103-691: Bathing Festival may refer to: Hindu culture [ edit ] Kumbh Melas Haridwar Kumbh Mela Allahabad Kumbh Mela Ujjain Simhastha Nashik-Trimbakeshwar Simhastha Makar Sankranti Pushkaram Snana Yatra Others [ edit ] Tibetan Golden Star Festival Nepali Maghe Sankranti Indonesian Malay Mandi Safar See also [ edit ] Bath Festival (disambiguation) Water Festival Topics referred to by
206-532: A 12-year cycle for it. The later Mughal Empire era texts that contain the term "Kumbha Mela" in Haridwar's context include Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh (1695–1699 CE), and Chahar Gulshan (1759 CE). The Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh also mentions an annual bathing pilgrimage festival in Prayag, but it does not call it Kumbh. Both these Mughal era texts use the term "Kumbh Mela" to describe only Haridwar's fair, mentioning
309-512: A Buddha statue, involved alms giving and it might have been a Buddhist festival. 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
412-525: A central attraction and a stop for mainstream Hindus who seek their darsana (meeting, view) as well as spiritual guidance and blessings. The Kumbh Melas have been one of their recruitment and initiation venues, as well as the place to trade. These akharas have roots in the Hindu Naga (naked) monks tradition, who went to war without clothes. These monastic groups traditionally credit the Kumbh mela to
515-466: A distinctive long rectangular shape, were used dating back to the 5th century BCE or earlier, and in some cases continued to be used until the 19th century. In China, bamboo and wooden slips were used prior to the introduction of paper . In Russia, birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, and by
618-554: A group, the thirteen active akharas have been, The ten Shaiva and Vaishnava akharas are also known as the Dasanamis, and they believe that Adi Shankara founded them and one of their traditional duties is dharma-raksha (protection of faith). The Kumbh melas of the past, albeit with different regional names, attracted large attendance and have been religiously significant to the Hindus for centuries. However, they have been more than
721-628: A large number of visitors came there for trade. He also includes a 1814 letter from his missionary friend who distributed copies of the Gospel to the pilgrims and tried to convert some to Christianity. 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. Along with priests, soldiers, and religious mendicants,
824-550: A large periodic assembly of Hindus at religious festivals associated with bathing, gift-giving, commerce and organisation. An early account of the Haridwar Kumbh Mela was published by Captain Thomas Hardwicke in 1796 CE. 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
927-411: A later practice by a "small circle of adherents" who have sought the roots of a highly popular pilgrimage and festival. The Hindu legend , however, describes the creation of a "pot of amrita (nectar of immortality)" after the forces of good and evil churn the ocean of creation. The gods and demons fight over this pot, the " kumbha ", of nectar in order to gain immortality. In a later day extension to
1030-518: A local festival. Like the priests at Prayag, those at Nashik and Ujjain, competing with other places for a sacred status, may have adopted the Kumbh tradition for their pre-existing Magha melas. One of the key features of the Kumbh mela has been the camps and processions of the sadhus (monks). By the 18th century, many of these had organised into one of thirteen akharas (warrior ascetic bands, monastic militia), of which ten were related to Hinduism and three related to Sikhism . Seven have belonged to
1133-744: A manuscript is called facsimile . Digital reproductions can be called (high-resolution) scans or digital images . Before the inventions of printing, in China by woodblock and in Europe by movable type in a printing press , all written documents had to be both produced and reproduced by hand. In the west, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls ( volumen in Latin) or books ( codex , plural codices ). Manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus , and on paper. In Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia , palm leaf manuscripts , with
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#17327720219801236-407: A manuscript, or script for short, is an author's or dramatist's text, used by a theatre company or film crew during the production of the work's performance or filming. More specifically, a motion picture manuscript is called a screenplay; a television manuscript, a teleplay; a manuscript for the theatre, a stage play; and a manuscript for audio-only performance is often called a radio play, even when
1339-464: A metal stylus. In the Philippines , for example, as early as 900 AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus, but were punched much like the style of today's dot-matrix printers . This type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the metal document in the hot, humid climate. In Burma ,
1442-533: 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. In modern religious and psychological theory, the Kumbh Mela exemplifies Émile Durkheim 's concept of collective effervescence . This phenomenon occurs when individuals gather in shared rituals, fostering a profound sense of unity and belonging. The collective energy generated during
