Ratha Yatra or Ratha Jatra or Chariot Festival is a Hindu festival associated with Lord Jagannath held at Puri in the state of Odisha, India. As part of Ratha Yatra, the deities of Jagannath, his elder brother Balabhadra and younger sister Subhadra are taken out in a procession to Gundicha Temple and remain there for nine days. Then the deities or Ratha Yatra return to the Main temple. The return journey of Puri Jagannath Ratha Jatra is known as Bahuda Jatra.
Amazingly enough, an exactly similar festival is depicted in the walls of Luxor. Opet festival that used to be celebrated in Karnak, during the season of the flooding of the Nile. In this grand festival, the idols of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were placed on sacred boats, which were carried in a splendid, joyous procession down the Avenue of the Sphinxes, along the 2 mile road that connects the temples of Karnak and Luxor. Huge crowds of people gathered along the road, blowing trumpets, dancing and singing, clapping, offering prayers, burning incense sticks and generally raising a tremendous din. Nubian musicians and female acrobats entertained the crowd. The boats rested along the way at six way-stations that were built by Queen Hatshepsut. Once the idols reached Luxor Temple, the coronation rites of the king were repeated in a sacred ritual, which effectively transferred the power of divine rulership from Amun to the pharaoh. The idols rested in Luxor for a period of time and subsequently came back to Karnak, in another procession along the river Nile.
The similarities between these two ancient festivals are obvious and striking. There was no doubt in my mind that the Opet festival of Karnak is identical in form and spirit to the Rathayatra festival of Puri.
As per Vedic accounts, the festival of Rathayatra has been celebrated in India for thousands of years, although the current Temple of Jagannath only dates from the 12th century CE. The festival has been mentioned in multiple Puranas, which are Vedic historical documents of unknown antiquity. The Skanda Purana states that the first Jagannath Temple was established in Puri in the Krita Yuga, which, as per the currently accepted Yuga Cycle doctrines, began at around 10,900 BC.
Since Jagannath refers to Vishnu i.e. the Lord of the Universe, he was worshipped in different forms in the different Yugas. In the Kali Yuga he is worshipped in the form of Krishna. The Skanda Purana also specifies the date of the Rathyatra festival. In many other Vedic documents such as the Narada Purana, Padma Purana and the Ramayana, the virtues of worshipping Jagannath have been extolled. The festival is, therefore, indubitably Vedic in origin.
That is a phenomenal idea. Although we know that Indian traders had extensive trade relations with the first Pharaohs of dynastic Egypt in 3000 BC, and sold them cotton, muslin, spices, gold and ivory, such a major influence of India on Egyptian religious systems has not been explicitly identified by historians till now. Some scholars have, however, pointed out the similarity between the culture of Egypt and Eastern India.
Peter Von Bohlen, a German Indologist, mentioned that there are elements of folk art, language, place names and rural culture of Bengal (the state adjacent to Orissa and included in it in ancient times) which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts. However, when you consider the fact that an entire patheon along with associated ceremonies and rituals seems to have been exported to Egypt from India, it appears that the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Emperors of India must have maintained very close relations since ancient times. This ‘pantheon’ transfer would have been possible only through express royal patronage. But when and why did this happen? Who all were involved? Was this also accompanied by a transfer of armed forces which resulted in the reunification of entire Egypt under the Pharaohs? History provides us with no answers.
Interestingly, the people of Egypt themselves claimed to have come from a land called ‘Puanit’ (corrupted to ‘Punt’) located on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Punt can be reached leading off the Red Sea, in a south-east direction, and is described by the scholar Dr. Adolf Erman as ‘a distant country washed by the great seas, full of valleys, incense, balm, precious metals and stones; rich in animals, cheetahs, panthers, dog-headed apes and long tailed monkeys, winged creatures with strange feathers to fly up to the boughs of wonderful trees, especially the incense tree and the coconut trees.’
Col. Henry Steel Olcott, a former president of the Theosophical Society, explained in the March, 1881 edition of The Theosophist that, “by the pictorial hieroglyphic inscription found on the walls of the temple of the Queen Haslitop (Hatshepsut) at Der-el-babri, we see that this Punt can be no other than India. For many ages the Egyptians traded with their old homes, and the reference here made by them to the names of the Princes of Punt and its fauna and flora, especially the nomenclature of various precious woods to be found but in India, leave us scarcely room for the smallest doubt that the old civilization of Egypt is the direct outcome of that the older India.”
The expedition of Hatshepsut to the land of Punt was done primarily with the objective of acquiring incense and a number of exotic goods, which she dedicated to Amun, the presiding diety of Thebes. Does that not indicate that ‘Punt’ and ‘Amun’ may somehow be connected? Is it possible that Hatshepsut felt that by bringing these items from the land of her forefathers, and from the place where Amun himself had originated, she would be performing a great service to her ‘father’, Amun, and thereby acquire his blessings.
Many questions are raised here. If Punt is India, then when did the ancient Egyptians migrate to the shores of the Nile from Punt?
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