Post by The Archivist on Oct 19, 2015 14:09:20 GMT -5
Huge stone statues on wheels which crush anything in their path. They are motivated by some unearthly force.
The English loanword juggernaut in the sense of "a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god" is from the 17th century, inspired by the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha, which has the Ratha Yatra ("chariot procession"), an annual procession of chariots carrying the murtis (statues) of Jagannâth, Subhadra and Balabhadra (Krishna's elder brother).
The first European description of this festival is found in the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death.
The figurative sense of the English word, with the idea of "something that demands blind devotion or merciless sacrifice" became common in the mid-nineteenth century. For example, it was used to describe the out-of-control character Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other notable writers to have used the word this way range from H.G. Wells and Longfellow to Joe Klein.
The first European description of this festival is found in the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death.
The figurative sense of the English word, with the idea of "something that demands blind devotion or merciless sacrifice" became common in the mid-nineteenth century. For example, it was used to describe the out-of-control character Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other notable writers to have used the word this way range from H.G. Wells and Longfellow to Joe Klein.
I like to use it as in the second note as related to a religious sacrifice to pagan gods.