Talk:Kumbh Mela
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Suggested Copyediting and Clarifying Questions Follow:
Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage, rotating between four India cities: Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik. The pilgrimage visits each city once each four years. The twelve-year cycle ends in the Maha Kumbha Mela (Great Kumbha Mela) at Prayag in Uttar Pradesh. This is attended by millions of people, making it one of the largest, if not the largest, religious gathering in the world.
Questions:
A photo essay on the event in [Time Magazine] translates Maha Kumbha Mela as great urn festival. Is that correct?
Does 'this' above refer to the Maha Kumbha Mela or the total of all four festivals in the cycle?
It would be helpful if there was a reference to official estimates here, if Uttar Pradesh or other authorities keep them.
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[edit] A Battle Between Gods and Demons
Thousands of years ago, during the Vedic period, gods and demons temporarily agreed to work together to gather amrita (the nectar of immortality) from the Milky Ocean, and to share it. However, when the Kumbha (pot) containing the amrita appeared, the demons ran away with the it. And the gods chased the demons. Over twelve years (and a year is but a day for a god) the gods and demons fought in the sky over the pot of amrita. During the battle, the urn spilled drops of amrita on to four places: Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik. Thus, Kumbha Mela is observed at the four cites where the nectar fell.
[edit] The Pilgrimage
Millions of people attend the Kumbha Mela. Each pilgrimage's climaxes in a ritual bath. Other activities include religious discussions, devotional singing, mass feeding of holy men and women and the poor, and religious assemblies where doctrines are debated and standardized. Kumbha Mela (especially the Maha Kumbha Mela) is the most sacred of all the Hindu pilgrimages. Thousands of holy men and women (monks, saints, sadhus) grace the occasion by their presence. The suspiciousness of Kumbha Mela is in part attributed to the gathering of thousands of holy men and women at one place on earth.
How many days does each pilgrimage last? Do pilgrims come from India or from other places?
Where is the ritual bath held?
Is it in a river in each city, or a lake or other body of water?
In the last line of this paragraph, is suspiciousness the word your looking for? I think you mean auspiciousness.
[edit] Recent History
In 2003, the Kumbh Mela was held in Nashik, India, from July 27 to September 7. In a stampede, 39 pilgrims (28 women and 11 men) were trampled dead and 57 injured. Devotees had gathered on the banks of the Godavari river for the maha snan or holy bath. Over 30,000 pilgrims were being held back by barricades in a narrow street leading to the Ramkund, a holy spot, so that the sadhus could take the ceremonial dip first. Allegedly a sadhu threw some silver coins into the crowd; the subsequent scramble for the coins allegedly led to the stampede.
I would also link back to the categories on Hinduism and pilgrimages.
Respectfully,
--Bill Humphries 07:16, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Remove cleanup?
The article as it stands looks great and reads well. Is it not time to remove the cleanup notice? QuartierLatin1968 18:15, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- The article needs to throw some more light on the following:
- Ardh Kumbh Mela
- A table showing the dates of Maha Kumbh Mela and places in the past 2 decades and the coming one decade
- Official statistics as per Govt records
- Interesting Trivia
- VMO 17:48, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Completed copy edit
Will finish this very soon. Jekoko 21:58, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Completed copy edit but questions above remain unanswered. Jekoko 00:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] photo
where are the people in that photo? i'm sure they're there.. i just don't know where.. what do 70 million people look like, after all? 131.111.8.104 22:01, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
- It is a satellite image. What is more interesting is the satellite image before the evnt and a comparison of the photographs shows the change in the topography of the earth due to so many people descending on the same place. No doubt that this is the largest ever human assembly in living history. --Gurubrahma 16:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 70 Million?
The "List of largest gatherings in history" page says that 70 million were present in 2001, and on this page we are told that 70 million were present in 2003. Is it 70 million every year? then why only 30 million in 2004? (as stated on the "list" page)
[edit] Ambiguity in the article's paragraph , Tu 15th of August
In the article's second paragraph, (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kumbh_Mela&action=edit§ion=1), "Astrology and Kumbh Mela", the final sentece says:
"It is also said that the elixir of life is filled in a Kumbh (Pot) in Swarg (heaven) so with certain combination of Sun - Moon - Jupiter combination, the elixir falls from heaven to earth, and kumbh mela is held on those locations."
1st, the last two words were "on that locations", which is ungrammatical, so I changed it to "on those locations", which eliminates the ambiguity of whether they're held on many locations or just one.
2nd, I still find that the phrase "those locations" doesn't refer to anything inside the sentence, at least. What locations? On the planets? Perhaps where the elixir comes down from heaven, and would that mean it flows down in Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nashik? Someone with knowledge of this could perhaps explain it a bit further, I can't do it, at least yet.
[edit] Ardh Kumbh
It seems like there are quite a few mentions of "Ardh Kumbh" or "Ardh Kumbh Mela" in the news lately[1]. Is this the same thingg as Kumbh Mela? Maybe this could be explained in the article more. —Tokek 15:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 18:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
