Friday, October 3, 2014

Wheels

Jagannath and Parthasarathy are but two manifestations of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. One of them has given a word to the English lexicon. A word that was used by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, and by Robert Louis Stevenson to describe Mr. Hyde trampling over a child. 

There. Even without the clue, you would have guessed by now that I am talking about 'Juggernaut', which came from a description of the chariot of Puri Jagannath, at the wheels of which, it was claimed, Hindus sacrificed themselves. 

These wheels, though, are from the chariot of the Parthasarathy temple at Triplicane. They may not be as big as that of Jagannath; yet, you had better be careful to not get in their way, upon pain of creating a synonym of juggernaut!


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