1545-418: A place "bustling with pilgrims, priests, vendors, beggars, guides" and local citizens busy along the confluence of the rivers ( Sangam ). These Sanskrit guide books of the medieval era India were updated over its editions, likely by priests and guides who had a mutual stake in the economic returns from the visiting pilgrims. One of the longest sections about Prayag rivers and its significance to Hindu pilgrimage
1648-591: A religious event to the Hindu community. 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. During the colonial era rule of the East India Company, its officials saw the Hindu pilgrimage as a means to collect vast sums of revenue through a "pilgrim tax" and taxes on
1751-516: A similar fair held in Prayag and Nashik. The Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh lists the following melas: an annual mela and a Kumbh Mela every 12 years at Haridwar ; a mela held at Trimbak when Jupiter enters Leo (that is, once in 12 years); and an annual mela held at Prayag (in modern Prayagraj) in Magh . Like the Prayag mela, the bathing pilgrimage mela at Nasik and Ujjain are of considerable antiquity. However, these were referred to as Singhasth mela , and
1854-440: A very large human gathering, with officials estimating 70 million people over the festival, including more than 40 million on the busiest single day according to BBC News. Another estimate states that about 30 million attended the 2001 Kumbh mela on the busiest mauni amavasya day alone. In 2007, as many as 70 million pilgrims attended the 45-day long Ardha Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj . In 2013, 120 million pilgrims attended
1957-725: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Kumbh Mela Traditional Kumbh Mela or Kumbha Mela ( / ˌ k ʊ m b ˈ m eɪ l ə / ) is a major pilgrimage and festival in Hinduism . On 4 February 2019, Kumbh Mela witnessed the largest peaceful public gathering of humans ever recorded. It is celebrated in a cycle of approximately 12 years, to celebrate every revolution Brihaspati ( Jupiter ) completes, at four river-bank pilgrimage sites: Prayagraj ( Ganges - Yamuna - Sarasvati rivers confluence), Haridwar (Ganges), Nashik ( Godavari ), and Ujjain ( Shipra ). The festival
2060-577: Is found in chapters 103–112 of the Matsya Purana . Exceedingly old pilgrimage There is evidence enough to suggest that although the Magh Mela – or at least, the tradition of religious festival at the triveni [Prayag] – is exceedingly old, the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad is much more recent. Maclean (2008) , p. 91 According to James Lochtefeld – a scholar of Indian religions,
2163-651: Is found in the Vedic texts, in this sense, often in the context of holding water or in mythical legends about the nectar of immortality. The word Kumbha or its derivatives are found in the Rigveda (1500–1200 BCE), for example, in verse 10.89.7; verse 19.16 of the Yajurveda , verse 6.3 of Samaveda , verse 19.53.3 of the Atharvaveda , and other Vedic and post-Vedic ancient Sanskrit literature. In astrological texts,
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#17327720219802266-426: 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. The seekers believe that bathing in these rivers is a means to prāyaścitta (atonement, penance, restorative action) for past mistakes, and that it cleanses them of their sins. The festival is traditionally credited to
2369-711: Is often used by modern academics, especially where the animal has not been established by testing. Merovingian script , or "Luxeuil minuscule", is named after an abbey in Western France, the Luxeuil Abbey , founded by the Irish missionary St Columba c. 590 . Caroline minuscule is a calligraphic script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Latin alphabet could be easily recognized by
2472-667: The Dead Sea scrolls make no such differentiation. Manuscripts using all upper case letters are called majuscule , those using all lower case are called minuscule . Usually, the majuscule scripts such as uncial are written with much more care. The scribe lifted his pen between each stroke, producing an unmistakable effect of regularity and formality. On the other hand, while minuscule scripts can be written with pen-lift, they may also be cursive , that is, use little or no pen-lift. Islamic manuscripts were produced in different ways depending on their use and time period. Parchment (vellum)
2575-472: The Hindu luni-solar calendar and the relative astrological positions of Jupiter , the sun and the moon. The difference in Prayag and Haridwar festivals is about 6 years, and both feature a Maha (major) and Ardha (half) Kumbh Melas. The exact years – particularly for the Kumbh Melas at Ujjain and Nashik – have been a subject of dispute in the 20th century. The Nashik and Ujjain festivals have been celebrated in
2678-477: 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. The Kumbh mela is "widely regarded as the world's largest religious gathering", states James Lochtefeld. According to Kama Maclean, the coordinators and attendees themselves state that
2781-402: The Latin : manūscriptum (from manus , hand and scriptum from scribere , to write ). The study of the writing (the "hand") in surviving manuscripts is termed palaeography (or paleography). The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. , ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. , mss or mss. for plural (with or without
