Ratha Yātrā

When it falls

The second lunar day (dvitīyā) of the bright half of Āṣāḍha, in late June or July. The chariots return nine days later on the Bāhuḍā Yātrā.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Jagannātha, lord of the world, is Kṛṣṇa in the form Puri worships: a wooden figure with round eyes and stumps for arms, beside his brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadrā. Once a year the three leave the sanctum and are pulled two miles down the Grand Road to the Guṇḍicā temple, where they stay a week before returning.

The reason given is that Subhadrā asked to see the city, and her brothers took her. Another telling makes the Guṇḍicā temple the aunt's house, and the journey a family visit.

The point of the day is access. A temple that admits only Hindus puts its deities in the open street, where anyone at all may see them and pull the rope. The English word juggernaut comes from the chariots and the crowds that surrounded them, and is a traveller's misreading of the day rather than a description of it.

How the day is kept

• Three chariots are built new each year from a fixed count of timber, wheels and planks — Nandighoṣa for Jagannātha at forty-five feet, Tāladhvaja for Balabhadra, Darpadalana for Subhadrā.
• The Gajapati king of Puri sweeps the chariot platforms with a golden broom before the pulling begins, a rite called Chherā Pahaṃrā that puts the king at the deity's service.
• Hundreds of thousands take the ropes; the chariots move in stages and often do not reach the Guṇḍicā temple until the next day.
• The three are bathed in public a fortnight earlier on Snāna Pūrṇimā, fall ill from the bathing, and are kept out of sight for a fortnight — the Anasara — before the yātrā.
• ISKCON has carried the festival to London, New York, Melbourne and dozens of other cities, where the same three chariots are pulled through the streets each summer.

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