Christian News Network – A Hindu festival in which animals are sacrificed to the “goddess of power” in an effort to obtain good fortune concluded this week, with thousands of buffalo beheaded on temple grounds in Nepal. Pigeons, goats, chickens and other animals were also slaughtered during the mass gathering, which is known as one of the “world’s bloodiest.” The Gadhimai Festival is held every five years at the Temple of Bariyarpur, approximately 100 miles south of the capital city of Kathmandu and near the India-Nepal border.
According to reports, between two and four million flock to the event, with 300-500 men bearing khukuris (similar to machetes) ready for the sacrifice. The practice stems from a purported 900-year-old dream, in which farmer Bhagwan Chaudhary was told by Gadhimai to offer five humans as a sacrifice in exchange for being freed from jail for a crime he did not commit. “Instead, he vowed an animal pancha bali (a quintuple sacrifice) every five years. It would include a rat, a pig, a rooster, a goat and a water buffalo,” the site ECS Nepal outlines. Seeing that the sacrifice did not work as youth in the region fell ill, Chaudhary went back to the Hindu goddess and was again instructed to offer up a human, along with the animals. READ MORE
