{"id":6537,"date":"2008-01-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/14\/more-than-thirty-million-pilgrims-worship-at-sabarimala\/"},"modified":"2008-01-14T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-14T12:00:00","slug":"more-than-thirty-million-pilgrims-worship-at-sabarimala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/01\/14\/more-than-thirty-million-pilgrims-worship-at-sabarimala\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than Thirty Million Pilgrims Worship at Sabarimala"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.hinduonnet.com\/thehindu\/holnus\/004200801142070.htm\">www.hinduonnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">SABARIMALA, INDIA, January 14, 2008: Thousands of devotees on Monday evening witnessed the &#8220;Makara Jyothi&#8221; &#8212; a celestial light on the eastern horizon &#8212; marking the finale of the pilgrimage season of the hill shrine of Sabarimala, which witnessed a record turnout of 32.5 million pilgrims this season. The chant of &#8220;Swami&#8230;Saranam&#8230;Ayyappa&#8221; rent the air as the holy light flickered across the skies above the Ponnambalamedu after the evening puja was performed in the shrine with the Lord&#8217;s idol adorned with glittering &#8220;Holy Jewels.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hours before, the Sannidhanam around the temple had turned into a virtual sea of humanity with the devout from different parts of the country converging in thousands for the auspicious occasion. <\/p>\n<p>Thousands of others had darshan of the holy fire on the banks of the river Pampa, from where the uphill trek was halted this morning to avoid overcrowding.<\/p>\n<p>Moments before the evening puja, three wooden caskets containing the holy jewels were brought to the shrine in a procession, which set off from the Panthalam Palace some 60 km away, where Lord Ayyappa was believed to have spent his childhood as the adopted son of a local king.<\/p>\n<p>Over 3,000 police personnel had been deployed in and around the area for security and crowd-management. Kerala Devaswom Minister Sudhkaran said on Monday that the revenue received by the temple increased by Rs 11.7 millions from last year&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.hinduonnet.com SABARIMALA, INDIA, January 14, 2008: Thousands of devotees on Monday evening witnessed the &#8220;Makara Jyothi&#8221; &#8212; a celestial light,&#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-6537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6537","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=6537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}