Bathing Srila Prabhupada with 1,008 Sacred Waters
September 6, 1996, will mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the appearance of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. On that day, following Vedic custom, devotees will bathe Srila Prabhupada in his deity form not only with traditional substances such as yogurt and honey, but also with water from 1,008 holy places in India.
The bathing ceremony will take place in Calcutta, the place of Prabhupada's appearance. Thousands of people, including an international delegation of devotees, will take part. Sealed pots containing the mixture of 1,008 holy waters will also be sent to every ISKCON temple, enabling devotees everywhere to take part in this once-in-a-lifetime event by bathing Srila Prabhupada in their own temple.
Teams of devotees are traveling throughout India to collect the sacred waters. They expect to complete the collection by the month of Kartika (October-November) this year.
Lokanath Swami, who oversees the Global Centennial campaign, says, "This bathing is an arrangement to worship one of the greatest persons history has ever seen in a way history has never seen. This opportunity will never present itself again."