A Million Bathers

Hokitika Guardian, 9 May 1921, Page 1

A Million Bathers

ALLAHABAD, Feb. 7. I have just seen the biggest bathing parade in the world. Here in Allahabad nearly a million people have bathed to-day. And it is not even as if some cooling sea waves attract this multitude. The nearest sea is nearly a thousand miles away to the east.

Allahabad’s attraction is due to the

fact that here the two holy rivers of India meet. This is the sacred spot where Mother Ganges meets her chief tributary, the holy Jumna. The "actual meeting place of the two rivers is a split of alluvial soil, close by the fort. On the left are tho muddy waters of the Ganges, whereas to the right the Jumna rolls quietly along with a bluer and less sluggish stream. The actual religious significance is lost in the dim past of tradition long before the dawn of the lights of history. It is said that Brahma sacrificked a horse here in memory of his recovery of the four Vedas or holy hooks. However that may he, the supreme object of tlie pilgrims is to bathe in the cleansing waters. The festival itself is called the Maglimela—.

For days before it begins pilgrims rom all parts have turned towards Allalabad, many of the poorest classes

walking from remote villages. At dawn this morning the whole plain for a mile round was covered with long spider-leg lines of pilgrims, which crossed and recrossed each other as they made their way to various points on the river front.

Here, too, were groups of Sunnyasis, holy men, smeared in ashes and with next to no clothing—curious marks of sancity from a Western point of view! Temporary shelters of straw and thatch offered resting-places where those from afar sat and cooked their meals, in much the same way that the early Aryan settlers had done. There -was the usual array of crudo side-shows; and beggars, many of them horribly deformed, swarmed by the sides of every path. On the water’s edge the bathers were

packed in every available yard of space. Some of them, overcome with an access of religious fervour, drank deep draughts of the holy water, which must have contained an enormous mass of contaminating matter.