2884-663: The Shaivism tradition, three to Vaishnavism , two to Udasis (founded by Guru Nanak's son) and one to Nirmalas . These soldier-monk traditions have been a well-established feature of the Indian society, and they are prominent feature of the Kumbh melas. Until the East India Company rule , the Kumbh Melas (Magha Melas) were managed by these akharas . They provide logistical arrangements, policing, intervened and judged any disputes and collected taxes. They also have been
2987-610: The UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . The festival is observed over many days, with the day of Amavasya attracting the largest number on a single day. The Kumbh Mela authorities said that the largest one-day attendance at the Kumbh Mela was 30 million on 10 February 2013, and 50 million on 4 February 2019. The Kumbha in Kumbha Mela literally means "pitcher, jar, pot" in Sanskrit . It
3090-597: The University of Timbuktu in Mali . Major U.S. repositories of medieval manuscripts include: Many European libraries have far larger collections. Because they are books, pre-modern manuscripts are best described using bibliographic rather than archival standards. The standard endorsed by the American Library Association is known as AMREMM. A growing digital catalog of pre-modern manuscripts
3193-774: The middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried ( Nag Hammadi library ) or stored in dry caves ( Dead Sea scrolls ). Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum . Manuscripts in Tocharian languages , written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in
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3296-516: The 1789 Nashik Kumbh Mela. The dispute started over the bathing order, which then indicated status of the akhara s. At the 1796 Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, violence broke out between the Shaivites and the Udasis on logistics and camping rights. 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
3399-484: The 8th-century Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara , as a part of his efforts to start monastic institutions ( matha ), and major Hindu gatherings for philosophical discussions and debates. However, there is no historic literary evidence that he actually did start the Kumbh melas. During the 17th century, the akharas competed for ritual primacy, priority rights to who bathes first or at the most auspicious time, and prominence leading to violent conflicts. The records from
3502-627: The 8th-century Hindu philosopher and saint Adi Shankara , as a part of his efforts to start major Hindu gatherings for philosophical discussions and debates along with Hindu monasteries across the Indian subcontinent. However, there is no historical literary evidence of these mass pilgrimages called "Kumbha Mela" prior to the 19th century. There is ample evidence in historical manuscripts and inscriptions of an annual Magha Mela in Hinduism – with periodic larger gatherings after 6 or 12 years – where pilgrims gathered in massive numbers and where one of
3605-475: The Bible came scores of commentaries. Commentaries were written in volumes, with some focusing on just single pages of scripture. Across Europe, there were universities that prided themselves on their biblical knowledge. Along with universities, certain cities also had their own celebrities of biblical knowledge during the medieval period. A book of hours is a type of devotional text which was widely popular during
3708-401: The British administration to recognise the festival and protect their religious rights. The 16th-century Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas mentions an annual Mela in Prayag, as does a Muslim historian's Ain-i-Akbari (c. 1590 CE). The latter Akbar -era Persian text calls Prayag (spells it Priyag ) the "king of shrines" for the Hindus, and mentions that it is considered particularly holy in
3811-718: The Carolingian script, giving it proportion and legibility. This new revision of the Caroline minuscule was called English Protogothic Bookhand. Another script that is derived from the Caroline Minuscule was the German Protogothic Bookhand. It originated in southern Germany during the second half of the 12th century. All the individual letters are Caroline; but just as with English Protogothic Bookhand it evolved. This can be seen most notably in
3914-471: The East India Company rule era report of violence between the akharas and numerous deaths. At the 1760 Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a clash broke out between Shaivite Gosains and Vaishnavite Bairagis (ascetics), resulting in hundreds of deaths. A copper plate inscription of the Maratha Peshwa claims that 12,000 ascetics died in a clash between Shaivite sanyasi s and Vaishnavite bairagi s at
4017-481: The Hindu month of Magha . The late 16th-century Tabaqat-i-Akbari also records of an annual bathing festival at Prayag sangam where "various classes of Hindus came from all sides of the country to bathe, in such numbers, that the jungles and plains [around it] were unable to hold them". The Kumbh Mela of Haridwar appears to be the original Kumbh Mela, since it is held according to the astrological sign "Kumbha" ( Aquarius ), and because there are several references to
4120-538: The Hindu pilgrims to a Christian sect. 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". "Prayagwals targeted and destroyed the mission press and churches in Allahabad". Once the British had regained control of the region, the Prayagwals were persecuted by
