Juggernaut

jug'ger-nawt, a famous Hindu idol. The temple of Juggernaut is situated in a sacred town of that name some 300 miles along the coast southeast from Calcutta. The grounds are of large extent, inclosing 120 temples. Twenty-four festivals a year draw thousands of pilgrims whose gifts amount to incredible sums. Once a year Juggernaut, on a car forty-five feet high and thirty-five feet square, mounted on sixteen wheels, seven feet in diameter, is dragged to his summer house a mile distant. The sand is so deep and the devotees so poorly organized that the ceremony occupies several days. Englishmen formerly supposed that the worship of Juggernaut required that a score or two of devotees cast themselves under the ponderous wheels of the car to propitiate the god's wrath, but this is probably an error. It may be seen readily that, with a frantic, howling mob pushing and dragging the equivalent of a three-story house through deep sand, enough poor wretches would accidentally get under the wheels or be trampled to death to secure the favor of any ordinary idol. The idea of a Juggernaut rolling on mercilessly over the bodies of its self-devoted victims has become fixed in our language, however, and is applied to any burdensome custom or institution requiring sacrifice. See India