Kerala welcomes Karkidakam with elephant feeding festival in Thrissur
Forty nine elephants were fed a ceremonial feast of rice, fruit, and grass at Kerala's Vadakkumnathan Temple.
Forty nine elephants were fed a ceremonial feast of rice, fruit, and grass at Kerala's Vadakkumnathan Temple.
Forty nine elephants were fed a ceremonial feast of rice, fruit, and grass at Kerala's Vadakkumnathan Temple.
Forty nine majestic elephants were served a lavish ceremonial feast at the historic Vadakkumnathan Temple in Thrissur as part of the traditional Aanayoottu (elephant feeding) ritual. The festival generally marks the first day of the Malayalam month of Karkidakam in Kerala. More than 25,000 devotees and elephant enthusiasts gathered at the temple premises to witness the annual spectacle.
The day's rituals began around 5 am with the 'Ganapathi Homam,' led by temple thantri Puliyannur Sankaranarayanan Namboodiri. The ritual was performed using 10,008 coconuts, 2,000 kg of beaten rice (avil), 2,000 kg of jaggery, 350 kg of puffed rice (malar), and 60 kg of sesame seeds.
The Aanayoottu ceremony commenced around 9.30 am. Temple melshanthi Payyappilly Madhavan Namboodiri inaugurated the event by offering the first rice ball to a female elephant named Thiruvambadi Lakshmikkutty. A total of 50 elephants—41 tuskers and nine female elephants—participated in this year's ceremony. Among them were well-known captive elephants, including Ernakulam Sivakumar, Paramekkavu Kalidasan, Pampady Sundaran, Puthuppally Sadhu, Puthuppally Kesavan and Bastin Vinayasundar.
Specially prepared rice, made from 500 kg of paddy and mixed with traditional herbal ingredients and Ashtachoornam, was rolled into 10 large rice balls for each elephant. The feast also included apples, grapes, sugarcane, bananas, watermelon, cucumber, ten bundles of palm leaves for every elephant, and nearly 2,000 kg of fresh grass.
People's representatives, Devaswom officials and prominent personalities from various fields joined the ceremony by feeding the elephants. The fest had enthusiastic participation of thousands of devotees, continuing one of Kerala's most cherished temple traditions associated with the beginning of Karkidakam.