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Concept
Juggernaut
Summary
A juggernaut (ˈdʒʌɡərnɔːt), in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable. This English usage originated in the mid-nineteenth century and was adapted from the Sanskrit word Jagannath.
The figurative use of the word is analogous to figurative uses of steamroller or battering ram to mean something overwhelming. Its ground in social behavior is similar to that of bandwagon, but with overtones of devotional sacrifice. Its British English meaning of a large heavy truck or articulated lorry dates from the second half of the twentieth century.
The word is derived from the Sanskrit/Odia Jagannātha (Devanagari जगन्नाथ, Odia ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ) "world-lord", combining jagat ("world") and nātha ("lord"), which is one of the names of Krishna found in the Sanskrit epics.
The English loanword juggernaut in the sense of "a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god" is from the seventeenth century, inspired by the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, Odisha (Orissa), which has the Ratha Yatra ("chariot procession"), an annual procession of chariots carrying the murtis (Deities) of Jagannātha, Subhadra, and Balabhadra.
The first European description of this festival is found in a thirteenth-century account by the Late Medieval Franciscan friar and missionary Odoric of Pordenone, who describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death. Odoric's description was later taken up and elaborated upon in the popular fourteenth-century Travels of John Mandeville. Others have suggested more prosaically that the deaths, if any, were accidental and caused by the press of the crowd and the general commotion.
Many speakers and writers apply the term to a large machine, or collectively to a team or group of people working together (such as a highly successful sports team or corporation), or even a growing political movement led by a charismatic leader—and it often bears an association with being crushingly destructive towards all obstacles.
Official source
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