Rath Yatra Grand Road Puri -- Festival Chariot Procession HD Wallpaper
Free download • HD quality • 2.9 MB
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About this image
The Grand Road (Bada Danda) of Puri stretches wide to accommodate the three chariots that only travel this route once a year -- and even at its widest, the road seems barely adequate for the towering structures that move through it. This illustration captures the architectural scale of the Rath Yatra: each chariot is essentially a mobile temple, with a superstructure of carved and painted wood rising four stories above the platform, canopied with cloth in the specific colors assigned to each deity. The wheels alone are over seven feet in diameter. Building three chariots of this scale from scratch every single year is a logistical feat that has been accomplished without interruption for centuries, even during famines, wars, and colonial rule. The British East India Company, which controlled Odisha from 1803, considered banning the festival but wisely decided against it -- the Rath Yatra was too deeply embedded in the culture to suppress. The festival has survived Mughal rule, British colonialism, natural disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic (when a dramatically reduced Rath Yatra was held with no public attendance in 2020, the first time in recorded history). The sound of the Rath Yatra is as distinctive as the sight: the creaking of massive wooden wheels, the rhythmic chanting of the devotees pulling the ropes, the temple musicians playing on the chariots, and the roar of the crowd -- a soundscape that has remained essentially unchanged for a millennium. Free HD download.
