To watch a short video of this year's Maharadham procession, check out the below video. Gents pull the chariot from the right, and ladies from the left.
So how does it all work? First off we have the sweet Rukku, the Temple elephant surveying the area. She precedes many of the chariot processions and activities throughout the Deepam Festival.
From early morning, devotees have lined up, in order to enter the top of the Big Chariot, so that they may take darshan of the gods Annamalaiyar and Unnamulai. To reach the Gods, devotees have to climb to the top of a connecting building and cross a tunnel that leads directly into the top of the Big Chariot.
In the below photograph, you can see the yellow building connecting to the Big Chariot and the tunnel corridor leading from one to the other.
Devotees are milling about on Car Street around the chariots. But it will be hours before the Big Chariot is ready to move.
The photographs give one an idea of the vast size of the chariot.The devotees at the top of the chariot with their backs to us, are facing the murtis and taking their darshan.
The massive chains that will be used to pull the vast vehicle are lying on the pavement ahead of the Chariot.
Gents will be pulling the chariot from the right side, and ladies from the left side.
The chariot needs help, specifically when going around corners. So to control the direction of the vehicle, wooden chocs are placed under the massive wheels, and a number of lads and young men, jump up and down on wooden levers.
The levers themselves are heavy, solid planks of wood, so to move them under the wheels, a system of ropes and pulleys has been devised.
Progress around the outside of the 26 acre perimeter of the Arunachaleswarar Temple, is very slow, and it will be late in the night when the Big Chariot has completed its circumambulation of the Big Temple.
One of the most well attended functions during the Arunachala Deepam Festival is always the day of the Maha Radham. On this day, five enormous chariots carrying representations of the Gods, circumbulate the perimeter of the 26 acre Arunachaleswarar Temple compound. The largest of these chariots is the Maha Radham, carrying the Lord Arunachaleswarar.Over the years another major part of the day of 'Maha Radham' is ‘karumbu thottil’ -- which involves the fulfilment of a vow by parents, who previously promised Lord Arunachaleswarar that if granted a child, would return and carry the child in a 'sugar cane cradle' around the Temple.A short narrative in a National newspaper on this subject begins thus:"Hundreds of parents circumbulated Sri Arunachaleswarar temple in Tiruvannamalai town carrying their child in ‘karumbu thottil’, a cradle made of a new silk sari tied to sugarcane, to fulfil their prayers to Lord Arunachaleswarar.A common sight on the seventh and tenth days of the Karthigai Deepam festival, the ritual is the culmination of a vow made to the deity. The devotees and temple priests strongly believe that couples will be blessed with a child if they promise to Lord Annamalaiyar that they will carry the infant around the temple in a sugarcane cradle. Not less than 10,000 couples kept their vow this year." To continue reading go to this link here.
This year at the beginning of the day long circumbulation, there was an incident in which the back wheels of the huge chariot over ran a number of devotees. We can report that no lives were lost and the devotees involved in the incident are now recovering.In some of the below photographs, its possible to gauge the size and weight of the huge chariots, which are pulled with chains manually by devotees (gents on the right, ladies on the left) around the vast Temple perimeter.
By the time the Chariots have completed their full circumbulation of Arunachaleswarar Temple, it is late in the evening, and the chariots are once again positioned in their permanent homes on the side of 'Car Street' in the front of Arunachaleswarar Temple.
