Kumbh and the unbroken flow of life

The literal meaning of the word 'Kumbh' is earthen pot. The Kumbh referred to in connection to the Kumbh Mela is the pot of Amrit, or elixir of immortality.

- LAKSHMI BAYI

Great civilizations have always come up on the banks of rivers. The most obvious reasons for this was the easy availability of potable water. The waterways also facilitated transport for commodities, as well as a way of transport of ideas.

No civilization which is stagnant can survive for long periods of time. In ancient times, exchange of thoughts could happen only by the physical mingling of the thinkers. Present modes of travel were operational in those days.

Creation is made up of different combinations of the Five Elements: Air, Water, Earth, Fire and Space. Of these, water has the property of being tangible as well as mobile. A human body mass is more of water than anything else, however obese a figure may appear to the naked eye. Two thirds of the Earth's surface is also water.

Humans were and still are-dependent on the good behaviour of water. The rivers had to flow obstacle free within their beds. The slightest increase or decrease in the water levels could end in the disaster of floods or the drying out of a drought. The correct amount of water had to be evaporated and sent down again as rains. The economies of places were heavily dependent on water.

The geography, and consequently, the history of that period became entangled with the course of water.

For example, the ancient poem "Shilapadikaaram" says that Madurai became landlocked in later years.

Once a spectre of what happens if the melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, increased the volume of the oceans and inundated much of the coastal land is something very real.

The sacrifices on the river Nile, which made the waters red, the annual four days of flooding, were and are, an inherent part of Egyptian culture. The holiest of holy for Sanatanis, the Kailas Mansarovar, the "mind born lake" in the Himalayas, is the place where Goddess Parvati has Her daily bath.