The Kumbh Mela was not founded by anyone. It is what happens when a very old and still living tradition, Sanātana Dharma, comes to the river at the hour its own calendar names. This page explains that tradition in plain words and shows where to read more.
Sanātana means eternal, without a beginning. Dharma is the order that holds the world together and the duty that holds a life together. The two words stand side by side in old texts such as the Mahābhārata and the Manusmṛti. The tradition has no single founder, no single book and no single head. It is a family of teachings, practices and lineages that recognise one another, which is why sadhus of very different orders can bathe in the same river on the same morning.
Many people say Hindu Dharma in daily speech. Sanātana Dharma is the name the tradition gives itself, and it describes what every pilgrim at the Kumbh is taking part in.
Read more on srisanatan.org: What is Sanātana Dharma?
The tradition rests on śruti, what the ṛṣis heard: the four Vedas, Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva, with their Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads. Beside this Vedic stream, called nigama, flows the āgama: the Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava and Śākta scriptures that teach temple worship, mantra, initiation and inner practice. Most living worship joins the two, with a Vedic hymn at the sacred fire and an āgamic pūjā in the shrine.
On this foundation stand the Itihāsas and the Purāṇas. They carry the stories every Kumbh pilgrim knows, among them the churning of the ocean and the pot of amṛta.
Read more on srisanatan.org: The Vedas · The Āgamas · Nigama and Āgama
The Akhil Bharatiya Akhada Parishad recognises thirteen akhāḍās, and together they show the breadth of the tradition. Seven are Śaiva orders of sannyāsīs in the Daśanāmī line of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya. Three are the Vaiṣṇava anis of the bairāgīs, devoted to Rāma. The remaining three, two Udāsīn and one Nirmal, carry lineages linked with the Sikh Gurus and keep the Vedas and Upaniṣads in their study.
Worship of the Goddess, the Śākta current, runs through all of them, and the Kumbh cities are home to old temples of the Devī. Deities, customs and dates differ from order to order, and each akhāḍā keeps its own. Yet on the great bathing days they all walk to the water as one procession of dharma.
Read more on srisanatan.org: Śaiva · Vaiṣṇava · Śākta · Guru paramparā · Sannyāsa
A tīrtha is a ford, a crossing-place: a spot on the earth where, the tradition says, it is easier to cross from the world of change to what does not change. The Purāṇas tell that drops of amṛta fell at four such places, Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik-Trimbakeshwar and Ujjain, and the Kumbh returns to each one when Jupiter, the Sun and the Moon stand in the positions linked with that place.
Snāna, the sacred bath, is the simplest act of the tradition and one of the oldest: water taken with a prayer, a name of God and the memory of the ancestors. On the Amrit Snan days the akhāḍās bathe first, in a fixed order, and the pilgrims follow.
Read more on srisanatan.org: Temples and tīrthas
The tradition marks a life with saṃskāras, rites that refine and consecrate it. The classical list counts sixteen: from conception and the naming of a child, through the first solid food, the first haircut, the sacred thread and marriage, to the last rite at death. Many families bring one of these rites to a tīrtha, such as a child's first haircut, the immersion of ashes or the offerings to the ancestors, and the Kumbh is one of the great occasions for it.
The river also sees the step beyond the household. In sannyāsa dīkṣā the seeker performs his own last rites and receives a new name, and the naga vows of the Śaiva akhāḍās are traditionally given at the Kumbh itself.
Read more on srisanatan.org: The sixteen saṃskāras
The tradition does not ask everyone to renounce the world. It names four rightful aims of a human life: dharma, right conduct; artha, wealth and security honestly earned; kāma, love and enjoyment; and mokṣa, freedom. Dharma guides artha and kāma, and mokṣa is the final goal.
At the Kumbh the four aims meet in one place: families who come for a blessing, traders and sevā workers who keep the tent city running, and renunciates who have given up everything for the last aim. All of them stand inside the same tradition.
Read more on srisanatan.org: The four puruṣārthas
Broadly, yes. Hinduism is a later name given from outside; Sanātana Dharma, the eternal dharma, is the name the tradition gives itself, and it holds the Vedic, Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Śākta and other paths together.
No. On the Amrit Snan days the akhāḍās bathe first, in their fixed order, but the river is open to every pilgrim on every day of the Mela.
The story of the pot of amṛta and the churning of the ocean is told in the Purāṇas and the Mahābhārata. The bathing days are fixed by the positions of Jupiter, the Sun and the Moon, read from the pañcāṅga.
Our companion reference site srisanatan.org covers the Vedas, the Āgamas, the darśanas, the saṃskāras, the festivals and much more, and swarayoga.org explains the tradition as Swara Yoga Peeth teaches it.
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