The Big Chariot

As always the Big Chariot is parked on Car Street, in front of Arunachaleswarar Temple. Besides the usual maintenance checks and upkeep, it only gets moved around and used once a year and that is during the Deepam Festival on the 7th Day.

Its parked on the road and anyone can get close and look at the beautiful detail and finishing of the Chariot.

And in the below photographs, you can see part of the chains that will be used to haul the chariot all around the outside perimeter of the Big Temple. It is considered a great blessing to pull this chariot and there is never a shortage of willing souls to join the massive lines of people needed to haul it.

Pradakshina Practice

The practice of pradakshina is very highly regarded in India. It consists of making the circuit on foot of a sacred place, a temple, a statue or of some person who is the object of reverence. The circuit is always clockwise, starting from the east towards the south, so that what is thus venerated is always on one’s right hand. In the great Temples people may perform a series of pradakshina in each of the three, five, and sometimes seven courts which surround the central sanctuary, one within the other. People sometimes take a vow to carry this out for forty-eight consecutive days, with a view to obtaining certain blessings or else in thankfulness to God for his mercies.

On great festivals the temple-murtis (images), mounted on their colossal cars, themselves make the pradakshina of their own sanctuary, accompanied by the crowd of their worshippers.

[Swami Abhishiktananda]