Workshop on Pilgrimage: the Kumbha Mela Session 3 Notes

Workshop on Pilgrimage: The Kumbha Mela Session 3 Notes September 24, 2012 Purpose: These notes, by Susan Holman (HGHI staff and HDS alumna) are provided - for internal reference only - as short “draft” summaries of Harvard University South Asian Studies 150: Workshop on Pilgrimage: The Khumba Mela (Harvard College/GSAS 88766), Fall 2012-2013, taught by Diana Eck (Religion) and Rahul Mehrotra (Design). The purpose of these notes is to aid HGHI’s support of this course-based collaboration and anticipated development of public goods related to urbanization and global health. Meets: Mondays 3-5 in CSIS South S040 Course website: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k87818&login=yes Summary of Today’s Session: Coming Soon: Next week we will have two guest speakers: 1) Nashid Nabian, who works on cellular technology, urban sensing, and crowd-densing. 2) Sue Goldie, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who is working with our planning group. By the end of the coming week, students should watch for a posted research application for the January session. Over the next couple of weeks, students should think about their desired projects and plan to meet with Diana, Rahul, and Sue Goldie to talk about the projects. With so many students in the course, we want to be sure that the research paper will truly provide you with a grounding. Today’s Content Discussion: Today’s session began with an ~15 minute excerpt from the film, “Shortcut to Nirvana.” Jenny Bordo will post it on the course website for viewing. Random notes: one sadhu spoke of samadu (sp?), a deeply meditative state, practiced by a Japanese woman in the film who spends time during the Mela buried in a pit. Another speaks of this essence as “silence, nothingness, hope.” Two Westerners reflecton what brought them to the Mela (one is an MPH nurse from NYC). On westerners, see also Kama Maclean’s focus on “seeing and being seen” in this week’s readings. Another sadhu emphasized the role of ritual, defining it as offering one’s life to God; “sankalp” (sp?), the ritual of prayer. Many examples of street theater (leilas). Overall, the film clip highlighted gurus present, some pretty spectacular in their asceticism, almost entertainment. Performances, called “tamasha (sp?), translate something like “mash ups”! Much noise from musical bands, processions with (intentional) entertainment. Photos of people smoking ganja. We get a visual sense of the weather: winter mornings, fog and smoke. We see the emphasis on sitting with the holy ones (by sitting with them you absorb their holiness). Clip ended with bathing ritual on an astonishingly empty stretch of water. No one wants to leave the festival without bathing. 1 Our topical focus for this session was the rivers --the Ganga and Yamuna. Diana notes, “This is, after all, the reason people come to the Kumbh Mela: to bathe in the rivers. Why? What is the mythological, theological meaning of the rivers? How is the Ganga understood? What is the water quality of the Ganga, the Yamuna and the sangam of the rivers at Allahabad? How do pilgrims and others understand the pollution of the "river of heaven?" How does Kumbha planning deal wih the danger of water- borne disease in a crowd of millions? What are we to make of what some call "the mysterious X factor?" Diana showed slides to help us understand the tradition of the rivers. Rivers are called “Avatarana” – sacred rivers that descended from the sky to earth. These rivers of heaven are the focus of the pilgrimage, as Hindus bring their devotion to mother Ganga. Devotion to heaven is why people come: to scoop up water as a blessing and offering to the gods and humans. The Ramayana opens with the story of the “fall” of the Ganga as it came to earth, a fall provoked by a human dilemma caused during a “horse sacrifice.” Such horse sacrifices are common in Hindu tradition, and include the concept that wherever the horse roams unimpeded during the ritual, the land becomes the property of the king who is performing the ritual. In this case a horse disappeared and the king presumed it had been stolen. After a long search, the missing horse was found tied up in the ashram of the sage Kapile (sp?). When the king’s soldiers woke him up and accused him of theft, he fixed his eye on them and burned 40,000 descendents of the king to a crisp. The king had one son who remained alive, and this son had a son, and this grandson of the king does penance to bring the river of heaven to earth in order to bring the ashes of those who had been destroyed so their proper rituals could