Juggernaut: Indian Temple Or Unstoppable Force?

<p><span>In 2014, a grad student in Kolkata named Ujaan Ghosh came across an old book by a Scottish missionary. And as Ghosh paged through the book, he noticed the missionary kept using a word over and over: <em>Juggernaut.</em> But the missionary wasn’t using it the way we do today—to mean an unstoppable, overwhelming force. He  was using it to talk about a place: a temple in Puri, India. So Ghosh dug further, and as he grasped the real story of where the English word, </span><em><span>juggernaut</span></em><span>, had come from, he realized there was just no way he could keep using it.</span></p> <p><em><span>A transcript of this episode is being processed and will be available within a week.</span></em></p> <h3><span>Guests: </span></h3> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisegusa"><span>Chris Egusa</span></a><span> is an audio producer and 2020 KALW Audio Academy fellow.</span></p> <p><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/dylan"><span>Dylan Thuras</span></a><span> is co-founder of Atlas Obscura, and host of the Atlas Obscura podcast.</span></p> <p><span><a href="https://southasia.wisc.edu/staff/ghosh-ujaan/"><span>Ujaan Ghosh </span></a><span>is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.</span></span></p> <h3><span>Footnotes &amp; Further Reading: </span></h3> <p><span>Read </span><a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697934"><span>Ujaan Ghosh’s article</span></a><span> on the origins of the word “juggernaut.” </span></p> <p><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jagannath-temple#:~:text=Jagannath%20is%20a%20huge%20complex,Rath%20Yatra%2C%20or%20chariot%20festival."><span>Learn more about Jagannath Temple</span></a><span> in Atlas Obscura. </span></p> <p><span><span>Listen to more episodes of </span><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/podcast"><span>the Atlas Obscura podcast.</span> </a></span></p> <h3><span>Credits: </span></h3> <p><span>This episode was a collaboration between Science Diction and Atlas Obscura. It was produced by Johanna Mayer and Ch