way.

As Serampore, or its suburbs, is the most popular centre of Jaganath
worship next to Pooree in Orissa, the cruelty and oppression which
marked the annual festival were ever before the missionaries' eyes.
In 1813 we find Dr. Claudius Buchanan establishing his veracity as
an eye-witness of the immolation of drugged or voluntary victims
under the idol car, by this quotation from Dr. Carey, whom he had to
describe at that time to his English readers, as a man of
unquestionable integrity, long held in estimation by the most
respectable characters in Bengal, and possessing very superior
opportunities of knowing what is passing in India generally:
"Idolatry destroys more than the sword, yet in a way which is
scarcely perceived. The numbers who die in their long pilgrimages,
either through want or fatigue, or from dysenteries and fevers
caught by lying out, and want of accommodation, is incredible. I
only mention one idol, the famous Juggernaut in Orissa, to which
twelve or thirteen pilgrimages are made every year. It is
calculated that the number who go thither is, on some occasions,
600,000 persons, and scarcely ever less than 100,000. I suppose, at
the lowest calculation, that in the year 1,200,000 persons attend.
Now, if only one in ten died, the mortality caused by this one idol
would be 120,000 in a year; but some are of opinion that not many
more than one in ten survive and return home again. Besides these,
I calculate that 10,000 women annually burn with the bodies of their
deceased husbands, and the multitudes destroyed in other methods
would swell the catalogue to an extent almost exceeding
credibility."

After we had taken Orissa from the Marathas the priests of Jaganath