4223-586: The Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj. Nasik has registered maximum visitors to 75 million. Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj is the largest in the world, the attendance and scale of preparation of which keeps rising with each successive celebration. For the 2019 Ardh Kumbh at Prayagraj , the preparations included the construction of a ₹ 42,000 million (equivalent to ₹ 52 billion or US$ 630 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
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4326-407: The Kumbh Mela is uncertain. The 7th-century Buddhist Chinese traveller Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang) mentions king Harsha and his capital of Prayag, which he states to be a sacred Hindu city with hundreds of " deva temples" and two Buddhist institutions. He also mentions the Hindu bathing rituals at the junction of the rivers. According to some scholars, this is the earliest surviving historical account of
4429-538: The Kumbh Mela originated in times immemorial and is attested in the Hindu mythology about Samudra Manthana ( lit. churning of the ocean) found in the Vedic texts. Historians, in contrast, reject these claims as none of the ancient or medieval era texts that mention the Samudra Manthana legend ever link it to a "mela" or festival. According to Giorgio Bonazzoli, a scholar of Sanskrit Puranas, these are anachronistic explanations, an adaptation of early legends to
4532-401: The Kumbh Mela, which took place in present-day Prayag in 644 CE. Kama MacLean – an Indologist who has published articles on the Kumbh Mela predominantly based on the colonial archives and English-language media, states based on emails from other scholars and a more recent interpretation of the 7th-century Xuanzang memoir, the Prayag event happened every 5 years (and not 12 years), featured
4635-628: The Kumbh Melas: Prayagraj, Haridwar, Trimbak-Nashik and Ujjain. Other locations that are sometimes called Kumbh melas – with the bathing ritual and a significant participation of pilgrims – include Kurukshetra , and Sonipat . Each site's celebration dates are calculated in advance according to a special combination of zodiacal positions of Bṛhaspati ( Jupiter ), Surya (the Sun ) and Chandra (the Moon ). The relative years vary between
4738-845: The Mela strengthens social bonds and elevates individual and communal consciousness, illustrating the power of such gatherings to create shared identity and purpose. The Kumbh Mela are classified as: For the 2019 Prayagraj Kumbh Mela , the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced that the Ardh Kumbh Mela (organised every 6 years) will simply be known as "Kumbh Mela", and the Kumbh Mela (organised every 12 years) will be known as "Maha Kumbh Mela" ("Great Kumbh Mela"). Numerous sites and fairs have been locally referred to be their Kumbh Melas. Of these, four sites are broadly recognised as
4841-568: The Middle Ages. They are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscripts . Each book of hours contain a similar collection of texts, prayers , and psalms but decoration can vary between each and each example. Many have minimal illumination, often restricted to ornamented initials , but books of hours made for wealthier patrons can be extremely extravagant with full-page miniatures . These books were used for owners to recite prayers privately eight different times, or hours, of
4944-532: The Tamil Kumbh Mela. Other places where the Magha-Mela or Makar-Mela bathing pilgrimage and fairs have been called Kumbh Mela include Kurukshetra, Sonipat , and Panauti (Nepal). The Kumbh Melas have three dates around which the significant majority of pilgrims participate, while the festival itself lasts between one and three months around these dates. Each festival attracts millions, with
5047-463: The Vedic era texts (pre-500 BCE). Nor is this story found in the later era Puranas (3rd to 10th-century CE). While the Kumbha Mela phrase is not found in the ancient or medieval era texts, numerous chapters and verses in Hindu texts are found about a bathing festival, the sacred junction of rivers Ganga , Yamuna and mythical Saraswati at Prayag, and pilgrimage to Prayag. These are in
5150-696: The arm of the letter h. It has a hairline that tapers out by curving to the left. When first read the German Protogothic h looks like the German Protogothic b. Many more scripts sprang out of the German Protogothic Bookhand. After those came Bastard Anglicana, which is best described as: The coexistence in the Gothic period of formal hands employed for the copying of books and cursive scripts used for documentary purposes eventually resulted in cross-fertilization between these two fundamentally different writing styles. Notably, scribes began to upgrade some of
5253-541: The attendance rose sharply. On amavasya – one of the three key bathing dates, over 5 million attended the 1954 Kumbh, about 10 million attended the 1977 Kumbh while the 1989 Kumbh attracted about 15 million. On 14 April 1998, 10 million pilgrims attended the Kumb Mela at Haridwar on the busiest single day, according to the Himalayan Academy editors. In 2001, IKONOS satellite images confirmed
