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These couples have really strong calf muscles

By: Santosh :+: Under: Religion
On: ⋅ March 11, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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or really tough knees, depends on your perspective. 10000 reps of kneeling and standing up will do that. This story seems right out of a wet dream of an orientalist. [link] (tip Sai via email).

A long long time ago in a gully far far away, when this scrawny little Indian kid indulged in behavior that would with amazing regularity earn him the now politically incorrect sobriquet of monkey (and the occasional even more politically incorrect “maa ki”), the enforcer often had a special punishment in store for the macaca’esque kid - thoppukaranams. Thoppukaranam, for the uninitiated, is a form of corporal punishment in India particularly the South where the offenders are made to hold their ears and kneel down and get up multiple times, often with legs crossed. Whether this mode of punishment is effective may be worthy of a debate but they sure helped strengthen the calf muscles, I can vouch for that one.

In the village of Ammapatti in Virudhnagar district of Tamil Nadu, India, getting married is deemed worthy of this barbaric punishment, doing thoppukaranams not once, not a dozen but 10,000 times.

A Tamil Nadu village is making headlines for the strange rituals people have to follow to get married. A couple getting married has to kneel before the goddess 10,000 times!

Ammapatti village in Virudhnagar district, nearly 700 km south of Chennai, has just 1,500 people living there but as many as 300 weddings have taken place at the village temple before the local goddess Jakkamma.

Thankfully enough though, if the couple collapses from sheer fatigue, their friends and relatives get punished.

A couple getting married has to perform thoppukaranam - kneel and get up, holding their ears - 10,000 times. And if a person cannot do this, their friends and relatives can help complete the ritual.

No word on whether this kind of substitution is available for the wedding night. The weird rituals don’t end there.

The groom has to dig a shallow trench around the village green and the bride has to fill this with water from the village tank. After this, the bride and groom have to walk around the temple tank with grass in their mouth, holding burning torches.

Of course, no Hindu superstition is complete without the animal sacrifices.

Goats are sacrificed at the temple on such occasions. The meat is then salted, sun-dried, and a piece of this is given to every villager.

And before you say, these rituals probably started in the dark ages…

According to local people, the rituals are of relatively recent origin. They began as punishment for eloping lovers some decades ago.
Several couples from the village had children born with disabilities. A local soothsayer said, the goddess Jakkama was displeased and prescribed these rituals for people in the village getting married. Now they have been absorbed in the community culture.

It’s nice to know even these days superstitious rituals are being manufactured out of thin air.

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