Major Temple cities: Puri, which hosts a major Vaishnava Jagannath temple and Rath Yatra celebration ; Katra, home to the Vaishno Devi temple ; Three comparatively recent temples of fame and huge pilgrimage are Shirdi, home to Sai Baba of Shirdi, Tirumala-Tirupati, home to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple ; and Sabarimala, where Swami Ayyappan is worshipped.

Ayyappan () ( also called Sastavu, or Sasta ) is a Hindu deity worshiped in a number of shrines across India.

The most prominent and famous Ayyappan shrine is the one at Sabarimala, in the hills of Pathanamthitta in Kerala, with over 30 million devotees visiting it every year, making it one of the largest pilgrimage sites in the world.

The name " Ayyappan " is used as a respectful form of address in the Malayalam language, spoken in the Indian state of Kerala.

His most common name is " Manikanta " because when the king Rajasekara Pandiya of Pandalam found little Ayyappan in a forest, there was a " mani " ( bell ) tied around his neck.

Lord Ayyappan is a incarnation of Lord Sree Dharma Sastha and Lord Ayyappan is a visible embodiment of their essential identity.

Sabarimala is believed to be the place where the Hindu God Ayyappan meditated after killing the powerful demoness, Mahishi.

This is because Ayyappan is a Bramachari ( Celibate ).

It symbolically means the merging of Jeevatma with the Paramatma. While a Black coloured Irumudi is used by a pilgrim on his first journey ( Kanni Ayyappan ) to Sabarimala, others use Navy Blue till third year and there on saffron coloured Irumudi.

Vasudevapuram temple ( is accredited for mural paintings ), Ayyappan Kavu, Karukulangara Sri Bhadrakali Temple ( Tiyattu, Garudan Parava and Thookam are the novelties of the temple festival ), Eraveeswaram Mahadava temple, Pandavam Sri Dharma Shastha Temple, Pandavam Sri Subrahmanya Swami Temple etc are very ancient.

There is another minor temple for Sastha or Ayyappan in the Sri Varahapuram Agraharam limits.

For example the devotees of ' Swami Ayyappa ', the name of a Hindu God very popular in Kerala, India ( Sabarimala Swami Ayyappan ) strictly observed forty days fasting and visit ( Only mail devotees are permitted to enter into the God's Temple ) with their holy submittance or offerings on 41st or a convenient day after a minimum 40 days practice of fasting.

He was formally named Ayyappan.

In southern India the god Ayyappan was associated with a tiger.

Ayyappan may bear a historical relationship to the tutelary deity Aiyanar in Tamil Nadu.

By the 20th century, there has been an increase in the number of worshipers of Ayyappan from many different groups, spurred by vast improvements in transport and communication in southern India.

These devotees fast and engage in austerities under the leadership of a teacher for weeks beforehand and then travel in groups to the shrine for a glimpse of Ayyappan.

In it, the Raja of Madurai finds Ayyappan, as a young man well versed in archery, in a forest.

This version puts Ayyappan as a Senapathi, or Captain, of the Pandyan army whose popularity and influence with the King was disliked by locals.

* Sri Ayyappan Temple-Near to Pambai at Kerala.

Devotees visit temples like Sabarimala Ayyappan Temple or Guruvayur Sree Krishna temple to have a " Vishukkani Kazhcha " in the early hours of " Vishu " day.

Yukthivadi started its publication in August 1929 from Ernakulam under the editorial board of M. Ramavarma Thampan, C. Krishnan, C. V. Kunhiraman, Sahodaran Ayyappan and M. C.

In a statement published in the first issue of Yukthivadi, Sahodaran K. Ayyappan wrote:

* Sahodaran K. Ayyappan

Each mode is believed to have a specific attribute -- one inducing pleasure, another generosity, another love, and so on, to include all of the emotions.

This machine, operating at speeds up to 350,000 revolutions per minute, is believed to provide one of the fastest mechanical operations in industry today.

The founder of the Junior Showmanship Competition the late Leonard Brumby, Sr. ( for whom the trophy is named after at Westminster ) was an outstanding Handler and believed a Junior should have an opportunity to exhibit in a dog show starting with the Junior Showmanship Division.

It is believed that these boards will, within the next few years, replace many of the conventional flood-lighted boards now in use.

An enemy would obviously choose an agent that is believed to be highly infectious.

It is believed that drug therapy and electroshock involve the former and psychotherapy the latter mechanism.

She later divorced Graham, who is believed to have moved to Bolivia.

Yes, he believed that the Jews were `` enemies of the Reich '', and such a belief is, of course, typical of `` patriotic '' anti-Semites ; ;

Second, they believed it important to determine the fate of the captain -- a man whose name is permanently stamped on our maps, on American towns and counties, on a great American river, and on half a million square miles of Arctic seas.

It is believed that Hudson was related to other seafaring men of the Muscovy Company and was trained on company ships.

The luminosity of the water is now believed to have been caused by the stimulation of vast numbers of the luminescent organism Noctiluca miliaris by the turbulence of the sea.

It is significant, too, that the older teen-agers I interviewed believed, unlike the younger ones, that Jewish students tend to do better academically than their gentile counterparts.

The large statue on the first floor is believed to be the statue of Pompey at the base of which Julius Caesar was stabbed to death ( if so, the statue once stood in the senate house ).

As you approach the church on the Via D. Baullari you are passing within yards of the remains of the Roman Theatre of Pompey, near which is believed to have been the place where Julius Caesar was assassinated.

The charges of the electron and proton are believed to be exactly equal and opposite, but Dr. Lyttleton is not so sure.

Even if that's all the promise he ever gave or ever will give, the giving of it once was enough and you believed it then and you will always believe it, even when it is finally the only thing in the world you have left to believe, and the whole world is telling you that one was a lie.

It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.

The earth deity had power over the ghostly world, and it is believed that she was the deity behind the oracle.

There is no agreement on when and where this Urheimat existed, though the language is generally believed to have originated somewhere in or near the region stretching from the Levant / Near East to the area between the Eastern Sahara and the Horn of Africa, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

The first " true alphabet " in this sense is believed to be the Greek alphabet, which is a modified form of the Phoenician alphabet.

Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs.