On Tuesday, about 15 lakh devotees witnessed the ‘SunaVesha’ of lord Jagannath, His elder brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra on their respective chariots. Three sets of servitors brought gold ornaments and jewellery from the temple treasury to the Raths amid tight security. On the chariots, it took about two hours to dress the deities in gold ornaments. Gold ornaments of 138 various types and styles measuring about 100 kg were used to decorate the deities. They included giant limbs like feet and hands and insignias like mace, lotus, wheel and conch, besides huge gold tiaras and a number of special necklaces and garlands. The deities too wore big gold “kundalas”(earrings) in their earlobes, besides chest guards. The darshan of the special vesha was to continue till late in the night and all the ornaments were to be returned to the temple treasury by the servitors on duty late in the night. The administration threw a three- layer security of armed personnel around the three Raths while CCTV cameras were fitted to cover the festival arena.
An inventory of the lords’ treasury conducted in 1978 reflects that there were 367 items of gold ornaments weighing four quintals of gold and 251 items of silver ornaments weighing 14 quintals used round the year on various occasions. These apart, there were diamond, emerald, ruby and other precious stones of rare quality and size in the temple treasury. It is learnt that out of the total seven vaults of the temple treasury, only one is opened.
On the Wednesday, the deities would be offered Adhar Pana, a special drink. On Thursday, lord Jagannath would present Rasgollas to His consort Mahalakshmi to appease her.
Mahalakshmi is believed to be angry as she was not taken by the lords for the pleasure ride of chariot during the nine-day-long Rath Yatra. late on Thursday night, the deities would be escorted to the Ratna Simhasan in ceremonial Pahandi.