be performed. Ganga agreed to flow provided that the Lord Sriva would catch her flow in his ascetic hair [so the flow would not destroy the earth]. He agrees; there is some competition between Ganga and the other spouses, but she flows out of heaven through his locks. The idea of Ganga’s flow, Diana points out, is really not about a story from the past but about an ongoing heavenly source. We see the carved image of the river goddess and snake symbol at the doorway of many temples: ascetic serpentine motif, Gangetic crocodile, Shiva with the Ganga flowing from his head – all of this the visual vocabulary of North India. Other symbolism in the representation relates to the four corners of India. A pilgrimage journey to the four is one of the most popular Hindu pilgrimages. Images of the Ganga high in the Himalayas illustrate the wonderful rock formations and the strong sense of ascending. Gomukh is one dramatic site 12,000 feet high, the terminus of the Gangotri Glacier. Here Diana showed slides of sacred water coming out of a cow’s mouth, another common theme. The homology of cows and water is early and continuing. People bring milk as one of the offerings they pour into the rivers; some see this as problematic. Ganga is a female deity associated exclusively with benign goodness (even though the river can be very rough). Unlike other Hindu goddesses, she is never associated with weapons. Another form of offering ritual is that of priests who lower flaming oil lamps into the river, bringing them up often still lit. The slides showed examples from Varanasi. This is a relatively recent ritual, 2 involving lighted canopies, synchronized, with the lamp offered not just to the image of the mother that is the Ganga, but to the water itself. It is designed to be a spectacle. They call it Ganga siva (sp?). There are many similar rites at other rivers in India. Haridwar (city) – means “door of Hari.” Here the Ganga enters the plains of India. Conveys an idea of “God’s gateway.” Maclean speaks of this. Other “doors” include Gangadvara at Bahmajiri near Nasik, where the river begins to pool at the base of the mountain, with bathing in the pools, a source of the river Naurma. [not sure I’ve captured ideas accurately here]. For more see eg James Lochtefeld book, God’s Gateway: Identity and Meaning in a Hindu Pilgrimage Place. Overall, there is a very broad sense of sacred waters. One of the great pilgrimages of India is the circumnabulation of the Narmada River. People walk the pilgrimage by keeping the river always on their right. It is a very arduous trip. A major damming project funded by the World Bank has begun to submerge some of these places along the way. Diana showed a slide of two women walking this path; “they expect to die along the way.” The Haridwar Kumbh of 2010 was a sort of “ritual amphitheater”, with bathing places stretched along the river, and fences so pilgrims would not be swept away (The Ganga flows very swiftly). The Ganga at Allahabad is not very deep; you can see people wading in the pictures. One of the myths of the creation of Varanasi says it was formed as an earthly home to Shiva following pressure on the husband from his parents-in-law, who thought their daughter deserved better than a tent made of elephant skin! Thus the sense of the river at Varanasi is one of being “never left by Shiva.” This is where we see the famous images of the long stretch of bathing ghats. Ritual theater here extends for miles on one side of the river only; the other side is the flood plain. Vital concept: No culture in the world does with its rivers what India does. Thus in India presumably rivers should have top priority. The “Taraka Mantra” is what is whispered at death, the “ferryboat mantra” for the “crossing.” It is held to be something that will enlighten your mind, part of the concept of the transcendence of death. At Varanasi the entire river ghats have to be excavated every year as they get covered with silt during the river’s rising Student notes: disconnect between focus on life and fact that people come here to die; what is the relationship? Cremation grounds and laundry are all very much part of the river front. Varanasi now has an electric crematorium but with frequent power outages etc it often does not work. People prefer cremation by wood fires. Some say that the laundry use of detergents helps to “purify” the water! The water contains ashes as well as bodies of those people who are not cremated (sadhus, children). A sadhu’s renunciation ritual is to lie on his (or her?) own cremation pyre (without the fire).

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