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#17327720219805356-407: The attention of the East India Company officials. They intervened, laid out the camps, trading spaces, and established a bathing order for each akhara. After 1947, the state governments have taken over this role and provide the infrastructure for the Kumbh mela in their respective states. The Kumbh Melas attract many loner sadhus (monks) who do not belong to any akharas. Of those who do belong to
5459-551: The beginning of this text coming from the Abby of Saint-Martin at Tours . Caroline Minuscule arrived in England in the second half of the 10th century. Its adoption there, replacing Insular script , was encouraged by the importation of continental European manuscripts by Saints Dunstan , Aethelwold , and Oswald . This script spread quite rapidly, being employed in many English centres for copying Latin texts. English scribes adapted
5562-464: The codex format (as in a modern book), which had replaced the scroll by Late Antiquity . Parchment or vellum , as the best type of parchment is known, had also replaced papyrus , which was not nearly so long lived and has survived to the present almost exclusively in the very dry climate of Egypt , although it was widely used across the Roman world. Parchment is made of animal skin, normally calf, sheep, or goat, but also other animals. With all skins,
5665-715: The collection, in accordance with national and international content standards such as DACS and ISAD(G) . In other contexts, however, the use of the term "manuscript" no longer necessarily means something that is hand-written. By analogy a typescript has been produced on a typewriter. In book, magazine, and music publishing, a manuscript is an autograph or copy of a work, written by an author, composer or copyist. Such manuscripts generally follow standardized typographic and formatting rules, in which case they can be called fair copy (whether original or copy). The staff paper commonly used for handwritten music is, for this reason, often called "manuscript paper". In film and theatre,
5768-551: The colonial officials, some convicted and hanged, while others for whom the government did not have proof enough to convict were persecuted. Large tracts of Kumbh mela lands near the Ganga-Yamuna confluence were confiscated and annexed into the government cantonment. In the years after 1857, the Prayagwals and the Kumbh Mela pilgrim crowds carried flags with images alluding to the rebellion and the racial persecution. The British media reported these pilgrim assemblies and protests at
5871-432: The cursive scripts. A script that has been thus formalized is known as a bastard script (whereas a bookhand that has had cursive elements fused onto it is known as a hybrid script). The advantage of such a script was that it could be written more quickly than a pure bookhand; it thus recommended itself to scribes in a period when demand for books was increasing and authors were tending to write longer texts. In England during
5974-461: The day. Along with Bibles, large numbers of manuscripts made in the Middle Ages were received in Church . Due to the complex church system of rituals and worship these books were the most elegantly written and finely decorated of all medieval manuscripts. Liturgical books usually came in two varieties. Those used during mass and those for divine office. Most liturgical books came with a calendar in
6077-546: The early centuries of the Christian era , manuscripts were written without spaces between the words ( scriptio continua ), which makes them especially hard for the untrained to read. Extant copies of these early manuscripts written in Greek or Latin and usually dating from the 4th century to the 8th century, are classified according to their use of either all upper case or all lower case letters . Hebrew manuscripts, such as
6180-417: The fair had horse traders from Bukhara , Kabul , Turkistan as well as Arabs and Persians. The festival had roadside merchants of food grains, confectioners, clothes, toys and other items. Thousands of pilgrims in every form of transport as well as on foot marched to the pilgrimage site, dressed in colourful costumes, some without clothes, occasionally shouting "Mahadeo Bol" and "Bol, Bol" together. At night
6283-459: The flow of pilgrims to and from the river and ghats was managed. In 1986, 50 people were killed in a stampede. The Prayag Kumbh mela in 1885 became a source of scandal when a Muslim named Husain was appointed as the Kumbh Mela manager, and Indian newspaper reports stated that Husain had "organised a flotilla of festooned boats for the pleasure of European ladies and gentlemen, and entertained them with dancing girls, liquor and beef" as they watched
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#17327720219806386-795: The form of Snana (bathe) ritual and in the form of Prayag Mahatmya (greatness of Prayag, historical tour guides in Sanskrit). The earliest mention of Prayag and the bathing pilgrimage is found in Rigveda Pariśiṣṭa (supplement to the Rigveda ). 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
6489-519: The four sites, but the cycle repeats about every 12 years. Since Jupiter's orbit completes in 11.86 years, a calendar year adjustment appears in approximately 8 cycles. Therefore, approximately once a century, the Kumbh mela returns to a site after 11 years. Manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten , as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently,
