'festival of the Sacred Pitcher'[1]) is an important Hindu pilgrimage, celebrated approximately every 6, 12 and 144 years, correlated with the partial or full revolution of Jupiter and representing the largest human gathering in the world.

[2][3][4] Traditionally, the riverside fairs at four major pilgrimage sites are recognised as the Kumbh Melas: Prayagraj (Ganges-Yamuna-Sarasvati rivers confluence), Haridwar (Ganges), Nashik-Trimbak (Godavari), and Ujjain (Shipra).

This festival is held at the Mahamaham tank (near Kaveri river) every 12 years at Kumbakonam, attracts millions of South Indian Hindus and has been described as the Tamil Kumbh Mela.

[14] The festival is marked by a ritual dip in the waters, but it is also a celebration of community commerce with numerous fairs, education, religious discourses by saints, mass gatherings of monks, and entertainment.

[5] The weeks over which the festival is observed cycle at each site approximately once every 12 years[note 1] based on the Hindu luni-solar calendar and the relative astrological positions of Jupiter, the sun and the moon.

According to Giorgio Bonazzoli, a scholar of Sanskrit Puranas, these are anachronistic explanations, an adaptation of early legends to a later practice by a "small circle of adherents" who have sought the roots of a highly popular pilgrimage and festival.

[50] It is also mentioned in the Pali canons of Buddhism, such as in section 1.7 of Majjhima Nikaya, wherein the Buddha states that bathing in Payaga (Skt: Prayaga) cannot wash away cruel and evil deeds, rather the virtuous one should be pure in heart and fair in action.

[17] In Tirthayatra Parva, before the great war, the epic states "the one who observes firm [ethical] vows, having bathed at Prayaga during Magha, O best of the Bharatas, becomes spotless and reaches heaven.

[59] In contrast, Ariel Glucklich – a scholar of Hinduism and Anthropology of Religion, the Xuanzang memoir includes, somewhat derisively, the reputation of Prayag as a place where people (Hindus) once committed superstitious devotional suicide to liberate their souls, and how a Brahmin of an earlier era successfully put an end to this practice.

This and other details such as the names of temples and bathing pools suggest that Xuanzang presented Hindu practices at Prayag in the 7th century, from his Buddhist perspective and perhaps to "amuse his audience back in China", states Glucklich.

These Purana-genre Hindu texts describe it as a place "bustling with pilgrims, priests, vendors, beggars, guides" and local citizens busy along the confluence of the rivers (Sangam).

[61] According to James Mallinson – a scholar of Hindu yoga manuscripts and monastic institutions, bathing festivals at Prayag with large gatherings of pilgrims are attested since "at least the middle of the first millennium CE", while textual evidence exists for similar pilgrimage at other major sacred rivers since the medieval period.

[28] Four of these morphed under the Kumbh Mela brand during the East India Company rule (British colonial era) when it sought to control the war-prone monks and the lucrative tax and trade revenues at these Hindu pilgrimage festivals.

The first British reference to the Kumbh Mela in Prayag occurs only in an 1868 report, which mentions the need for increased pilgrimage and sanitation controls at the "Coomb fair" to be held in January 1870.

A copper plate inscription of the Maratha Peshwa claims that 12,000 ascetics died in a clash between Shaivite sanyasis and Vaishnavite bairagis at the 1789 Nashik Kumbh Mela.

[72][71] The repetitive clashes, battle-ready nature of the warrior monks, and the lucrative tax and trading opportunities at Kumbh melas in the 18th century attracted the attention of the East India Company officials.

Historically the Kumbh Melas were also major commercial events, initiation of new recruits to the akharas, prayers and community singing, spiritual discussions, education and a spectacle.

[78] According to an 1858 account of the Haridwar Kumbh Mela by the British civil servant Robert Montgomery Martin, the visitors at the fair included people from a number of races and clime.

According to Amna Khalid, the Kumbh Melas emerged as one of the social and political mobilisation venues and the colonial government became keen on monitoring these developments after the Indian rebellion of 1857.

[80] The British officials in co-operation with the native police also made attempts to improve the infrastructure, and movement of pilgrims to avoid a stampede, detect sickness, and the sanitary conditions at the Melas.

[86] The Kumbh Mela held in Haridwar in 2021 was considered a Covid-19 super spreader, contributing to increased cases in Uttarakhand and India, as the growing number of pilgrims visiting the area and numerous health guidelines being violated.

During the 1857 rebellion, Colonel Neill targeted the Kumbh Mela site and shelled the region where the Prayagwals lived, destroying it in what Maclean describes as a "notoriously brutal pacification of Allahabad".

For the 2019 Ardh Kumbh at Prayagraj, the preparations included the construction of a ₹42,000 million (equivalent to ₹52 billion or US$600 million in 2023) temporary city over 2,500 hectares with 122,000 temporary toilets and range of accommodation from simple dormitory tents to 5-star tents, 800 special trains by the Indian Railways, artificially intelligent video surveillance and analytics by IBM, disease surveillance, river transport management by Inland Waterways Authority of India, and an app to help the visitors.

[106] According to Kama Maclean, the coordinators and attendees themselves state that a part of the glory of the Kumbh festival is in that "feeling of brotherhood and love" where millions peacefully gather on the river banks in harmony and a sense of shared heritage.

[109] The collective energy generated during the Mela strengthens social bonds and elevates individual and communal consciousness, illustrating the power of such gatherings to create shared identity and purpose.

The camping (santhas/akharas), food, water, sanitation, emergency health care, fire services, policing, disaster management preparations, and the movement of people require significant prior planning.

The most significant is the belief that the tirtha (pilgrimage) to the Kumbh Mela sites and then bathing in these holy rivers has a salvific value, moksha – a means to liberation from the cycle of rebirths (samsara).

[128] These ritual practices are punctuated by celebratory feasts where the vast number of people sit in rows and share a community meal – mahaprasada – prepared by volunteers from charitable donations.

[140] In 2007, National Geographic filmed and broadcast a documentary of the Prayag Kumbh Mela, named Inside Nirvana, under the direction of Karina Holden with the scholar Kama Maclean as a consultant.

[citation needed][141] On 30 September 2010, the Kumbh Mela featured in the second episode of the Sky One TV series An Idiot Abroad with Karl Pilkington visiting the festival.