Source: sify.com
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA, February 28, 2010: More than three million women devotees lit earthen kilns to cook rice and jaggery as offering for the presiding deity of Attukal Bhagavathi temple here Sunday on the occasion of Pongala festival.
The ritual started after the chief priest lit a hearth with fire brought from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. The devotees carrying bricks, firewood, rice, jaggery and coconut then lit up their stoves with the sacred fire to cook the offering for the Attukal Bhagavathi deity, believed to be an incarnation of Kannaki, the central character of the Tamil epic “Silappathikaaram”.
The offering is made on the penultimate day of the 10-day-long Attukal Pongala festival, which is often referred to as the equivalent of the Sabarimala pilgrimage for women.
The Guinness Book of Records listed the festival as the world’s largest annual gathering of women in 1997, when 1.5 million devotees converged here Feb 23.