring that once fed Pipola has dried up. Several times a day, Devi drapes a red sari above her blue eyes, hoists a 2.5-gal. (10 L) brass vessel atop her head and walks to the nearest hand pump. There, she and the other women of Pipola spend two or three hours a day, sometimes more, locked in low-intensity combat. "We have to go to the next village," she says. "Oh, how angry they get. They fight. We wait." [Source: Jyoti Thottam, Time, July 19, 2010]
As the villages around the Tehri Dam lose their natural springs, the dam sends drinking water and electricity to Delhi, home to 16 million people. Delhi sucks up not only water but people too — migrants who leave their farms for the city because there isn't enough water to sustain them. The urban areas don't always win, however. Farther downriver, the farms of India's powerful rural heartland divert power and water from small cities like Kanpur. Without enough of either, Kanpur's fight against industrial pollution has become nearly impossible. These competing demands are lowering water levels all along the Ganges, a crisis most apparent in the sacred city of Varanasi. There, a decades-long push to clean up the river is gaining momentum and attracting money, but it may not be enough to correct the miles of mismanagement upstream.
The Tehri Dam is the grandest fulfillment of Jawaharlal Nehru's hope that dams would be the "temples of modern India." The dam wall is 870 ft. (265 m) high — taller than the Hoover Dam — and when completed, the dam formed a reservoir 47 miles (75 km) long that completely submerged the old town of Tehri. But the dam is also a stark example of how quickly a place with abundant water resources can turn into one plagued by shortage. There are more than 100 villages like Pipola scattered around the reservoir's rim, and they feel that shortage acutely. The villages can't get water from the lake itself — the walls of the reservoir are the exposed sides of a blasted mountain made of loose gravel too steep to climb — and the construction of the dam has disrupted the underground sources of the area's natural springs. So the residents of Pipola are lobbying Ramesh Pokhriyal, chief minister of Uttarakhand state, for a pumping station. When I met him in Dehra Dun, the state's capital, he insisted that all the affected villages near the Tehri Dam would be helped "in due course of time."
From the Tehri Dam, the Upper Ganga Canal channels clean drinking water 121 miles (194 km) downstream to the nation's capital. Thanks to this bounty and supplies from its own river, the Yamuna, Delhi enjoys a water availability of 66 gal. (250 L) per person per day — comparable to the amount consumed in much of Europe. As Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and the Environment, puts it, "Delhi is a pampered city."
“Very few of the city's residents experience that abundance. Delhi loses about half the water it gets to leakage, from both decaying pipes and theft, and what's left isn't evenly distributed. The privileged parts of central Delhi get as much as 132 gal. (500 L) of water per capita per day; others get only 8 gal. (30 L). And so in Delhi, as in Tehri, the poor line up at municipal water tankers and hand pumps. The Sonia Vihar pumping station, which opened in 2006, was meant to ease chronic water shortages by using supplies from the Tehri Dam. But there isn't enough water in the reservoir, and Sonia Vihar has been operating below its expected capacity of 140 million gal. (530 million L) per day for the past two years.
For the complete article from which the material here is derived see “How India's Success Is Killing Its Holy River” by Jyoti Thottam, Time, July 19, 2010 time.com
Pollution in the Ganges
Some 345 million gallons of raw sewage and 70 million gallons of industrial waste flows into the Ganges everyday. Dead goats, monkeys and occasion dead beggars can be seen floating in it. Diseases that have been caught bathing in the river include hepatitis amoebic dysentery, jaundice and cholera. It has been said that there are so many toxins in the Ganges that even bacteria won’t grow in it. Even so, Indians drink water from the river, bathe in it and irrigate their crops with it. In Varanasi people who bathe in the Ganges say it is a question mind over matter. Hindus believe the Ganges can not be contaminated. Hindus don't like the term "polluted" attached to the Ganges. Environmentalists now favor milder language to infer that the sacred river is "suffering."
