KANNIYAKUMARI: On the concluding day of the Navaratri celebrations at the Kanniyakumari Arulmigu Bagavathi Amman Temple on Thursday, the district police personnel offered the ceremonial guard of honour to the temple idol, which is a centuries-old practice dating back to the Travancore kingdom regime during the 1800s.
The police offered the traditional respect at the origin of the procession, in which the Bagavathi Amman idol was taken for “parivettai” — a sacred hunting ritual performed on the final day of the festival — on a silver horse palanquin around 12.30 pm to Mahadanapuram, located nearly four kilometres away.
The police personnel, holding rifles in their arms, stood in front of the temple on either side of the procession, in which the idol was taken along with a horse, an elephant, women holding muthu kudai (umbrellas), amid the beats of chenda melam among other instruments. Later that evening, the parivettai ritual was performed in Mahadanapuram. Besides, the district police also offer respect every year to Navaratri processions from Padmanabhapuram palace to Thiruvananthapuram.
Folklorist A K Perumal told TNIE that the practice of police offering respect could be traced back to 1810, when the Travancore kingdom started taking control of the temples in the district. The respect was offered as the revenue and devaswom functioned as a single department at the time, he said, adding that the practice continued even after the department was bifurcated in 1922, till the end of the princely state in the end of 1940s.
When the district merged with the Madras State in 1956, based on the request of the people from Kerala, the then chief minister K Kamaraj permitted the continuation of the rituals and agamas of the temples in the district, he added. Kanniyakumari Bagavathi Amman Devotees Sangam Secretary M V Nathan said the procession, after parivettai, would reach the temple after going around Panjalingapuram.