Jagannath
ଜଗନ୍ନାଥ जगन्नाथ
Also Jagannatha, Daru Brahma, Patitapavana, Kalia.
VaishnavaVillage and folk
Who this is
Jagannath is Vishnu in wood, with round eyes, no neck and stumps for arms, and he is unlike any other image in India. He stands with his brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra, which is also unusual: a deity flanked by siblings and not by a wife. The images are not permanent. Every twelve to nineteen years, in a Nabakalebara year, new ones are carved from neem trees found by signs and the old ones buried, and something called the Brahma padartha is moved from the old body to the new in darkness by priests who are blindfolded and whose hands are wrapped. Nobody has said what it is.
How to recognise them
A squat wooden figure, black, with enormous round white eyes, a wide red mouth, no neck, and arms that end before the hands. Balabhadra is white and Subhadra yellow, smaller and without arms. Sudarshana, a wooden pillar, stands with them. The unfinished look is explained by a story and is never corrected.
Family and companions
Krishna, with Balabhadra, who is Balarama, and Subhadra, their sister. Lakshmi has her own shrine within the complex and the Rath Yatra includes a quarrel with her about being left behind. The tradition of tribal Sabara origins is kept in the Daitapati servitors who handle the images and claim descent from them.
How they are worshipped
Rath Yatra in Ashadha; Snana Purnima in Jyeshtha; the Anasara fortnight when he is ill and unseen.
The Rath Yatra in Ashadha is the great event, when the three are brought out and drawn on chariots to the Gundicha temple, and a deity leaving the sanctum to be seen by everybody is the whole point: those who may not enter the temple may touch the chariot. The mahaprasad, cooked in earthen pots over wood in the largest kitchen in the world, is eaten by all castes together in the Ananda Bazaar, which is old and was deliberate.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The carpenter who was interrupted
King Indradyumna found the sacred log and needed a carver. An old man came and agreed, on condition that he work behind closed doors and nobody look in until he was finished. Weeks passed in silence, and the queen, hearing nothing, feared he had died and had the doors opened. The carver was Vishvakarma, and he vanished, leaving the three figures unfinished with no hands and no feet. The king was told to install them as they were. Odisha has never corrected them, and the explanation and the images have held each other up for centuries.
The fever and the fortnight
After the ceremonial bath on Snana Purnima, with a hundred and eight pots of water, the deities fall ill. The temple closes for a fortnight, the Anasara. They are kept out of sight, given decoctions rather than food, attended by the Daitapatis, and painted and repaired in private. When the doors open again it is Netrotsava, the festival of the eyes, and the queue to see the fresh faces runs for miles. A god who catches cold from a bath and must be nursed for two weeks is unlike anything in the agamic temples, and Puri is unembarrassed by it.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Odisha
- Puri is the state’s centre of gravity, with the Rath Yatra, the Nabakalebara when the bodies are renewed, and the mahaprasad eaten across castes in the Ananda Bazaar.
- Bengal
- Bengal keeps the Rath Yatra widely, with Mahesh near Serampore the oldest outside Puri, and Chaitanya’s Gaudiya tradition is rooted in his worship at Puri.
- North India
- Rath Yatras are pulled in most cities by the Gaudiya organisations, and the word juggernaut entered English from the chariot.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Sri Jagannath Temple, Puri Puri, Odisha
What is said
From the mantra library