"I will not stop my taking my daily bath in the Ganges," one man told journalist Geoffrey Ward of Smithsonian magazine, "but the struggle inside me every morning is terrible, inexpressible." The centuries-old sewer in Varanasi is overtaxed and the water treatment facility doesn't work, partly because the local power stations can't supply it with enough electricity. Raw sewage plummets into the river from half a dozen places at a rate of 3,500 gallons a minute. On the northern edge of the city, near where the Aryans built their first camp, the water is so foul that bubbles from chemical reactions form. The smell of the toxic brew is so horrible that even seasoned boatmen hold their nose as they paddle. [Source: Geoffrey Ward, Smithsonian magazine, September 1985]
Much of the pollution in the Ganges if from untreated sewage. Hindus refuse to believe that the river is polluted and scoff at accusations that this is the case. Environmentalists try to get Hindus to take an interest in the fate of the river by asking them first if the believe the Ganges is their mother. When they say yes the environmentalist ask: "Would you show such disrespect to your mother? Pour filth over her?" When they say No, they gain more converts. [Source: Santha Rama Rau, National Geographic February 1986]
See Separate Articles: POLLUTION IN THE GANGES AND EFFORTS TO CLEAN IT UP factsanddetails.com; WATER POLLUTION IN INDIA factsanddetails.com
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Impact of Climate Change on the Ganges
The Ganges is one of India's most important rivers for drinking water, agriculture, culture and religion. It flows about 2,525 kilometers (1,568 miles) from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal and supports hundreds of millions of people. The Gangotri Glacier is an important source of the river's water, particularly during the dry summer months, when glacier melt supplements rainfall. A 2007 Washington Post report cited scientists who estimated that the glacier supplied up to 70 percent of the Ganges' summer water at the time. The river is also central to Hindu religious practices, with millions of people bathing in it, performing ceremonies along its banks and collecting its water for religious use. [Sources: Emily Wax, Washington Post, June 17, 2007]
Climate-related changes in the Himalayan water supply could therefore affect both human communities and religious traditions. Scientists cited by The Washington Post warned that the Gangotri Glacier was shrinking and that continued glacier loss could eventually reduce dry-season flows. An initial period of accelerated melting can produce additional water, but as glacier volume declines, the long-term supply can decrease. Experts have warned that the Ganges could eventually become more dependent on seasonal monsoon rainfall. Mahesh Mehta, an environmental lawyer who had previously focused on industrial pollution of the river, said, “There has never been a greater threat for the Ganges.”
Reduced glacier and snowmelt could have particularly serious consequences for agriculture. The Gangotri system supplies water to the Bhagirathi, which joins the Alaknanda to form the Ganga, and its contribution is important during periods when rainfall is limited. In 2016, India was experiencing drought in 10 states and facing a severe water crisis after two weak monsoons. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute warned that if the Ganges became a river that flowed for only part of the year, “double cropping breaks down.” This would affect farmers who depend on reliable water supplies for multiple harvests.
The Ganges also faces major threats unrelated to climate change, particularly pollution and inadequate sewage treatment. More than 100 cities and numerous villages are located along the river, while many lacked adequate sewage-treatment facilities when these reports were published. Climate change could compound these existing problems by altering river flows and increasing pressure on limited freshwater supplies. The World Wildlife Fund listed the Ganges among the world's 10 most endangered rivers in 2007, while environmental groups warned that reduced flows could make pollution more concentrated. The combined effects of water scarcity, pollution, agricultural demand and changing rainfall make the future condition of the river a major environmental and economic concern.
The consequences also extend to India's cultural and religious life. In Varanasi, people bathe in the Ganges, perform religious ceremonies, cremate the dead beside the river and collect its water for use in homes and temples. Veer Bhadra Mishra, an engineer and director of the Sankat Mochan Foundation, warned, “This may be the first place on Earth where global warming could hurt our very religion.” Greenpeace climate and energy expert Srinivas Krishnaswamy similarly said that climate change could affect “not just communities, but also businesses and even the Ganga itself, our most sacred river.” At the same time, Indian officials argued that economic development remained important and that developed countries should take greater responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The evidence presented in these reports shows that climate change represents an additional pressure on a river already affected by pollution, population growth, water demand and variable monsoon rainfall.
Melas and Kumbh Melas
The world largest gatherings are a series of melas (festivals) held on the Ganges attended by millions of Hindu pilgrims who enter the river in hopes of washing away their sins. There are four major melas: in Allahabad (Prayag), in Haridwar, in Nasik, and in Ujjain. Each one is held every 12 years, with one of four held every three years. The one in Allahabad is by far the largest. It attracts over 50 to 100 million people. The others attract about 10 million each.
