Temple Elephants in India

[Guest guest]

Friends,

 

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

of temples that had temple elephants, including the Arunachaleshwar

temple in Tiru. We were given a tour of the elephant's home and goshala

in the temple grounds, truly a priviledge.

 

The elephants 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