Sri Jagannath Temple, Puri

Deity

Jagannath with Balabhadra and Subhadra, in wood renewed each Nabakalebara

Where

Odisha · 19.80N 85.82E

Usual hours

5 am – 11 pm, with bhog slots — hours change with festivals and the season; check before travelling. Were these right when you went?

Grahas

Guru Suriyan

Visited for

One of the Char Dham, where the Mahaprasad is cooked in earthen pots for thousands. The Rath Yatra in Ashadha is its great day.

The sthala purana has it that king Indradyumna dreamt of a deity called Nila Madhava and sent men to find him, and that one of them traced him to a forest where a Sabara chief worshipped him in secret. When the king came, the deity had gone.

A voice is said to have told him that the Lord would come instead as a log of wood on the shore. The log was found, and an old carpenter offered to carve it on condition that he be left alone behind closed doors until he had finished.

The king is said to have opened the door too soon. The carpenter was gone and the images were unfinished, without hands or feet, and it was decided to worship them as they were. That is why the three deities of Puri look the way they do, and why they are made of wood and renewed rather than carved once in stone.

Puri is one of the four Char Dham. The temple was built in the twelfth century under Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, in the Kalinga style.

The images are renewed at the Nabakalebara, held in years when the month of Ashadha is doubled — an interval of twelve to nineteen years. New logs are sought by a stated procedure and the old images are buried.

The kitchen cooks the Mahaprasad in earthen pots stacked over wood fires and serves it in the Ananda Bazar; it is among the largest temple kitchens anywhere. Non-Hindus are not admitted to the temple.

The shikhara carries the Nilachakra and a flag, and the flag is changed every day by a man who climbs the tower by hand.

Four gates open in the four directions; the Singhadwara on the east, with the Aruna Stambha pillar in front of it, is the main one.

Inside are the three deities on the ratnavedi, the Jagamohan hall, and the Ananda Bazar with the pots. The Bada Danda, the broad street the chariots run down, starts at the Singhadwara and is a sight in itself.

The Rath Yatra in Ashadha is the festival: three chariots built fresh each year, drawn down the Bada Danda to the Gundicha temple, with the return journey nine days later.

Snana Yatra, when the deities are bathed and then kept out of sight for a fortnight, Chandan Yatra and the Nabakalebara are the other great occasions.

Also called

Srimandir, Purushottama Kshetra, Sri Kshetra

Period

Twelfth century, under Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty

Reaching it

Puri has its own railway station about 2 km from the temple, and Bhubaneswar is roughly 60 km away with the nearest airport.

• Sakshi Gopal Temple, Satyabadi 16.7 km · Vaishnava
• Konark Sun Temple 30 km · Other
• Lingaraj Temple, Bhubaneswar 48.9 km · Saiva
• Maa Cuttack Chandi Temple 75.7 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Tara Tarini Temple, Purushottampur 102.3 km · Sakta (Amman)
• Biraja Temple, Jajpur 126.7 km · Sakta (Amman)

Been to this temple? The things that change — whether the hours on this page were right, whether the sannidhi was open, how long the queue was on a Saturday — are exactly what no printed source keeps current, and what the next person travelling here needs.

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