6592-447: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, many books were written in the script known as Bastard Anglicana. From ancient texts to medieval maps, anything written down for study would have been done with manuscripts. Some of the most common genres were bibles, religious commentaries, philosophy, law and government texts. " The Bible was the most studied book of the Middle Ages". The Bible was the center of medieval religious life. Along with
6695-562: The front. This served as a quick reference point for important dates in Jesus' life and to tell church officials which saints were to be honored and on what day. In the context of library science , a manuscript is defined as any hand-written item in the collections of a library or an archive. For example, a library's collection of hand-written letters or diaries is considered a manuscript collection. Such manuscript collections are described in finding aids, similar to an index or table of contents to
6798-523: The full stop, all uppercase or all lowercase) are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural; by an old convention, a doubling of the last letter of the abbreviation expresses the plural, just as pp. means "pages". A manuscript may be a codex (i.e. bound as a book ), a scroll , or bound differently or consist of loose pages. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The mechanical reproduction of
6901-470: The historian and biographer of the Turco-Mongol raider and conqueror Timur , Timur's armies plundered Haridwar and massacred the gathered pilgrims. The ruthlessly slaughtered pilgrims were likely those attending the Kumbh mela of 1399. The Timur accounts mention the mass bathing ritual along with shaving of head, the sacred river Ganges, charitable donations, the place was at the mountainous source of
7004-698: The hubs for the Hindutva movement and politics. In 1964, the Vishva Hindu Parishad was founded at the Haridwar Kumbh Mela. The historical and modern estimates of attendance vary greatly between sources. For example, the colonial era Imperial Gazetteer of India reported that between 2 and 2.5 million pilgrims attended the Kumbh mela in 1796 and 1808, then added these numbers may be exaggerations. Between 1892 and 1908, in an era of major famines, cholera and plague epidemics in British India,
7107-502: The impact of the religious tax on the pilgrims became clear. In 1938, Lord Auckland abolished the pilgrim tax and vast numbers returned to the pilgrimage thereafter. According to Macclean, the colonial records of this period on the Prayag Mela present a biased materialistic view given they were written by colonialists and missionaries. Baptist missionary John Chamberlain, who visited the 1824 Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, stated that
7210-515: The kammavaca, Buddhist manuscripts, were inscribed on brass, copper or ivory sheets, and even on discarded monk robes folded and lacquered. In Italy some important Etruscan texts were similarly inscribed on thin gold plates: similar sheets have been discovered in Bulgaria . Technically, these are all inscriptions rather than manuscripts. In the Western world, from the classical period through
7313-449: The largest gathering at the Prayag Kumbh Mela and the second largest at Haridwar. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica and Indian authorities, more than 200 million Hindus gathered for the Kumbh Mela in 2019, including 50 million on the festival's most crowded day. The festival is one of the largest peaceful gatherings in the world, and considered as the "world's largest congregation of religious pilgrims". It has been inscribed on
7416-554: The late 15th century had largely replaced parchment for many purposes there. When Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were sometimes made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium , each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy -wrappings, discarded in
7519-744: The later Kumbh Mela as strangely "hostile" and with "disbelief", states Maclean. The Kumbh Mela continued to play an important role in the independence movement through 1947, as a place where the native people and politicians periodically gathered in large numbers. In 1906, the Sanatan Dharm Sabha met at the Prayag Kumbh Mela and resolved to start the Banaras Hindu University in Madan Mohan Malaviya's leadership. Kumbh Melas have also been one of
7622-411: The legend, the pot is spilled at four places, and that is the origin of the four Kumbha Melas. The story varies and is inconsistent, with some stating Vishnu as Mohini avatar, others stating Dhanavantari or Garuda or Indra spilling the pot. This "spilling" and associated Kumbh Mela story is not found in the earliest mentions of the original legend of Samudra Manthana (churning of the ocean) such as
7725-402: The libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Papyrus has a life of at most a century or two in relatively humid Italian or Greek conditions; only those works copied onto parchment, usually after the general conversion to Christianity, have survived, and by no means all of those. Originally, all books were in manuscript form. In China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing
7828-675: The literate class from different regions. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, classical and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule throughout the Carolingian Renaissance . The script developed into blackletter and became obsolete, though its revival in the Italian renaissance forms the basis of more recent scripts. In Introduction to Manuscript Studies , Clemens and Graham associate
