Jaya Jagannatha.
Jaya Jagannatha.
In the sweltering heat of eastern India, under a blazing sun that seemed to set the very air on fire, a massive wooden chariot rumbled through the streets of Puri. Its towering form, adorned with intricate carvings and vibrant fabrics, cast long shadows over the devotees who crowded around it. This was no ordinary vehicle – this was the chariot of Lord Jagannath, a form of the Hindu god Vishnu.
The year was 1321, and Sir John Mandeville, an intrepid English knight and explorer, watched the scene with wide eyes. He had journeyed far from his homeland, seeking adventure and marvels in the mysterious East. What he witnessed that day would plant the seed of a word that would rumble through the English language for centuries to come.
The chariot creaked and groaned as it inched forward, pulled by hundreds of fervent worshippers. Their chants rose to a fever pitch, drowning out all other sounds in the bustling city. “Jaya Jagannath! Jaya Jagannath!” they cried, praising their lord.
Mandeville, his fair skin glistening with sweat, leaned towards his local guide. “What manner of ritual is this?” he shouted over the din.
The guide, used to the annual spectacle, replied casually, “This is the Ratha Yatra, the Chariot Festival. The great lord Jagannath and his siblings leave their temple to bless the people.”
As Mandeville watched, he saw some devotees, in their religious ecstasy, throw themselves before the massive wheels of the chariot. The huge wooden wheels, as tall as a man, rolled inexorably onward. The knight gasped in horror, but his guide seemed unsurprised.
“Some believe it is a great honor to die beneath the wheels of Jagannath’s chariot,” the guide explained, his voice matter-of-fact. “They think it will free them from the cycle of rebirth.”
Mandeville’s mind reeled. The sheer size of the chariot, the unstoppable nature of its progress, and the devoted frenzy of the crowd all combined into a singular, overwhelming image. When he returned to England and penned his fantastical travelogue, this scene featured prominently.
His account, embellished and exaggerated as travelers’ tales often were, spread throughout Europe. The name “Jagannath” morphed in English mouths, becoming “Juggernaut.” The word took on a life of its own, coming to mean any unstoppable force that demanded devotion or sacrifice.
Orientalism began early, alas: four centuries before the British conquest of India began, falsely distorted tales about India were propagated in the 14th-century travelogue of Sir John Mandeville, who described the festival in his Travels and depicted Hindus throwing themselves under the wheels of the enormous Jagannath chariots as a religious sacrifice and being crushed to death. Hinduism, in fact, has no concept of such human sacrifice; if Sir John really saw a Hindu killed under the wheels of a chariot, it can only be because a poor devotee stumbled and fell accidentally upon the path in the tumult and the enormous chariot could not easily stop or turn on the narrow road.
Still, the tale, the false image of the faith it portrayed, and the unfortunate associations of the word persisted. By the 18th century “juggernaut” was in common use as a synonym for an irresistible and destructive force that demands total devotion or unforgiving sacrifice—the sense in which it pops up in the novels of Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens, and even Robert Louis Stevenson, who applied it to Dr Jekyll’s foil, Mr Hyde.
The picture of a lovely rath in a British Museum catalogue exists for an exhibition called Living With Gods. It was only Mark Twain, in his autobiography, who described Juggernaut as the kindest of gods; and a look at the lovely object in the British Museum’s collection shows you why—for such an exquisite piece of art would only have been used to transport a figure of reverence, not of fear. But alas, by then the damage had been done.
As centuries passed, the religious context faded, but the image of that massive, inexorable chariot remained. From the printing press to the steam engine to the march of progress itself, anything huge, powerful, and unstoppable became a “juggernaut.”
And so, from the sun-baked streets of Puri to the linguistic landscape of the English-speaking world, the juggernaut rolled on, crushing old meanings and gathering new ones, an unstoppable force of language itself.
