Context: The Bahuda Yatra, the return journey of the deities to the Puri Jagannath temple after the annual Rath Yatra, was recently concluded amid permitted restrictions.
Bahuda Yatra

• According to folk stories Lord Jagannath and his siblings, Goddess Shubhadra and Lord Balabhadra, returns from their aunt’s place at Gundicha Temple to Jagannath Temple.
• This journey is known as Bahuda Yatra.
• Nine days after the Rath Yatra, the yatra or the return journey takes place.

About Jagannath Rath Yatra

• Ratha Jatra, the Festival of Chariots of Lord Jagannatha is celebrated every year at Puri, the temple town in Orissa, on the east coast of India.
• It involves a public procession with a chariot with deities Jagannath (Vishnu avatar), BalaBhadra (his brother), Subhadra (his sister) and Sudarshana Chakra (his weapon) on a ratha, a wooden deula-shaped chariot.
• The huge, colourfully decorated chariots, are drawn by hundreds and thousands of devotees on the bada danda, the grand avenue to the Gundicha temple, some two miles away to the North.
• It attracts over a million Hindu pilgrims who join the procession each year.

About Puri Jagannath Temple

• The Jagannath Temple in Puri was called the “White Pagoda”.
• The temple is a part of Char Dham (Badrinath, Dwaraka, Puri, Rameswaram) pilgrimages that a Hindu is expected to make in one’s lifetime.
• When most of the deities in the temples of India are made of stone or metal, the idol of Jagannatha is made of wood which is ceremoniously replaced in every twelve or nineteen years by using sacred trees.
• The temple is believed to be constructed in the 12th century by King Anatavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga Dynasty.
• The temple is famous for its annual Ratha Yatra or Chariot festival, in which the three principal deities (Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra) are pulled on huge and elaborately decorated temple cars
• Jagannath Puri temple is called ‘Yamanika Tirtha’ where, according to the Hindu beliefs, the power of ‘Yama’, the god of death has been nullified in Puri due to the presence of Lord Jagannath.