Juggernaut is an
Anglicized version of Jagannath, the presiding deity of the same-named temple
in the eastern Indian city of Puri.
The name "juggernaut," which in ordinary English
use refers to something that requires blind devotion or heinous sacrifice,
derives from a popular legend surrounding Jagannath, or Juggernaut, and his two
siblings as they parade through Puri each summer during the Rath Yatra.
The automobiles that transport them in the procession are
massive—is Jagannath's 45 feet high, 30 feet wide, and moves on sixteen seven-foot-high
wheels—and are dragged by ropes pushed by hundreds of people.
The frantic worshippers (bhakta) of Jagannath committed
suicide by flinging themselves under the car's wheels in order to die in front
of the deity, according to one of the basic fictions of British colonial
history.
Despite their legendary position, suicides of this kind were exceedingly rare: the majority of persons who perished beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut procession were pulling the ropes when they lost their footing, fell into the vehicles' path, and were unable to flee due to the crush of the spectators.
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