Blessings from Elephant in Temples of India

Don’t be surprised if you are confronted by elephants in temples of Tamil Nadu. These elephants are trained animals, trained to even bless you. During festivals elephants are decorated and taken out on processions.

Their routine work would include carrying and transferring heavy loads and sometimes idols too within temple complex. Devotees seeking blessings from elephant in temples of India, especially south India is a common occurrence.

Lakshmi in Hampi

Blessings from Temple Elephants

One of the daily activities of these mute mammoth animals would be to bless visitors and collect money. The elephants are decorated with Bhasma, the three horizontal lines on the forehead indicates it is a devotee of Lord Shiva. Mahouts always stands close to them.

Presence of mahout infuses confidence in kids and adults to approach the elephant. Children visiting temples find it exciting and fun to get blessed by the elephants.

They queue up in front of these elephants, the elephants extend the trunk like upturned palm towards them. As soon as the coin is placed on the trunk, it would swing the trunk to the mahout and pass the coin to him.

Then it would place the trunk on their heads and lo! they are blessed. Adults too wait patiently for their turn.

Blessings from Temple Elephants

I just didn’t like the idea of these mahouts making an earning out of these mute animals, so I sent my daughters with bunches of bananas. To our astonishment and disappointment, the elephant happily ate the bananas but did not do the act of blessing.

Obviously it was not trained to do so. The selfish Humans have successfully trained these mute animals to be money minded. My daughters made a second trip, this time armed with coins!

Elephant blessing a child in Temple

Blessings from Temple Elephants

Blessings from Lakshmi in Hampi

One of the most popular elephants famed to bless devotees is Lakshmi in Virupaksha Temple in Hampi, Karnataka. Place a 10 rupee note in her extended trunk, she will pass it to her mahout and bless you!

This practice is on for years now. Some tourists and devotees follow her to her bathing spot in Tungabhadra river. She playfully splashes water on them.

Blessings from Temple Elephants

Not many support using elephants for acts like this. Many perceive it as a way of deceiving the people for money. But then where will the money come for feeding the elephants. Obviously the cost to cater to their huge appetite cannot be met by the earnings of the poor mahouts and hence they resort to such means.

What is your opinion about this?

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