- Also spelled:
- Ratha Yatra, Rath Yatra, or Ratha Jatra
- Also called:
- Rathotsava
Rathayatra
What is Rathayatra?
Where is the most famous Rathayatra festival held?
How did the English word juggernaut originate?
Rathayatra, chariot festival in Hinduism observed by taking an image (murti) of a Hindu deity in a procession (Sanskrit: yatra) through the streets around the temple, or from one temple to another, in a wooden chariot (ratha). In some instances, multiple murtis are paraded in the same procession. The most famous Rathayatra festival honors the god Jagannatha (Vishnu in the avatar of Krishna) and takes place annually in Puri in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. The chariots at these festivals can be small and simple or, as in the Puri festival, massive and ornate constructions, requiring many devotees to pull these chariots of the gods.
Chariots in Hindu ritual
The use of chariots in Hindu rituals extends to the ancient Vedic religion era, when royal rituals involved chariots and chariot races. In the later Vedic period, chariots themselves became sacred objects. In classical Hinduism, chariots were closely associated with the Kshatriya (royal) varna, who were tasked with rule and warfare, and the god Krishna acted as the charioteer for the prince Arjuna in the war described in the Mahabharata. As temple worship developed in Hinduism in the early centuries ce, chariots were incorporated into temple rituals, precisely so they could carry gods outside the temples. In these Rathayatras, which are sometimes also called rathotsavas (“chariot festivals”), images of the gods are carried on elaborately carved wooden chariots, which are often extremely large and heavy, requiring hundreds of worshippers to pull them. In smaller village temples, deities may travel on far simpler, lighter palanquins. In some cases, special utsava murtis (festival images) go on parade instead of the main sacred image in the temple.
The procession of the deity around the temple echoes the procession of a king outside his castle and around his kingdom to survey his land and meet with his subjects. In terms of human devotion, the Rathayatra procession affords darshan (auspicious viewing) of the deity to worshippers outside the temple precincts. This access to the deity is especially meaningful for some devotees who, because of caste or sectarian restrictions, are not admitted to the temple’s sanctuary. The Rathayatra also dramatizes the Hindu conviction that however much the power of a deity may be associated with a particular place, that power has a wider orbit than the temple itself. Hindu deities are simultaneously identified with their physical murtis and their ubiquitous divinity, and they become all the more available to worshippers during a Rathayatra.
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The Rathayatra at Puri
The famous Rathayatra for the god Jagannatha (sometimes spelled Jagannath) takes place annually in Puri, Odisha, in the summer month of Ashadha in the Hindu calendar (June and July in the Gregorian calendar). The deity Jagannatha (Sanskrit: “Lord of the World,” jagat meaning “world” and natha “lord”) is a form of the god Vishnu in his avatar as Krishna. Hindus worship Jagannatha in many parts of India, but the deity is closely associated with the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, Odisha. Built in the 12th century, the Jagannatha Temple is a key example of Kalinga architecture. In the Rathayatra procession, Jagannatha is accompanied by his brother, Balarama (or Balabhadra), and his sister, Subhadra. The stories associated with this trio are recounted in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana.
The murtis (divine images) of Jagannatha and his siblings are unique. Unlike images of the gods found elsewhere in India that are typically fashioned out of granite or marble, these three deities are hand-painted on boards of neem wood and depicted with large white eyes. Krishna’s face, usually blue, is painted a deep black, while Balarama’s image is white and Subhadra’s is yellow.
Local tradition holds that Krishna decreed he would be worshipped in Puri in the Kali Yuga, the final era of degenerative dharma (adherence to moral law) in Hindu cosmology. The end of the Mahabharata war and Krishna’s death in his hometown of Dwarka (in present-day Gujarat, on the western coast of India) marked the end of the Dvapara Yuga and the beginning of the Kali Yuga. Various myths explain the reappearance of Krishna as Jagannatha and as a wooden murti on the opposite coast of peninsular India in Puri.
The English word juggernaut comes from the Rathayatra! The term first entered English through the 14th-century friar Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan missionary from Italy who recorded the chariot festival during travels in Asia and whose stories may have been falsely attributed to John Mandeville in English. Beginning in the 19th century, British colonial rulers and observers regarded Hindu practice as satanic. As these massive chariots rolled through the streets, they sometimes accidentally crushed devotees, and the British wrongly interpreted this act as religious suicide. British writers’ disdainful accounts of the Rathayatra led, metonymically, to a pejorative sense of a juggernaut as a massive crushing vehicle, which was later extrapolated to mean an unstoppable force.
