Temple Elephants in India

[Guest guest]

Friends,

 

This may be off-topic, but you may find of interest.

 

In our recent trips to India, we had the opportunity to visit a number

of temples that had temple elephants. Often they are found in the temple

compounds, giving blessings to the pilgrims as they visit the temple.

The pilgrim simply offers the elephant a banana or a rupee coin, which

the elephant deftly takes with the nimble end of its trunk, and places

the donation in its mouth or in its keeper's hands, as the case may be.

Then the elephant taps (or knocks) the pilgrim on the head as a

blessing.

 

We put together a short video montage (two minutes) of some of the

elephants which you might find interesting and amusing. It can be found

at Temple Elephants in India

<http://www.atmajyoti.org/vi_temple_elephants_medium.asp> .

 

Elephants in this video include Rukmini from the Arunachaleshwar Temple

in Tiruvannamalai, Andar from the Sri Rangam Temple in Trichy, and the

temple elephant from the famous Krishna temple in Udupi.

 

The Video is in Quicktime format, so some PC users might need to

download the latest free version of Quicktime

<http://www.apple.com/quicktime/win.html> for it to view properly.

 

We hope you enjoy it.

 

Swami Tarakananda

Atma Jyoti Ashram