The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.323

v2.c17.s1.323

The origin of the Car Festival is of greater interest to the antiquarian. In none of the ancient rituals is there any mention made of such a festival. In Vedic times there were no images and consequently no car was required for their use. In later days when images were brought into requisition as accessories to devotion or object of worship, the idea of giving such images an airing in a car every now and then did not strike any of the law-givers. It is only in medieval works that references are met with regarding the institution of the festival, but even to this day none of the Hindu divinities has a car, except Jagannātha and his representatives, as also the Jain saints Pārśvanātha and Mahāvira⁸⁰. The question, therefore, naturally suggests itself : did the Hindus of Puri borrow it from the Jains, or the Buddhists, and from them the people of other parts of India ? The late Rev. J. Stevenson of Bombay was the first to take up this question, and the conclusions, he arrived at were thus given in a paper entitled, ‘On the intermixture of Buddhism with Brahmanism, in the religion of the Hindus of the Dekkan’ : ‘The Ratha Jātrā, just immediately preceding the Śayâna Ekadaśī, or season of sacred rest, is probably the remains of a triumphal entry, with which the sages were welcomed on returning from their peregrinations to hold the Wasso'⁸¹. His arguments for this conclusion were, the absence of caste rules, the former : prevalence of Buddhism at Puri and the belief in a relic, a bone of Kṛṣṇa, in the image of Jagannātha.