The Car of Juggernaut
TAGANATH is an .earless, legless block of wood, fl about a yard high, smothered 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 three thousand pilgrims at his festival at Puri, .but not often. When the police are not looking, 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.
For uncounted centuries Jaganath has been the symbol of the oldest living faith and the adored of millions. A hundred devadasis dance in his honour. He has a score of elephants to attend him. The revenue of his temple is kingly, and he has two locked cellars which are knee- deep in jewels. No white man except Lord Curzon has ever seen them or penetrated to his inner shrine. When he rides in his car, on his day of days, escorted by his brother Balarama and sister Subhadra, surrounded by his priests and worshipped by his people, he goes on such a tide of human love and faith as we in the West may never see.
Love and faith are miracles whether they inform single minds or multitudes. But the thing which passes unseen at the altar or in some hand-clasp becomes so visible and so vivid when it takes place at Puri simul- taneously in the minds and hearts of two hundred thousand people, that it stuns 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 the ,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 into a .page of print, without analysis.
We are at the Lion Gate, then, in the Temple Square of Puri, . in a roped-off . enclosure containing privileged spectators and the cars of Jaganath, Subhadra, 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 the drivers, .with elbows and wrists in regular coaching style. Ropes thick as a man's wrist lie coiled below the. cars, to each of ,which will be harnessed a thousand pilgrims. The car . of Jaganath has three such traces, the others two. Out- side our enclosure—where 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 fly-whisks, sprinkling it with holy water, explaining to it.the proceedings, for many of the pilgrims are strangers . from far places, and ignorant.. .
. When the Lord. Krishna was meditating with legs crossed in the lotus .posture here. at Puri, they tell their charges, a hunter mistook the upturned sole of his left foot for part of a deer, and shot him. Before dying Krishna forgave the hunter ; then he abandoned. his mortal body_ and it became transformed into Jaganath, loOrd of the World, symbol of the godhead. Soon he will emerge from the shrine where he has lived for ages, on his yearly pilgrimage to his consort, Lakshmi, at the Garden Temple four miles-away.
..Already 'there is a stir at' he Lion Gate, for the sister iifithe Lord of the World is coming. The pandars tell. the pilgrims, and the pilgrims lift up their voices. - The panders join hands in worship. The pilgrims join theirs. The pandars sprinkle and fan the squatting hosts and there is a seething and a crying.. The voice of the crowd is like the purr of a tremendous tiger. The palanquin of Subhadra arrives on the shoulders of a hundred priests, preceded by another hundred walking backwards.
Two hours pass, but Time is an illusion of Siva, destroyer of Forms. The square is packed to suffocation.. The sun peeps in and out, raising the temperature to 100° F., and then blanketing us in clouds. Balarama has come, but still the 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 braceleted 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 be fighting round him. The sun blazes over pandemonium. The ropes are broken. Hot bodies surge by me and over me to the car of Jaganath. Priests and pandars try to beat them down with rolls of matting, but good-humouredly, for this always happens. The people will not be denied touch with the deity.
Through these ecstasies and agonies Jaganath is borne to his seat. With each step taken the peacock plumes come forward. Through the tumult one can hear a rhythm, as if the fan kept time to a chant. Jaganath is ready to go where Lakshmi waits.
Now an odd thing happens, which I wish the Simon Commission could see. A British police officer, sweating and dishevelled in his khaki, appears before the car. His duty is to see that the god reaches the garden of his desire. It is a ticklish business, for Jaganath• is so holy that he cannot be 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 wheels revolve. Everywhere between them, above, below, on every side, men and women and children are clinging and crying and trampling and fainting. A glimpse of Jaganath is fertility to the barren, heart's-ease to the sad, sons and kine to the householder.
Near by a temple elephant, with forehead of gold and the red eye of Siva painted on it, stands very thought- fully. He has seen this show a hundred times. Pilgrims salute him, touching his trappings of cloth of gold and then their foreheads. They give him money, putting annas and even rupees. into his trunk, which he swings up lazily to a mahout almost as blasé 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, turbid, frenzied, yet wrapped in its own inscrutable mysteries. Why does it 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 these people of Puri and caught a little of the spirit of that far-off shore, you- will know that wonders still walk this earth: Every- thing is possible here, but comprehension is not easy for those whose nurture has been different, whose climate is kind, whose traditions are concerned with conquest of races or environment. The Indian, like our early saints, is interested not in machines, but 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 we are further from the ages of faith, but it would be the commonest of vulgar errors 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 stretch like the ropes of
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