THE KUMBHA MELA : A FESTIVAL OF RENEWAL

Abstract

Religious festivals play a central role within the life of the religious traditions of humankind. From the little festivals that are part of family practice to the larger festivals of the whole tradition. Humankind across the planet has gathered to celebrate in festivals the meeting of divine and human life, or what Mircea Eliade hascalled "the manifestation of the sacred." Religious festivals include a seemingly bewildering array of practices, ritual gestures and symbolic actions which become more trans- parent as one grasps the sacred morphology of the festival in question. LIkewise, there is seemingly no limit to the diversity of transcendent pur- poses that can occupy the heart of festivals. Adherents of.different tradi- tions have gathered at special places and times throughout their long history to celebrate, for example, the renewal of creation in festivals of the new year; to reenact and relive the dramatic events that are foundational to a tradition or part of its mythology; to give thanks for the harvest.end the gifts of nature; to mark the passages of life from one stage to another. Religious festivals have social, archetypal, and cosmic dimensions that are all combined in remarkably compressed gestures and actions or elaborately dramatized in extended performative acts.