Kanifnath at Madhi: One of the Nine Naths and the Fair at His Samadhi

The nine Naths are the founding figures of a tradition that shaped a very large part of Indian devotional and yogic practice, and they are worth listing.

The Navnath, as commonly given:

• Matsyendranath, the first, from whom the human lineage is generally counted
• Gorakshanath, or Gorakhnath, his disciple and the tradition's most influential figure
• Jalandharnath
• Kanifnath, also called Kanhoba or Kanhupa
• Gahininath, who initiated Nivruttinath and through him the Varkari line
• Bhartarinath, often identified with the king Bhartrihari
• Charpatinath
• Revannath
• Naganath

Lists vary in their later names, which is normal for a tradition transmitted through many regional lines.

What the Naths taught:

• Hatha yoga, in its formative period. The techniques that later became the global vocabulary of yoga were developed and transmitted substantially through this tradition
• The body as instrument, with practices aimed at transformation rather than only at withdrawal
• A lineage of guru to disciple initiation, marked by the ear ornaments that give the Kanphata yogis their name
• A practical, unliterary and often deliberately provocative style, expressed in short verses rather than systematic treatises

Where they were. The Naths were not a regional tradition. They are found from Nepal and Bengal to Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, and their influence runs through Marathi, Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali devotional literature.

They are the connecting tissue between a great many Indian traditions that are usually described separately.

The most historically significant thing about the Naths is who they admitted, and it explains a great deal about the shrines associated with them.

How the tradition worked:

• Initiation was not restricted by birth. Naths came from every community, including those excluded from the brahminical order
• Authority came from realisation and lineage, not from caste standing
• Nath yogis were renunciates outside the household order, which placed them outside the categories that governed everyone else
• Several of the Navnath are remembered as coming from outside brahmin backgrounds

Why this mattered so much. In a society organised by birth, a tradition offering a route to recognised religious authority regardless of birth was a significant institution, and it had consequences well beyond its own membership.

• It gave figures like the four siblings of Alandi a lineage when the local community had denied them one
• It supplied the yogic strand that runs under the bhakti movements of several regions
• It created shrines whose devotee base cut across communities in a way that temples generally did not

Where the difficulty comes in. A tradition can be open in principle while the institutions around its shrines are contested in practice.

Madhi, like a number of large shrines in Maharashtra, has a long history in which questions about who may lead the ceremony, who may raise the flag, who may enter and in what order have been live and sometimes disputed. That history belongs to the site as much as the devotion does, and glossing over it would be dishonest.

What can be said fairly. The Nath tradition's founding principle was that birth does not determine access to realisation. The working out of that principle at particular shrines, over centuries, has been uneven and is still argued about. Both of those are true at once, and the second does not cancel the first.

The word samadhi is used in two related ways, and both are in play at Madhi.

Samadhi as a state:

• In yogic terminology, the final limb of Patanjali's eightfold path
• A condition of absorption in which the distinction between the meditator and the object of meditation is understood to fall away
• The goal of the practice rather than a technique within it

Samadhi as a place:

• The tomb or memorial of a realised person
• Specifically, in traditions that practise it, the site where a yogi entered sanjeevan samadhi, deliberately leaving the body in a state of absorption rather than dying in the ordinary sense

What sanjeevan samadhi means in these traditions:

• The yogi is understood not to have died but to have entered and remained in that state
• The site is therefore treated as a place where the person is still present, not as a grave
• Worship continues as it would to a living guru, with offerings, aarti and the observance of their preferences
• The most famous instance in Maharashtra is Dnyaneshwar at Alandi, who took sanjeevan samadhi at twenty one

Why renunciates are not cremated. This is a related point that visitors often ask about. Sannyasis and yogis in many traditions are buried or interred rather than cremated.

The reasoning is that cremation is a rite performed for a householder by their descendants, closing their accounts with the world of ritual obligation. Someone who has already renounced that world formally, in the rite of sannyas, has performed their own funeral in advance and does not require another.

So Madhi is not a memorial to someone remembered. In the tradition's understanding it is an address, and the yatra each Phalgun is a visit rather than a commemoration.

The fair is the reason most people know of Madhi, and it is worth understanding as a social event as much as a religious one.

When and what:

• Held around Holi and the days following, in Phalgun, which falls in February or March
• The nishan, the ceremonial flag, is raised to open the fair
• Devotees arrive over several days, many of them on foot
• Attendance is counted in lakhs

What happens across the days:

• Darshan at the samadhi, with very long queues
• Fulfilment of vows made during the year
• A livestock market, which in a rural district is a serious annual event in its own right
• Folk performance, music, and entertainments of every kind
• Trade in household goods, tools, cloth and everything a village restocks

Who comes. The yatra draws heavily from the rural communities of Ahmednagar, Beed, Aurangabad and the surrounding districts, and includes communities across the social spectrum. For many families it is a fixed annual obligation rather than a discretionary trip.

Why fairs of this kind matter. India has hundreds of large regional fairs that are invisible from outside their region, and they are among the most important institutions in rural life:

• They are the occasion for collective business that a dispersed population cannot otherwise conduct
• They fix a point in the year around which other plans are made
• They maintain connections between villages that are otherwise separate
• They are where a rural region sees itself assembled

Madhi is a good example precisely because it is not famous nationally. It is enormous, it is essential to the region, and almost nobody outside western Maharashtra has heard of it.

Getting there

• Madhi, Pathardi taluka, Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra
• Roughly 60 km from Ahmednagar town by road, and about 100 km from Aurangabad
• Ahmednagar and Aurangabad are the nearest towns of size, with rail and road connections
• Buses run to Pathardi, with local transport onward. A car is easier outside the fair

When to go

• The yatra around Holi in Phalgun, if you want to see the fair, accepting extreme crowds
• Any other time if you want to see the shrine itself. Madhi outside the fair is a quiet village
• October to March for comfortable weather generally. This is hot, dry country from April

If you go during the yatra

• Expect very large crowds, long queues and heavy pressure on every facility
• Accommodation in the village is effectively nil. Stay at Ahmednagar or Pathardi and travel in
• Carry water, food and cash. Do not rely on facilities being available
• Keep your group together and agree a meeting point. Phone signal will be congested
• Keep children held, not following
• Follow crowd management instructions. Fairs of this size have had crush incidents in India and the instructions exist for that reason
• Take particular care on narrow approaches and steps, where crowd density is highest

At the shrine

• Darshan at the samadhi
• The narrow entrance passage, which is part of the visit
• Behave as you would at any working shrine. Devotees here are often fulfilling vows

Combining the visit

• Shani Shingnapur is in the same district and is the region's other famous shrine
• Ahmednagar fort and the town's Nizam Shahi remains
• Aurangabad for Ellora, Ajanta, Daulatabad and Grishneshwar, which is a full trip in itself

A closing thought. The tourist map of India is drawn by outsiders and shows the places outsiders visit. There is a second map, of gatherings like Madhi, that is far larger, far older and almost entirely invisible from the first. Going to one of these is the quickest way to understand how much of the country's religious life happens outside the frame.