The pot is a great invention. Without the pot, we would still be going to water bodies like rivers and ponds to hydrate ourselves as and when we feel thirsty. Thanks to the pot, we can get the water into our homes and store it for future use no crocodiles lurking beneath the water, no fear of a wild animal getting provoked into attack. The pot is a symbol of human civilisation.
Ancient Indians revered the pot. It was the symbol of the womb, the garbha, for it sustained human life. The pot was equated with the mother; it was a symbol of divinity. A pot or kalash filled with water and sprouts and crowned with green leaves and fruits became the symbol of abundance and good fortune. It was worshipped over 3,000 years ago. It is still being worshipped today.
The gods, the ancients believed, had a pot that overflowed with grain and gold. It was called the akshaya patra. They also had a pot brimming with amrit, the nectar of immortality. Humans had neither. But humans included women who created and nurtured life, ensuring the continuation of the species. Women were therefore a combination of akshya patra and amrit, holding in their bodies the promise of abundance and immortality for the family. Without a woman, a family perished. The family tree withered.
In ancient times women were clearly regarded as being more valuable than men. The survival of a tribe depended not on the number of men it had but 
on the strength of its women. So in the early days, women were given the choice to choose husbands. The foremost form of wedding was considered to be one where the father gave his daughter to another family. It was a gift of akshaya patra and amrit.
While the forest was equated with the wild goddess, the field was equated with the domesticated goddess. Forest was woman, field was wife. Forest was water in the pond, field was water in a pot. Field was the womb that sustained a village. It was worshipped as humanity’s akshaya patra and amrit, bringing forth prosperity year after year. The domestication of the earth, the transformation of the woman into homemaker, the moulding of clay into a pot, is the result of human intervention, an imposition on nature’s freedom, a sacrifice to ensure the birth of civilisation, to ensure perpetuation and survival.
In autumn, as the rains recede and crops are harvested, three things come together on nine nights: the pot, the woman and the field. In the centre of the field, the pot is placed filled with water and sprouts, and around it women dance in circular formation. They bend down and clap as they thank the earth and cosmos and energise it with their happiness. This is garbo, the dance of the earth-womb. The circular formation of the dance is a reminder of the horizon, the rim of the divine pot, the world we live in. We live in a cosmic womb, just as deities in temples are enshrined in the garba griha or sanctum sanctorum, a detail endorsed by the metal pots placed on top of the temple dome.
Navaratri or nine auspicious nights is the season to remember and celebrate the female principle in various aspects as goddess as well as the pot, the homemaker and giver of prosperity. – Times of India, Chennai, Oct. 15, 2010
Purna Kumbha, or Purnakumbha or Kalash or Kalasha , is an essential part of worship in Hinduism. Today it is also used in Hindu weddings, temple functions and other occasions associated with Hindu religion. Purna Kumbha, literally means a ‘full vessel’ and symbolically it is a sign of plenty.
Reference of Purana Kumbha is also found in the Skanda Purana and the Matsya Purana. In Skanda Purana it is mentioned that the ‘Purna Kumbha’ can be worshipped. Matsya Purana indicates that people placed it at their doors as a sign of plenty.
Purna Kumbha mainly contains ‘water’ – the veritable life principle. Thus it is a direct worship of Varuna – the God of rain. He is the harbinger of rain which ensures fertility on earth and which nourishes animals and human beings.
The earthen pot used as Purna Kumba is decorated with geometric designs and Swastika. The geometric design various from region to region and from community to community. Depending on the society and its wealth, earthenware gives way to silver, brass or gold pots.
Apart from water, Purna Kumbha is filled with twigs or leaves of five trees – Ashwatha (peepul), Vata (Banyan), Amra (Mango), Panasa (Jackfruit) and Bakula (Elengi). A lotus flower and a small bowl of rice are also put in the pot. The mouth of the pot is covered with a husked coconut, which is decorated from the sides with mango leaves.
Except for water, what goes in the pot varies from region to region. Mango leaves and the coconut is a constant factor in most areas.
All the items used in the Purna Kumbha signify life in its bloom and plenty. It also indicates that human beings are part of nature and when nature thrives human beings too flourish
There is a discourse on the subject by Swami Tattvavidananda if any body is interested I can provide the links..
Shridhar Bhatt
IS,
- Pattanaik endorses that anti-Hindu Wendy Doniger’s motivated subversions and lies on Hinduism (and his own ‘work’ is of a similar nature):
The comment by Esteppan at http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2010/01/superb-elucidation-of-hindu-trinity-by.html
quotes Devdutt Pattanaik as writing:
>>> “Anyone who is serious about studying Hinduism needs to study the works of Wendy Doniger ….. …it is good scholarship”
- Pattanaik is a native “mythologist”: someone of Hindu ancestry who has been sufficiently macaulayised as to start explaining the very reality of the Hindu Gods (the Hindu religion) as “myths” with highly speculative mumbo-jumbo “meaning”.
Not only does he know absolutely nothing about the religion and especially its Gods, he actual subverts Hindus reading his stuff. He is himself either a subverted person of Hindu origins (i.e. he is something gone wrong), or his subversion is deliberate.
Hindus would not wish to refer to Pattanaik for anything on Hindu religion or Hindu Gods. But even though he knows nothing about what he would speak of (whereas Hindus do), it is unfortunately unwitting Hindus who, through their presenting his writings (which implies endorsement of validity), have given him a soap-box and thereby legitimacy to expound his fraud. He deserves to be exposed or at least ignored.