2ND LEAD

Thousands attend Nalloor Thear festival

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 August 2009, 11:50 GMT]
The Thear (Chariot) festival of the historic Nalloor Kandasamy Temple in Jaffna town was held Wednesday morning with thousands of devotees from all over the island and participating, turning Jaffna into a virtual spiritual town, sources attending the festival said. With 300,000 fellow Tamils incarcerated in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa, and constrained by the curfews the Jaffna citizens still have to endure daily, the festival had added significance to the Saiva population in the NorthEast, although the number of participants were fewer than the previous years, civil sources in Jaffna said.



The chief deity Lord Murukan was taken from the temple Tuesday morning around seven to the gaily-decorated Thear, with several devotees following the Thear paying their homage doing "Angapirathshnam". Devotees annually flock to the temple to fulfil the vows, imposing on themselves peculiar forms of penance including Kaavadi (hanging from strings piercing the skins) to propitiate Lord Murukan.

The Thear returned to the main temple around ten in the morning.