Chasing the Monk's Shadow by Mishi Saran

Author:Mishi Saran [Saran, Mishi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351182818
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Holy Confluence

It was already the middle of January.

If I wanted to catch the Maha Kumbh Mela, the Festival of the Great Pitcher, which lay smack on Xuanzang’s route, I had to immediately join the massive flow of bodies towards Allahabad, or Prayag, the city where I was born, where the Ganga meets the Yamuna, where there was a third river, subterranean and lost.

It meant I had to skip a section of Xuanzang’s route in Uttar Pradesh and, to my disappointment, forgo a visit to Kanauj the capital of the great king Harshavardhana. It also meant I would go first to Allahabad and then to Ayodhya, instead of the other way round like the Chinese pilgrim.

Eager to see the Maha Kumbh Mela, I was willing to make the sacrifice. As the monk wrote, Po-lo-ke-ya, or Prayag, was about 5000 li in circuit. The capital lay between two branches of the river and was blessed with a warm, agreeable climate. Its people were gentle.

To the east of the enclosure of charity, at the confluence of the two rivers, every day there are many hundreds of men who bathe themselves and die. The people of this country consider that whoever wishes to be born in heaven ought to fast to a grain of rice, and then drown himself in the waters. By bathing in this water (they say) all the pollution of sin is washed away and destroyed . . . 1

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