7931-416: The middle of the first millennium CE", while textual evidence exists for similar pilgrimage at other major sacred rivers since the medieval period. 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. Additionally, the priests sought
8034-425: The name Kumbh for these more ancient bathing pilgrimages probably dates to the mid-19th century. D. P. Dubey states that none of the ancient Hindu texts call the Prayag fair as a "Kumbh Mela". Kama Maclean states that the early British records do not mention the name "Kumbh Mela" or the 12-year cycle for the Prayag fair. The first British reference to the Kumbh Mela in Prayag occurs only in an 1868 report, which mentions
8137-490: 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. Other early accounts of the significance of Prayag to Hinduism is found in the various versions of the Prayaga Mahatmya , dated to the late 1st-millennium CE. These Purana-genre Hindu texts describe it as
8240-547: The native police also made attempts to improve the infrastructure, movement of pilgrims to avoid a stampede, detect sickness, and the sanitary conditions at the Melas. Reports of cholera led the officials to cancel the pilgrimage, but the pilgrims went on "passive resistance" and stated they preferred to die rather than obey the official orders. The Kumbh Melas have been sites of tragedies. According to Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi ,
8343-612: The need for increased pilgrimage and sanitation controls at the "Coomb fair" to be held in January 1870. According to Maclean, the Prayagwal Brahmin priests of Prayag coopted the Kumbh legend and brand to the annual Prayag Magh Mela given the socio-political circumstances in the 19th century. The Kumbh Mela at Ujjain began in the 18th century, when the Maratha ruler Ranoji Shinde invited ascetics from Nashik to Ujjain for
8446-473: The phrase "Kumbh mela" is yet to be found in literature prior to the 19th century. The phrases such as "Maha Kumbh" and "Ardh Kumbh" in the context of the ancient religious pilgrimage festivals with a different name at Prayag, Nasik and Ujjain are evidently of a more modern era. The Magh Mela of Prayag is probably the oldest among the four modern day Kumbh Melas. It dates from the early centuries CE, given it has been mentioned in several early Puranas . However,
8549-496: The phrase Kumbh Mela and historical data about it is missing in early Indian texts. However, states Lochtefeld, these historical texts "clearly reveal large, well-established bathing festivals" that were either annual or based on the twelve-year cycle of planet Jupiter. Manuscripts related to Hindu ascetics and warrior-monks – akharas fighting the Islamic Sultanates and Mughal Empire era – mention bathing pilgrimage and
8652-444: The pilgrimage dropped to between 300,000 and 400,000. During World War II , the colonial government banned the Kumbh Mela to conserve scarce supplies of fuel. The ban, coupled with false rumours that Japan planned to bomb and commit genocide at the Kumbh mela site, led to sharply lower attendance at the 1942 Kumbh mela than prior decades when an estimated 2 to 4 million pilgrims gathered at each Kumbh mela. After India's independence,
8755-497: The pilgrims bathing. According to the colonial archives, the Prayagwal community associated with the Kumbh Mela were one of those who seeded and perpetuated the resistance and 1857 rebellion to the colonial rule. Prayagwals objected to and campaigned against the colonial government who supported Christian missionaries and officials who treated them and the pilgrims as "ignorant co-religionists" and who aggressively tried to convert
8858-407: The pilgrims. This changed particularly after 1857. 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. The government deployed police to gain this intelligence at the grassroots level of Kumbh Mela. The British officials in co-operation with
8961-664: The population organized around the NGO "Sauvegarde et valorisation des manuscrits pour la défense de la culture islamique" (SAVAMA-DCI). Some 350,000 manuscripts were transported to safety, and 300,000 of them were still in Bamako in 2022. An international consultation on the safeguarding, accessibility and promotion of ancient manuscripts in the Sahel was held at the UNESCO office in Bamako in 2020. Most surviving pre-modern manuscripts use
9064-556: The quality of the finished product is based on how much preparation and skill was put into turning the skin into parchment. Parchment made from calf or sheep was the most common in Northern Europe, while civilizations in Southern Europe preferred goatskin. Often, if the parchment is white or cream in color and veins from the animal can still be seen, it is calfskin. If it is yellow, greasy or in some cases shiny, then it
9167-418: The recorded performance is disseminated via non-radio means. In insurance, a manuscript policy is one that is negotiated between the insurer and the policyholder, as opposed to an off-the-shelf form supplied by the insurer. About 300,000 Latin, 55,000 Greek, 30,000 Armenian and 12,000 Georgian medieval manuscripts have survived. National Geographic estimates that 700,000 African manuscripts have survived at
