Forever Prayaga (The Site of Kumbha Mela)

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We stem encounter with Indian history and culture projected many institutions of Hindu civilization, including the tirthas, melds and rites and rituals performed therein, as curios of human past. This led to the rise of a number of descriptive and, at times, mystery mongering research works about things of the wonderland that India was thought to be. The first exposition of Indian tirthas consisted of the works of hundreds of authors and researchers who had tried to describe the socio-religious and politico- economic significance together with academic and ascetic glory of various pilgrimage centres of this country. Needless to say, foreign scholars have given the lead in this direction and Indian scholars followed suit. It may also be pointed out that most of these studies were characterised by the sociological and anthropological rather than historical and cultural approach. Indologists may be given the credit of initiating the second approach, at first, casually but later seriously. One is here reminded of the observation of Milton Singer (Text and Context in the Study of Contemporary Hinduism'. The Adyar Library Bulletin 25, 1961: 276), who raised doubts about the appropriateness and adequacy of the anthropological studies on tirthas of India. He is supported by the famous sociologist, Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965, Appendix), who has rightly remarked that 'Indian anthropology without Indology has no scope at all. My approach has been to take up the study of Indian Tirthas from the historical and cultural end, not in a general way but in the particular context of Prayaga. This shift in methodology and approach may be looked upon as a distinctive feature of the present enterprise.

The present work is an attempt to outline the essential features of the cultural history of Prayaga from varied sources with a view to bringing out that magnetic quality of the Tirtharaja which has been attracting multitudes from far and near. The greatness of Prayaga, perceptible since the Vedic period, is adumbrated in the Epic-Puranic literature, and is attested by epigraphic records, Buddhist and Jaina texts, foreign (Chinese, Muslim and European) accounts, treatises on tirtha, and vernacular literature which received and developed further this great traditional lore about Prayaga Archaeological evidences have also been accumulated to a considerable extent. The task of sifting and interpreting this immense material, contained inter alia in the numerous and varied texts is not easy The most ticklish problem faced by the researcher consists of imparting the traditional pronouncements an interpretation intelligible to the modern world but without prejudice to their original import. As such, the researcher is inevitably faced with innumerable odds. The success or failure of the present work is, therefore, to be viewed in the context of these inherent difficulties and predicaments.

Prayaga is called Tirtharaja on account of its special features, not possessed by other tirthas. Among innumerable rivers and confluences the Ganga-Yamuna-Sangama at Prayaga is unique. The Kumbha Melas are also held at Haridvara. Nasik and Ujjain, but none of them is comparable to the Kumbha Mela at Prayaga. It is the biggest, the most sacred, the most attractive and the most spoken of and written about mela in the world. The month of Magha attains special significance only in relation to Prayaga where the sadhus and the Mathadhisas, the peasants and the princes, the naked and the clothed, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant all congregate to attain the punya of bathing in the sacred Sangama in holy moments of the most auspicious day of the year. Herein lies the greatness of Prayaga, the "King of sacred places" in the three worlds, which is inseparably linked with the cultural and religious heritage of India. The study of the cultural history of such a place helps to understand the character of Indian culture and civilization, which makes it a repository of different kinds of people and traditions fusing them into a vast cultural unity while allowing them to retaining the dynamism and diversity of their own.

Prayaga or Allahabad (lat 25°27'N and long. 81-50E), picturesquely situated at the confluence of the rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the invisible Sarasvati in the heart of the Ganga plain, is one of the most renowned sacred places of India (Fig. 1) It is known as Tirtharaja (King of the sacred places) and is believed by the Hindus to be the holiest place in the three worlds existing in space (heaven, earth and the netherworld) and in time (past, present and future). The greatness of Prayaga, perceptible since the Vedic period, is adumbrated in the Epics, the Puranas and the treatises on tirtha, and is attested by epigraphic records, foreign (Chinese, Muslim and European) accounts, Buddhist and Jaina texts, and the vernacular literature. It is one of the most frequented places of pilgrimage, where people come especially during the month of Magha for bathing in the sacred waters of the confluence (Sangama) and every twelfth year they come by hundreds of thousands to the largest mela of the world, the Kumbha Mela Kings and commoners from different parts of the subcontinent are also known to have often visited this place on pilgrimage to commit suicide and to make suitable grants in charity to commemorate the event. Prayaga is one of the three great tirthas of the land, the other two being Kasi and Gaya. Bharati has rightly observed, "Just as shrines of local, regional or sectarian importance all over India compare their own merit giving capacity to that of Banaras (Kasi), shrines close to a river or located inside a water expanse compare themselves to Prayaga". The land between the Ganga and the Yamuna is said to be the mons veneris of the goddess Earth and Prayaga is regarded as its generative organ. This is a cosmogonic allusion to the place suggesting that Prayaga is the mythical Centre of the creation of the universe. According to John Irwin, "There can exist any number of such 'Centres without logical contradiction, the Centre (or Navel) of the universe existed wherever man felt himself to be in communication with the divine world"."

Prayaga occupies an important place in the annals of Indian civilization.

serving as a meeting ground of different kinds of peoples and traditions and communicating with every comer of the country. The Ganga-Yamuna Doab, the region between the two rivers, was regarded as the heart of Aryavarta, where the Aryan and indigenous world attained its final fusion, later becoming the political epicentre of the great imperial dynasties Maurya, Gupta, Delhi Sultanate and Mughal. The cultural dominance of the region must have enhanced the fame of Prayaga, which provided its most outstanding feature, the confluence of the rivers at Prayaga came to be regarded as the visible symbol of Madhyadesa which is depicted in the Varaha cave at Udaigiri around C.E. 400. In tradition, Prayaga formed the eastern boundary of Madhyadesa. That Prayaga is the eastern point of Madhyadesa is of spatial significance stressing correspondences between humanity and space in order to make the most out of the various lines of cosmic forces. "The most basic of these forces", observes Brenda Beck. are fixed in association with the various compass points. The east, for example, is the direction from which many beneficial forces emanate".