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Ratha Yatra: Jagannath and his Mobile Temple at Puri Her m a nn Ku l ke

1 Tarini at GhatgaonTarini The image of Tarini, a small stone with two prominent silver eyes, the lower part being covered by a cloth. She also wears a silver crown. Before the first renovation, she was surrounded by numerous clay horses and elephants. Formerly she only received uncooked food. These very rare photographs were taken in 1971, before the first enlargement of the temple by Herman Kulke. Ghatgaon 1971, © C. Mallebrein.

The ratha yatra of Puri is India’s “car festival” par excellence and the three temple cars which carry Jagannath, the “Lord of the Universe”, and his divine elder brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra every year in the month of Asadha (June/July) from their monumental temple to Gundicha temple, their “summer residence”, are by far the most famous in India (fig. 1). During ratha yatra, when “the Lord of the Universe” leaves his “jewelled lion throne” (ratna-simhasana) in the temple and appears to his devotees in Puri’s Grand Road (bara danda) (fig. 2), his chariot (ratha) transforms his temple into an open “divine palace”, drawn by his devotees. As with the great temple cars of South India, Puri’s rathas are impressive examples of mobile temple architecture in a double sense. Moving from the “Lions Gate” (simhadvara) in front of the Jagannath temple to the Gundicha temple, a distance of about 3 km, they extend the ritual and sacred space of the temple into major parts of the town, thus transforming Puri (=town) into a veritable temple city. As their consecration on the eve of the ratha yatra and their outer shape identify them as the true ‘temples’ during the car festival, the first English Pilgrim Tax Collector at Puri was therefore not surprised to observe in 1806: “During the Rath Yatra the God is seen in the streets and hardly a single pilgrim enters the Temple.” But divine chariots are also “mobile” in a more metaphoric sense. Each ratha is drawn by several hundred devotees, who come from all social strata and includes pilgrims from all quarters of the Hindu world. The rathas and their divine occupants move many more thousands of devotees into a state of excitement. It is not only the appearance of the


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