Juggernaut

Anglicized form of Jagannath, who is
the presiding deity of the temple with
the same name in the eastern Indian city
of Puri. The word “juggernaut,” which in
general English usage refers to anything
that requires blind devotion or horrible
sacrifice, comes from a widespread
myth surrounding the procession of
Jagannath, or Juggernaut, and his two
siblings around Puri during the Rath
Yatra each summer. The cars that carry
them in the procession are enormous—
Jagannath’s measures forty-five feet high
and thirty feet wide, and travels on sixteen wheels that are seven feet high—
and are drawn by ropes pulled by
hundreds of people. One of the staple
fictions of British colonial lore described
Jagannath’s frenzied devotees (bhakta)
committing suicide by throwing themselves under the car’s wheels, in order to
die in the sight of the god. Despite the
legendary status of such stories, suicides
of this sort were in fact extremely
uncommon: most of those who died
under the wheels of the Juggernaut procession were pulling the ropes when
they lost their footing, fell into the cars’
path, and were prevented from escaping
by the crushing crowds.