{"id":4384,"date":"2004-07-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/07\/20\/2004-07-20-priests-called-to-pray-for-rain\/"},"modified":"2004-07-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-20T12:00:00","slug":"2004-07-20-priests-called-to-pray-for-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/07\/20\/2004-07-20-priests-called-to-pray-for-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"Priests Called to Pray for Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.123bharath.com\/india-news\/index.php?action=fullnews&#038;id=2715\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>MUMBAI, INDIA, June 16, 2004: Even as India&#8217;s eastern part continues to reel under floods, lack of rains in the western parts has forced some Hindu priests &#8212; standing neck-deep in water and chanting hymns &#8212; to invoke the rain god.&#8221;Praying to Varuna &#8212; the God of rains &#8212; while standing in water is a very effective ritual,&#8221; believes K.A. Vishwanathan of the South Indian Education Society in Sion in central Mumbai. &#8220;It is performed in south India and has produced good results there,&#8221; he said. Ten priests began reciting the Varuna Mantra (hymns invoking the rain god) standing in a tank as volunteers poured buckets of cold water. &#8220;The ritual was performed earlier in Mumbai in 1987 and 1992,&#8221; informed Vishwanathan. Said K.M. Shivaramakrishnan, vice president and trustee of the Shankara Math: &#8220;The ritual has been undertaken after the city of Mumbai and most of India had scarcity of rains. &#8220;In villages and small towns, the ritual is performed in temple tanks, rivers and ponds. But since we are in a city, the priests had to immerse themselves in large aluminium tanks. &#8220;The priests are very well-versed in the Vedas. They do the japam (sing hymns) without referring to any book.&#8221; Vishwanathan added, &#8220;After the water ritual, a havan (fire sacrifice) would also be offered.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceMUMBAI, INDIA, June 16, 2004: Even as India&#8217;s eastern part continues to reel under floods, lack of rains in the,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}