Sinhastha Mela

Name for the Kumbha Mela festival held
in the holy city of Ujjain. The festival is
called Sinhastha because it is celebrated
when Jupiter is in Leo (Sinha). The
Sinhastha Mela’s climactic bathing
(snana) day comes on the full moon in
the lunar month of Baisakh (April–
May). The Kumbha Mela is a massive
religious festival celebrated at threeyear intervals in four different cities:
Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain, and
Nasik; the festival thus comes to each
city every twelve years. The Kumbha
Mela is chiefly a festival at which participants bathe in sacred rivers. The festival’s primary participants are ascetics,
who come from all over South Asia to
bathe in the sacred waters. According to
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Sinhastha Mela
tradition, the Kumbha Mela was organized by the great philosopher Shankaracharya to promote regular gatherings of learned and holy men, as a
means to strengthen, sustain, and spread
Hindu religion.
The charter myth for the Kumbha
Mela is taken from the story of Churning
the Ocean of Milk. After the ocean has
been churned and the nectar of immortality (amrta) has been extracted, the
gods and their demon opponents begin
to quarrel over the pot of nectar. The
gods snatch the pot and run off with it,
but the one carrying the pot grows tired,
and in twelve days of carrying it sets it
on the ground in twelve different places.
Eight of the places are in heaven, but the
other four are on earth and these are the
four sites where the Mela is held. In each
place a bit of the nectar splashes on the
ground, sanctifying the site, and since a
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Sinhastha Mela
Depiction of Sita and her husband Rama. In the epic the Ramayana,
Sita is abducted by the demon king Ravana and Rama must search the earth for her.
divine day is considered to be a
human year, the twelve-year cycle is
established. According to popular
belief, at each Kumbha Mela’s most
providential moment, the waters in
which people are bathing become the
nectar of immortality, and all those
who bathe in these waters gain
immeasurable religious merit.
Historically speaking, the two most
important sites have been Haridwar and
Allahabad; one measure of their dominance is that they have held “half”
(ardha) Kumbha Melas after six years,
and that these have consistently drawn
bigger crowds than the “full” Kumbha
Melas at Ujjain and Nasik, which fall
during those times. In recent times,
however, political considerations have
increased the attendance at the
Sinhastha Mela. Ujjain is located in central India, in the heartland of the Hindu
nationalist groups such as the Rashtriya
Svayamsevak Sangh, Vishva Hindu
Parishad, and Bharatiya Janata Party.
The city of Ujjain is also close to the
ancestral kingdom of Vijaya Raje
Scindia, the matriarch of a former royal
family and a prominent figure in the
Bharatiya Janata Party. In such a political climate and local environment, the
Sinhastha Mela has been seen as a good
opportunity for religious-political theater, in order to generate publicity, deliver
patronage, and give the people in these
organizations greater status and visibility.
See also Tortoise avatar.