9270-500: The rituals included a sacred dip in a river or holy tank. According to Kama MacLean, the socio-political developments during the colonial era and a reaction to Orientalism led to the rebranding and remobilisation of the ancient Magha Mela as the modern era Kumbh Mela, particularly after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 . The weeks over which the festival is observed cycle at each site approximately once every 12 years based on
9373-533: The river and that pilgrims believed a dip in the sacred river leads to their salvation. Several stampedes have occurred at the Kumbh Melas. After an 1820 stampede at Haridwar killed 485 people, the Company government took extensive infrastructure projects, including the construction of new ghats and road widening, to prevent further stampedes. The various Kumbh melas, in the 19th- and 20th-century witnessed sporadic stampedes, each tragedy leading to changes in how
9476-539: The river banks and camps illuminated with oil lamps, fireworks burst over the river, and innumerable floating lamps set by the pilgrims drifted downstream of the river. Several Hindu rajas , Sikh rulers and Muslim Nawabs visited the fair. Europeans watched the crowds and few Christian missionaries distributed their religious literature at the Hardwar Mela, wrote Martin. Prior to 1838, the British officials collected taxes but provided no infrastructure or services to
9579-429: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Bathing Festival . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bathing_Festival&oldid=1146484043 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
9682-687: The same year or one year apart, typically about 3 years after the Allahabad / Prayagraj Kumbh Mela. Elsewhere in many parts of India, similar but smaller community pilgrimage and bathing festivals are called the Magha Mela, Makar Mela or equivalent. For example, in Tamil Nadu , the Magha Mela with water-dip ritual is a festival of antiquity. 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
9785-560: The term also refers to the zodiac sign of Aquarius . The astrological etymology dates to late 1st-millennium CE, likely influenced by Greek zodiac ideas. The word mela means "unite, join, meet, move together, assembly, junction" in Sanskrit, particularly in the context of fairs, community celebration. This word too is found in the Rigveda and other ancient Hindu texts. Thus, Kumbh Mela means an "assembly, meet, union" around "water or nectar of immortality". Many Hindus believe that
9888-469: The term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same. Before the arrival of prints, all documents and books were manuscripts. Manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, music notation , explanatory figures, or illustrations. The word "manuscript" derives from
9991-457: The trade that occurred during the festival. According to Dubey, as well as Macclean, the Islamic encyclopaedia Yadgar-i-Bahaduri written in 1834 Lucknow , described the Prayag festival and its sanctity to the Hindus. The British officials, states Dubey, raised the tax to amount greater than average monthly income and the attendance fell drastically. The Prayagwal pandas initially went along, according to colonial records, but later resisted as
10094-486: The typewriter in the late 19th century. Because of the likelihood of errors being introduced each time a manuscript was copied, the filiation of different versions of the same text is a fundamental part of the study and criticism of all texts that have been transmitted in manuscript. In Southeast Asia , in the first millennium, documents of sufficiently great importance were inscribed on soft metallic sheets such as copperplate , softened by refiner's fire and inscribed with
10197-490: The virtuous one should be pure in heart and fair in action. The Mahabharata mentions a bathing pilgrimage at Prayag as a means of prāyaścitta (atonement, penance) for past mistakes and guilt. 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." In Anushasana Parva , after
10300-405: The war, the epic elaborates this bathing pilgrimage as "geographical tirtha" that must be combined with Manasa-tirtha (tirtha of the heart) whereby one lives by values such as truth, charity, self-control, patience and others. There are other references to Prayaga and river-side festivals in ancient Indian texts, including at the places where present-day Kumbh Melas are held, but the exact age of
10403-586: Was a common way to produce manuscripts. Manuscripts eventually transitioned to using paper in later centuries with the diffusion of paper making in the Islamic empire. When Muslims encountered paper in Central Asia, its use and production spread to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa during the 8th century. 4,203 of Timbuktu's manuscripts were burned or stolen during the armed conflict in Mali between 2012 and 2013. 90% of these manuscripts were saved by
10506-412: Was made from sheepskin. Vellum comes from the Latin word vitulinum which means "of calf"/ "made from calf". For modern parchment makers and calligraphers, and apparently often in the past, the terms parchment and vellum are used based on the different degrees of quality, preparation and thickness, and not according to which animal the skin came from, and because of this, the more neutral term "membrane"
10609-515: Was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868. In the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive. Private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of
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