The Rathayatra festival in Odisha brings the gods from their temple at Puri for a brief sojourn at the Gundicha Temple about 2 miles (3 kilometers) away. Jagannatha and his brother and sister travel on a chariot each. The Rathayatra is a festival of renewal, which is more poignant every 12 years when the deities are said to die and be reborn and the wooden boards that make up their murtis are replaced. Two weeks before the Rathayatra, temple employees bathe the deities with water on a public platform; as the deities’ paint falls away, the temple employees splash the paint-filled bath water on devotees. Of note, the temple employees who attend to the deities in this ritual are not the typical Brahmin priests but daitas, who are considered of local tribal (Adivasi) origin and touch the deities only during festivals. After the washing, the local titular king of Puri performs a special sweeping ceremony with a gold-handled broom, the first of many moments in the Rathayatra when the king does a ritual sweeping of platforms for the gods. The deities are then returned to the temple, where they are placed in a reclining position and sequestered for a two-week period during which they are considered to be suffering from illness. During this time, all auspicious activities in the temple are suspended except for the ministrations of the temple workers in service of the ailing gods. The temple workers make offerings of food and herbs prescribed by a temple doctor to heal the deities, after which they repair and repaint the wooden images. The pupils of the eyes are then painted as a sign of the gods’ full revival.
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On the second day of the bright lunar fortnight (shukla paksha, the waxing phase of the moon) of Ashadha, the deities are brought up from a reclining position and moved to the chariots to begin the chariot festival. The hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who attend the annual celebration then bathe in the nearby Bay of Bengal to purify themselves. The three deities are then brought to their respective chariots and proceed in the order of Subhadra, Balarama, and Jagannatha in the rear. The tallest chariot, that of Jagannatha, which is named Nandighosha (“Cry of Joy”), has 16 wheels, while Subhadra’s chariot (Devadalana, “Crusher of Gods”) has 12 wheels and Balarama’s (named Taladhvaja, “Palm Tree Flag”) has 14 wheels. They are all approximately 45 feet (14 meters) tall. Once the deities are in place the king does another sweeping ceremony on the platforms of the chariots before they start on their journey. The crowd pulls the chariots on the road to the Gundicha Temple, and as they proceed, the thronging worshippers throw offerings onto the chariots. The deities remain at the Gundicha Temple for seven days, during which the goddess Lakshmi arrives on a palanquin for a visit. The three siblings then return to the main Puri temple, where their images are gilded with gold, and they return to the inner sanctum of the temple.
Rathayatras across regions and religions
Temples throughout India and Nepal hold Rathayatra festivals at different times of the year. The Rathayatra at the Mahesh Temple in Shrirampur, West Bengal, is very similar to the Puri ceremony, and another chariot festival of Krishna and his siblings transpires in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. In the Nepalese town of Patan, near Kathmandu, the Newars celebrate a festival dedicated to the god of rain, Rato (“red”) Machindranath, who journeys for a month in a massively tall and narrow wooden chariot. The Indra Jatra festival in Nepal includes chariots bearing Indra, Ganesha, Bhairava, and the Kumari—a young girl who is considered a living goddess. Temples in Tamil Nadu have their own unique chariot festivals, notable among which are chariot festivals for the goddess Meenakshi (Parvati) in Madurai and Tyagaraja (Shiva) in Thiruvarur. Outside South Asia, members of the Hindu diaspora (the desi community) hold their own versions of the chariot festival in cities around the world.
Although often associated with Hinduism, Rathayatras are performed in other South Asian traditions as well. Buddhist chariot festivals were recorded in the early 5th century ce when Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Faxian observed chariot festivals first in Khotan (far western China on the Silk Road) and in India in Pataliputra (modern Patna, Bihar). Rato Machindranath Jatra is a Hindu and Buddhist festival, and the god is considered a form of Avalokiteshvara among Buddhists. Within Jainism there is a Rathayatra for Mahavira, the great sage and last Tirthankara (savior figure), during his birthday celebration, Mahavir Jayanti. Some Roman Catholics in Tamil Nadu borrowed the South Asian chariot festival as a model for their own processions of images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on wooden chariots for Christian holidays.
Ram Rath Yatras
From September to October 1990, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Lal Krishna Advani led a Ram Rath Yatra from Somnath, Gujarat, to Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. This tour, spanning many Indian states, was in support of the demand by the Hindutva-aligned Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP; “World Hindu Council”) for a temple to the god Rama at the Ram Janmabhoomi (Rama’s birthplace), which was the site where the Muslim Babri Masjid stood. This political and religious tour included trucks rather than chariots, and it raised significant awareness in India about the debate about Rama’s birthplace and a potential temple in Ayodhya. Advani was arrested mid-tour and the Ram Rath Yatra came to an end, but massive protests and riots between Hindus and Muslims broke out, especially in northern India. Two years later, on December 6, 1992, a mob of Hindu activists destroyed the Babri Masjid. After protracted court proceedings and construction, in January 2024 a new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was consecrated. In celebration, beginning in March 2024, local wings of the VHP organized Ram Rath Yatras in the United States and Canada, with outfitted minivans as chariots. These yatras had the expressed purpose of uniting the Hindu diaspora, and they traveled thousands of miles to bring Rama’s blessings to hundreds of temples and thousands of devotees.