The Twelve Days of the Pot

The gods and the demons had churned the ocean of milk together, with a mountain for a churning stick and the serpent Vasuki for a rope, and they had agreed to share whatever came up. Poison came first, and Shiva drank it. Then came the wishing cow, the white horse, the moon, the goddess Lakshmi. Last of all rose Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods, and in his hands was a pot, a kumbha, full of amrita, the nectar that makes the drinker immortal.

The demons saw it and surged forward. But before they could reach it, Jayanta, the son of Indra, snatched the pot out of Dhanvantari's hands and ran.

"After him!" shouted Shukra, the teacher of the demons. "The nectar is ours as much as theirs."

So the chase began. Jayanta ran across the sky with the pot in his arms and the whole army of demons behind him. Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods, saw that one runner could not hold it alone, and called on three others. "Surya," he said, "keep the pot from breaking. Chandra, keep the nectar from spilling. Shani, keep Jayanta from losing his way, and keep the demons back."

The chase went on for twelve days of the gods. Eight times the demons caught up with Jayanta in the heavens, and four times on earth, and each time on earth he had to set the pot down to fight.

The first time he set it down at the place where the Ganga, the Yamuna and the hidden Saraswati meet, at Prayag. The second time was at Haridwar, where the Ganga leaves the mountains. The third time was on the bank of the Shipra at Ujjain, and the fourth on the Godavari, near its source, at Nashik and Trimbak. Each time, in the struggle, a few drops of nectar splashed out of the pot and fell into the river.

"Hold it steady!" cried Chandra, and Surya and Shani closed round it, and each time Jayanta caught it up again and ran on.

At last Vishnu came as Mohini, a woman so beautiful that the demons forgot their quarrel and stood staring. She offered to share out the nectar fairly, and they gave her the pot. She served it to the gods, and the demons got none of it. Jayanta's twelve days were over.

But the drops stayed where they had fallen. The four rivers kept something of the nectar in them, and the four places became holy. And because the chase had lasted twelve days of the gods, and a day of the gods is a year on earth, every twelve years, when the sun, the moon and Jupiter stand where they stood on the day the pot was set down, the nectar is said to wake again in that river.

So every twelve years the Kumbh comes back to each of the four places: to Prayag when Jupiter is in Taurus, to Haridwar when it is in Aquarius, and to Ujjain and Nashik when it is in Leo, the lion, which is why those two are called Simhastha. On the days of the great baths, the holy men go down to the water first, in procession, and then the millions follow them into the river.