Jagannath Temple

About

Rising in the heart of the temple town of Puri on the eastern shore of India, the Jagannath Temple draws devotees from across the subcontinent and the wider Hindu world. The shrine enshrines the three sibling deities, Jagannath, Balabhadra, and Subhadra, whose carved wooden murtis are a feature unique to this tradition.

According to temple tradition, the original sanctuary was raised by King Indradyumna of Avanti in deep antiquity. The present complex was rebuilt from the eleventh century onwards by Anantavarman Chodaganga of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, with a great deul tower that today rises some sixty-five metres into the sky.

Much of the daily worship here follows rites set down in the Shabari Tantras, traditions that grew from the older devotional practice of the forest peoples of Odisha. The Daitapati servitors, who claim descent from those communities, link the deities to the earlier worship of Nilamadhaba. The temple is also counted among the 108 Abhimana Kshetra of the Sri Vaishnava tradition.

The ratha yatra of Puri is the temple's most celebrated observance. Each year the three deities are brought from the sanctum and carried in towering wooden chariots along the Bada Danda, the great avenue of the city, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, in a public manifestation of the Lord's grace.

History

The temple records ascribe the founding of the original shrine to King Indradyumna of Avanti in a remote age, and tradition holds that the worship of Jagannath grew from the older devotion to Nilamadhaba practised by the Sabara forest people. From the eleventh century, the Eastern Ganga ruler Anantavarman Chodaganga began the great rebuilding that gave the temple its present form, a project continued under his successors.

The shrine flourished as a major centre of devotion through the medieval centuries, attracting royal patronage, the great Vaishnava saint Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who spent many years at Puri, and pilgrims from every part of India. Through changing political fortunes, including periods of disturbance and the great famines of the nineteenth century, the rhythm of daily worship and the annual ratha yatra has continued without interruption.

Significance

Puri is counted among the four sacred dhamas of India, the directional abodes that anchor Hindu sacred geography. For Vaishnavas everywhere, the temple is where Jagannath, the Lord of the Universe, receives the love of his devotees in a form first cherished by the Sabaras of the forests and now revered across the Hindu world. The annual ratha yatra remains one of the most public expressions of Hindu devotion in India.