Mahamaham, Kumbakonam: the twelve-year bath

Legend says that before the great deluge Brahma hid the seeds of all life and amrita, the nectar of immortality, in a pot, the kumbha. When the waters receded, the pot came to rest here, and Shiva, in the guise of a hunter, broke it with an arrow; the nectar spread into a tank. From nectar and sand Shiva shaped the linga of the Kumbeswarar temple, and the shards of the pot, its coconut and mango leaves became the town's shrines. The name Kumbakonam is read as "the pot's corner". In the Periya Puranam nine river goddesses, from the Ganga to the Kaveri, gather in the tank to worship Shiva and cleanse their own waters, which is why a dip here is held to equal a dip in every sacred river.

Mahamaham, "the great Magam", is the Masi Magam day, when the full moon is in the Magha star in the Tamil month of Masi, in a year when Jupiter is in Leo. Every year the same day brings a smaller bath, Masi Magam; the great one waits for Jupiter. Its orbit takes a little under twelve years, so now and then the festival comes after eleven. The everyday name of the festival, mamangam, is also used for a span of twelve years.

The tank has been revered for over a thousand years: in the 7th century the Shaiva poet-saint Appar sang of the Ganga's unseen presence in it. Inscriptions record that the Vijayanagara emperor Krishnadevaraya came to bathe here in the 16th century, and an inscription on the north bank records tulapurusha-dana, a person weighed against gold that was then given away. In the 19th century Tamil poets and scholars gathered for the festival, and the monasteries held talks and debates every day.

The Mahamaham tank covers about 6.2 acres in the middle of the town. Inside it are twenty theerthams, sacred wells, and on its banks stand sixteen stone mandapams (pavilions) built in the 16th century by the minister Govinda Dikshitar, each with a linga for a different aspect of Shiva.

Seventeen temples take part. Twelve Shiva temples, among them Adi Kumbeswarar, Kasi Viswanathar, Nageswara and Someswarar, send their deities to the tank. The five Vishnu temples, among them Sarangapani and Chakrapani, hold their bath on the bank of the Kaveri instead. On Mahamaham day the deities are brought to the water's edge for the theerthavari, the sacred bath of the gods, which the people share with them: at noon the images are lowered into the water and the crowd steps into the tank at the same moment.

The bath at the tank and the Kaveri ghats is open to everyone. The full round goes like this.

This is one of the few South Indian events worth fixing a trip around years ahead. Plan two nights at least, three ideally: the two nights before the bath and the night of it, so you leave after the crowd.