The Car of Juggernaut

Evening Star, Issue 20055, 21 December 1928, Page 1

The Car of Juggernaut

A PEBFERVID CEDEBOHY .Jaganath is an earless, legless block of wood, about a yard high, sjnothered in tinsel and brocade, decked in immense pearls and rubies. Above, the glitter his painted mouth looks suitably cruel. People still sometimes throw themselves under his car when it is harnessed to 3,000 pilgrims at his festival, at Puri, but not often. When the police are not looking, and where the press of pilgrims is thick, some poor widow may go to her bliss under Ixis sixteen wheels (bet relations may even give her a little push towards heaven), but on the whole, life is safer than it used to be, and the police more efficient.:

1 For ■ uncounted centuries Jaganath has been the symbol of tho oldest living faith and the adored of millions. A hundred “ devadasis ” dance in his honour. Ho has a score of elephants to atttend him. The revenue of his temple is kingly, and he has two locked collars which are knee-deep in jewels. No white man except Lord Curzon has ever seen them or penetrated to his innCr shrine. When he rides in his car, on his day of days, escorted by his brother Balarama and his sister Subhadra, surroundec l by his priests and worshipped by his people, no goes on such a tide of human love and faith as wo in tho West may never see. Love and faitn are miracles whether they inform, single (minds or multitudes. Bub the thing which passes unseen at the altar or in some hand-clasp becomes so visible and so vivid when it takes place at Pun simultaneously in tho minds and hearts of 200,000 people, that it stun the senses. One can only stammer about it. Some day psychologists may be able to explain how the “pandars’’ (who have given a verb to our language) influence the crowd; how tho priests, elephants, flowers, bugles, and heat, combine into a single emotional complex. As for me, I. shall only try to take a morning out of my life and put it inti, a page of print, without analysis. Wo are at the Lion Gate, then, in tho Tempt Square of Puri, in a ropedoff enclosure containing privileged spectators and the cars of Jaganath, Bubhadra, and Balarama. The cars are cottages on wheels, several stories high, beflagged and betinselled, with a central room for the god. On the front platform sit gilt idols of tho drivers, with elbows and wrists in regular coaching style. Ropes thick as a man’s wrist Re coiled below the cars, to each of which will bo harnessed 1,000 pilgrims. Tho car of Jaganath has three such traces, tho others two. Outside our enclosure—when. we stand with priests, pandits, retinues of rajahs, police officials, the Temple manager—squats the huge concourse of the people of Brahma. Only the pandars , remain * erect, fanning, their flock with flywhisks. sprinkling it with holy water, explaining to it the proceedings, for many of tho pilgrims aro strangers from far places, and ignorant. When the Lord Krishna was meditating with legs crossed in the lotus posture hero at Puri, they tell their charges, a hunter mistook tho upturned sole of his foot for a deer; airi shot him. Before dying, Krishna forgave the hunter; then he abanumco Ins mortal . body, and it became transformed into Jaganath, Lord of the World, symbol of tho godhead. Soon ho will emerge from, the shrine where ho has lived: for ages, on Iris yearly pilgrimage to his-consort, Lakslnni, at the Garden Temple, four miles away , ; : Alvc«uly there is u stir at the TjToii Gate, -for the sister of the Lord of the World is coming. The pandas tell the pilgrims, and the pilgrims lift up their voices. Tho pandars join hands in worship. The pilgrims join theirs. The pandars sprinkle and fan the squatting hosts, and there is a seething and crying. The voice of-the crowd is like the purr of a tremendous tiger. The palanquin of Suhhadra arrives on the shoulders of a hundred priest?, preceded by another hundred walking backwards. Two hours pass, hut Time is an illusion of Siva, Destroyer of Forms. Tho square is packed to suffocation. The sun peeps out, raising the temperature to lOOdcg F., and then blanketing us in clouds. ■ Balarama has come, but still tho Lord of the World delays. Now at last the backward-moving priests appear for the third time, and with them come elephants like castles on a chequer-board of brown bodies and white clothes, and waving white “ chowries,” and wild bracetlcted arms. Jaganath has a peacock fan bigger than the Pope’s,, and his conches are stranger than the silver trumpets of St. Peter’s. A throng seems to ho fighting round him. The sun blazes over pandemonium. The ropes aro broken. Hot bodies surge by me and over mo to tho oar of Jaganath. Priests and pandars-try to beat them down with rolls of matting, hut goodhninourpdjy, for this always happens. 1 The people will not be denied this touch with the deity. Through these, ecstasies and agonies Jaganath is ■ borne to his seal. 'With each step taken the peacock plumes come forward. Tinuugh the tumult one can hear a rhythm, as if the fan kept time to a chant. Jaganath is ready to go to whore Lakslnni waits. • Now an odd thing happens, which I wish the Simon Commission could see. A British officer, sweating and dishevelled in his khaki, appears before tho car. : His duty is to see,that the god reaches the -garder of his desire. It is a ticklish business, for Jaganath is so holy. that he cannot he moved backwards, even an inch; Should his car take a slant across the square and butt .against a house, the house must come down. , , The superintendent, of police directs the human horses with a whistle. A thousand men are clustered on each rope. When the superintendent sounds a blast, they take the’strain, and the traces stretch and stretch, like pieces of elastic. Slowly, smoothly, the sixteen \\;hceels revolve Everywhere between, them, above, below, on every sic|o, men, and women and children are dinging and crying arid trampling and fainting. A glimpse of Jaganath is fertility to the barren, heart’s-easo to the sad, , sons and kin to the, householder.-

Near by.- a temple elephant, with forehead of gold and the red eye of Siva glinted’ on it, stands very, thoughtfully, e has seen this show'a hundred times. Pilgrims salute him, touching hiArappings of cloth of gold and then their foreheads.. Tliev give him money, putting annas and even rupees into his trunk, which ho swings up lazily to a ! mahout almost as “blase” as'himself. Not quite, however, for the mahout has only seen the show fifty times. The crowd is ,mad with delight. Showers of marigold, jasmine,, -and money, fall on the car. The elephant sways on his soft feet, and blinks, not cynically, ; but with a very wistful wonder. The life of India flows by him, £urbid, frenzied, yefc wrapped in its own

inscrutable mysteries. Why does ii> grovel before Jaganath, when the “ rishis ” rejected idolatry several , thousand years ago? The elephant seems to share my feelings. Neither he nor I know how it is that the blind have been made to see by Jaganath, and the dumb to speak. Do you doubt it ? If you have seen those people,of Pun and caught a,little of the spirit of that far-off shore, you will know that wonders still walk this earth. Everything is possible here, but comprehension is not easy for those whose nurture lias been different, whoso climate is kind, wlio.se traditions are concerned with conquest of races or environment. The Indian, like our early saints, is interested, not in machines, hnt the souls of men. In his mind _ germinated “ bhakti marga,” whose light rejoiced all Christendom when it passed through the crystal of St. Francis. It was an Indian also (Sankara) whose principles of meditation must surely have inspired Loyola. To-day wo are further from the ages of faith, but it would he tho commonest of vulgar tirrors to believe that guns and engines have won us a moral as well as material superiority over “ simpler ” minds. The two cultures have much to give each other, but to bridge the gap between them will require an imagination that can ctrctch like the ropes, of Jaganath,’s car.—E. Yeats-Brown, in the ‘ Spectator.’