650 kg ghee on bullock carts for Ayodhya temple
LUCKNOW: With the preparations for the consecration ceremony of Lord Ram’s idol in child form in the Ram temple in Ayodhya going on at war footing, 6.5 quintal (650kg) ghee has been brought to the town from Rajasthan. It is to perform first ‘Aarti’ of the idol after its consecration in ‘sanctum sanctorum’ on January 22, next year.
Meanwhile, the makeshift temple where the ‘Ram Vigrah’ is enthroned presently, will be closed for general public for two days – January 20 and 21—during the consecration rituals. Interestingly, the ghee, which left Jodhpur on November 27 to reach the temple town on Thursday morning covering a distance of about 1200 km, has been brought neither by a bus nor by train, it has rather been ferried through the five bullock carts each guarded by a dozen ‘sevadaars’.
It took 10 days for the bullock carts to cover the distance from Jodhpur crossing Pali, Byavar, Ajmer, Jaipur, Bharatpur, Mathura and Lucknow, to reach Ayodhya where Shree Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust general secretary Champat Rai and a trust member Dr Anil Mishra received it. Moreover, 108 ‘Shivlingas’ have also been brought along with the ghee. On the other, ‘soil’ from Thailand and ‘turmeric’ from Cambodia – both to be used in Puja-- also reached Ayodhya on Thursday morning.
According to temple trust general secretary Champat Rai, the ghee brought to Ayodhya from Jodhpur is special as it has been extracted from the milk of those cows which were saved from being slaughtered in Jodhpur in 2014. “All those cows were reared and exposed to the ‘paathh’ of epic Ramcharitmanas for nine months and then their milk was used to make ghee to be used for the Aarti of Lord Ram,” said Rai.
As per the sources, 650 kg ghee was prepared at Shree Shree Maharishi Sandeepan Ram Dharma Gaushala (cow shelter) in Banad of Jodhpur. The sources claimed that 20 years ago, Maharishi Sandeepan had resolved to send ghee for the Aarti of Ram Lala whenever his temple would be built in Ayodhya. The sources said that on each bullock cart Rs 3.5 lakh was spent incurring a total expenditure of Rs 17.5 lakh in the transportation of ghee from Rajasthan to UP.
Meanwhile, the soil brought from Thaliland to Ayodhya was handed over to Champat Rai by temple trust treasurer Maharaj Govind Dev Giri on Thursday. Sharing a post on X, Rai said that like Ayodhya, the land of Lord Ram, another Ayodhya existed in Thailand known as ‘Ayuthaya’ from where the soil was brought to be used in Puja.
Sharing more details, Rai said that Lord Ram would be consecrated in the ‘garbh griha’ (Sanctum Sanctorum) of the temple as a five-year-old child. “Three idols depicting Lord Ram in his child from are being sculpted by the one stone from Rajasthan and two from Karnataka. “The idols are 90 per cent ready and are being given the final touches. Of the three, the most attractive one would be chosen to be consecrated on January 22,” added Rai.