Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra The annual Lord Jagannath Rath
Yatra, largest-ever religious congregation in Odisha has begun at Puri district
on 18 July 2015. Nearly half a million devotees converged in Puri as the annual
Ratha Yatra festival of Lord Jagannath began on Sunday. The Rath Yatra (Chariot
Festival) is 9 day-long event I which congregation of more than 50 lakh
devotees from across India and abroad come together. Priests performed the
Mangala Aarti at 8.20 am after a three-hour delay, temple official Laxmidhar
Pujapanda told IANS.
It is celebrated
annually to mark the annual visit of Deities Lord Jagannath, brother Balabhadra
and sister Subhadra who are taken in their respective chariots. These deities
will be brought out of the temple and will be taken by chariot to Gundicha
temple which is place of their aunt’s house and indicates the feminine creative
aspect of divinity. They will stay in the Gundicha temple for a week and then
return. During this traditional procession, the chariots carrying these deities
will be pulled by thousands of devotees. While in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Rathyatra
of Lord Jagannath began from the 400-year-old Jagannath temple in Jamalpur
area. More than 500,000 devotees are already in Puri, 55 km from Bhubaneswar.
The number could swell up to a million by evening, Pujapanda said.
The tradtional
‘Pahind-rituals’ i.e. the symbolic path cleaning on chariot of Lord Jagannath
at temple was performed by Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel.
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