{"id":8767,"date":"2010-02-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/02\/14\/5-million-take-holy-dip-in-ganga-on-mahashivaratri\/"},"modified":"2010-02-14T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T12:00:00","slug":"5-million-take-holy-dip-in-ganga-on-mahashivaratri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/02\/14\/5-million-take-holy-dip-in-ganga-on-mahashivaratri\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Million Take Holy Dip In Ganga On Mahashivaratri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindu.com\/2010\/02\/13\/stories\/2010021359861100.htm\">www.hindu.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>HARIDWAR, INDIA, February 13, 2010: Over 5 million devotees, along with sages and ash-smeared Naga sadhus, took a holy dip in the Ganga here on Friday on the first &#8216;shahi snan&#8217; (royal bath) of the Maha Kumbh on Mahashivaratri. The day was marked by a grand procession of the &#8216;akharas&#8217; or religious orders.<\/p>\n<p>The procession, which witnessed thousands of Naga sadhus displaying their acrobatic and martial skills, added color to the Kumbh Mela which started on January 14.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere across the country, the faithful thronged temples to offer prayers and observed dawn-to-dusk fasts as Mahashivaratri was celebrated. Devotees waited in long, serpentine queues to offer milk and &#8216;Gangajal&#8217; to the Shivlingams at the temples.<\/p>\n<p>They turned up in droves at the famous Somnath temple in Gujarat&#8217;s Junagadh district and in Delhi, Shiva temples were beautifully decorated. The festival was also observed in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, and across the country with traditional fervor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.hindu.com HARIDWAR, INDIA, February 13, 2010: Over 5 million devotees, along with sages and ash-smeared Naga sadhus, took a,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}