BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, May 12, 2005: Nearly a hundred traditional carpenters worshipped three big logs in Orissa’s temple town of Puri in an annual ritual that precedes the carving out of three gigantic wooden chariots for the Jagannath festival in July. “We have already got the first lot of logs to begin work, the rest will come phase wise,” temple official Bhaskar Mishra told IANS. As every year, the wooden logs arrived in the temple town, 56 km from here, on the auspicious day of Akshay Tritiya Wednesday. “The carpenters worship them before beginning work on the chariots as part of tradition.” The temple administration arranges over 1,000 big wooden logs and the construction work goes on for two months. The carpenters are those who have inherited the craft from their forefathers. A senior priest of the temple touched the logs with a golden axe and offered ceremonial prayers. A fire ritual was also performed on the road where the logs have been kept. Now carpenters can begin cutting logs to make the chariots, the official said. The temple organizes a grand festival every year on the auspicious day of Asadha Dutiya when the three gigantic chariots of Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra roll out from the 12th century temple to another shrine called Gundicha, located one and a half kilometers away, in a procession. After nine days, the procession is reversed and the deities are taken back to their primary residence. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world gather to watch and take part in the procession. The festival is known as Ratha Yatra and will start July 8 this year, the temple official said.
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