An archaic foundation of the Kumbh Mela

In essence, the templating for the Tanunaptra comprises a particular event wherein the Gods came together to convocate and to share, Each drawing from T 'most valued' 'strengths' or 'capacities' to make Their 'best contribution', with all of these being 'pooled together' ('Mela', we might suggest) to produce a sing potency far grander than could be conceived of through unlinked individual expressings.

- ROLINSON

Their ular CURWEN ARES Ask as to the meaning of "Kumbh Mela", and you'll likely get an answer oriented around a great "coming together".

Not simply of people with other people-or even, for that matter, of people with the sacred waters of the Tirtha...but of insights and understandings. And through all of this, the human engagement with the Divine.

There are, as is well known, several major traditions around the origination and the rationale to the Kumbh Mela. It is not our purpose to parse these in what follows, as one can readily find remarkable recountings for these elsewhere.

For my own contribution to proceedings, I had considered conjuring a comparative analysis as to various of its features shared with our religion's cousins in Europe (note: shared with, not derived from)-and certainly, it is remarkable to consider the strong concordance between the salient astrological elements of the event and what would be more familiar to a European view of the Heavens. What is known as the "Garuda" asterism, for example, is "Aquila" ("Eagle") for us of the West and with a likewise significant role to be played in bearing that which carries the Amrta, the Ambrosia (terms of direct cognate in both linguistic and functional meaning), in connexion with Jupiter (Brhaspati); the Amrta association for these stars evidently reaching right back into the Vedic era, as we observe in the Taittiriya Brahmana's detailing for the coterminous Naksatra of Srona [III 127].

Yet as interesting as that might have been for myself, it would hardly have served to illustrate something essential to the Kumbh Mela itself.

For that, I instead intend to draw from another archaic Vedic foundationthis being the Tanunaptra Rite extolled in the Sruti.