The melas takes place on dates set by astrology when one day of the gods’ time corresponds to a year of human time. the largest crowds occur at the 12- and 144-year marks, when it's believed that good karma is strongest. The melas are held at confluences of the Ganges with other rivers and last for about 40 or 60 days. Pilgrims come and go, with the greatest numbers arriving and entering the water at the sangam (confluence points) at auspicious times and dates set by Hindu astrologers in accordance with a correct alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, earth and the moon. Because the event is usually held in January and February the water is icy cold.
Kumbh means pot or pitcher. Mela means festival or fair. According to Hindu mythology, the churning of the primordial ocean (‘Samudra Manthan’) threw up Amrit or the nectar of immortality. Both gods and demons were part of the churning process and it was decided that nectar would be shared equally between the two groups. However, a battle broke out between gods and demons for control of the kumbha. During the battle, according to one version of the stor, the celestial bird Garuda flew away with the pot of nectar and spilled drops on the four places the melas are held — Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik — and eight places in heaven. In another version, one god, Vishnu in many stories, spilled the nectar in the four places as he circled the earth with the pitcher for 12 days (12 years in human time. )
Melas are said to wash away sins, cleans the soul and bring good luck in marriages, business and other things. Hindus believe that at the precise moment of the mela, the Ganges turns to heavenly nectar and anyone who bathes in it is freed from the cycle or death, reincarnation and rebirth and is guaranteed eternal salvation. According to Hindu beliefs bathing in the Ganges during one these melas is worth 10 million bathes in the Ganges at a less propitious times.
It is said that the melas date back to the second millennium B.C. If that is true that would make them the oldest continuously-held festivals. According to historical records, including an account in the 7th century by the Chinese traveler Hsuang Tang, the melas were huge gatherings for sadhus, gurus, swamis, and yogis. Mark Twain was among the first Americans to attend a mela. On a gthering he saw in 1896, he wrote: “It is wonderful," a marvel to "our kind of people, the cold whites...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."
See Separate Article KUMBH MELAS, THE LARGEST GATHERINGS ON EARTH factsanddetails.com
Ardh Kumbha Melas
Ard Kumbh Melas (Half Grand Pitcher gatherings) are smaller Kumbha Melas, attracting millions rather than tens of millions. During the 45-day long Ard Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, Naga Sadhuus, or naked Hindu holymen, walk in a religious procession on the confluence of the Gamges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati River during the auspicious day of Mauni Amawasya. Timed to take place during a new moon, millions of devout Hindus immerse themselves in one of the most important events of the weekslong pilgrimage aimed at cleansing believers of their sins. When asked to describe the feeling at mela, one pilgrim said, “People are concerned about you. They treat you in a polite manner: ‘Come, mother, [they say," and go comfortably."”
In January 2007, millions of pilgrims endured bitter cold and tough security, to attend the mela in Sangham, Allahabad, 400 kilometers from Delhi. About 50 million people, with 10 million on the most important day, showed up. The 62,000 tents used, many with pennants identifying different Hindu sects, could accommodate 2 million people. More than 50,000 police officers were on hand. The festival grounds were divided into 28 sectors, each under the command of different unit.
Yogaindailylife.org reported: “This year's festival is the Ardh (half) Kumbha Mela, but despite of its name it still drew millions of spiritual seekers to the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers. Hindu belief has it that one's sins are purified by a dip in these holy waters, thereby liberating him. This is a time of special astrological constellations and the most auspicious bathing times are known as shahi snans or "royal baths" (January 14 - Makar Sankranti, January 19 - Mouni Amavasya, January 23 - Vasant Panchami and February 15 – Mahashivaratri). [Source: yogaindailylife.org]
“The privilege of leading such baths goes to Akharas (Hindu monastic orders) and their Mahamandaleshwars (akhara leaders). The Maha Nirvani Akhara to which His Holiness Mahamandaleshwar Paramhans Swami Maheshwaranandaji belongs as one of its leaders led the first of the royal baths and His Holiness Swamiji took a holy dip accompanied by his western devotees. As over 90 million pilgrims are expected to visit Mela during January 3 until February 16, the event is also a huge logistic and security challenge and organizers along with Indian government have made tremendous efforts to provide adequate transportation, lodging, food and safety."
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: India tourism website (incredibleindia.org), India’s Ministry of Tourism and other government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.
Updated in August 2026