Puri, believed to be one of our oldest cities, has a modest appearance. Untouched by much that earns a present day Indian city the label of being smart, it has a strange formal grandeur laced with a certain rustic exuberance.
It is dominated by three strangely powerful and abstract idols of Jagannath, the lord of the universe, his sister Subhadra and brother Balraam.
One finds that mainstream Hinduism, in their presence, remains somewhat on hold. And even though the Brahmin Pandas scuttle about acting important, their ritual gestures in front of Lord Jagannath assume the scuttling vitality of shallow streams.
The Buddhism connection
It is at the time of the annual ceremony of the rath yatra during which Jagannath of Puri leaves his temple with his siblings to go visit their aunt, that the city relapses fully into the ancient personality of the land of Odisha, a rare mixing bowl of diverse cultures and religions.
Nine hundred years ago a Ganga king raised a fantastical temple to Jagannath, an avatar of Vishnu. But the real history of this grand deity goes back thousands of years. The image of Lord Jagannath is identified by scholars as belonging to an aboriginal tradition in which a humanised physical representation of a deity is rare. So the vigraha or idols that are taken out in the splendid rath yatra do not portray Jagannath as a young lad with a flute flanked by Radha or crawling on all fours as a baby. These are strangely powerful images: mostly large faces with huge disc like eyes, stumps for arms on either side, and no legs.
Buddhism too is somewhere a part of this cult. The Tibetan Buddhist Lama Taranatha describes how, by the 10th century, after repeated onslaughts on Buddhism by mainstream Hinduism (revived by Adi Shankaracharya), Buddhism lost a lot of ground in the North and thereafter sought refuge in Odisha, Bihar and Bengal.
By the late 12th Century, as Islamic forces closed in, the Buddhists probably abandoned the seminaries and their priceless libraries. Unfortunately they seem to have been totally isolated from the lives of the common folk in the area. Thus when a Muslim general, before setting their libraries on fire, enquired of the locals about the kind of books the libraries contained, he drew a blank.
By the time the Ganga rulers came to power in Odisha, stray seeds of Buddhist thought had latched on to other local religions like the Dharma sect of the Savara tribals, who came to worship a formless deity they called Niranjan or Neel Madhav.
The cult of Lord Jagannath later subsumed the cult of Niranjan and one of the new names acquired by Jagannath was Neel Madhav.
Wrote Ramai Pandit of the Munda tribal community in his Shoonya Purana:
“A Shoonya, formless and destroyer of a thousand impedimentsAbove everything, the greatest giver of boons
Is our Lord Niranjana.”
Melting pot
The spectacular shrine at Puri was perhaps the first conscious experiment in synthesising India’s diverse religions and religious principles that flourished in the east around the 12th century.
With its rich forests, relatively peaceful interior and flourishing sea ports, Odisha was a precious meeting point for all major Hindu and non Hindu cults: Buddhism, Jainism, the Tantrik Nath Siddha Panth and various tribal religions that pre-dated all of these.
It is also noteworthy that in erecting the grand temple to the Lord Jagannath, Raja Anantavarman Chodaganga of Odisha diverged from the tradition of building temples next to holy rivers. He selected a site on the seashore as the temple housed a deity whose form spanned the seas.
Since wood has a limited life, after a spell of 12 or 19 years, new wooden idols have to be freshly carved to replace the old ones. This ritual is called Nav Kalevara (taking of a new form). Wood is a recurring theme in the legends surrounding Lord Jagannath.
The legend of Jagannath
As always in India, poetic stories are soon deftly spun around available facts. In a 15th century tale from an Odia epic by Sarala Dasa, the log from which the idols are carved, was originally a tree that grew when the indestructible body of Krishna (another avatar of Vishnu) floated in from Dwarika Puri in the West to the eastern coast of Odisha. The tribals who found the body, brought it ashore and buried it and eventually a tree grew from the grave from which a statue of Buddha was carved.
Another legend describes how King Indradyumna who had been chasing a dream to locate the powerful deity of Neelachal, meditated upon the Lord Narasimha and saw a tree rising out of the seas. A divine carpenter then crafted the Lord’s image for him. The image however, remained incomplete as the carpenter, despite his instructions that he be left alone with the tree while working, was disturbed before he could craft the body. The resultant idol is still worshipped in a mutant form.
At the beginning of the rath yatra, the priests first carry out the idols from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple and place them upon three raths.
After this, a mix of mainstream Hindu and tribal rituals are performed by men from all castes and sects. Then they all together pull the chariots with strong ropes to their destination, some two miles down the road, while the town resounds with sounds of priests and the masses singing, dancing and chanting prayers and banging on gongs.
The king of Odisha signals the movement of the raths after he has swept the path with a broom as a humble sweeper. The message is clear: each one of those present at the premises is the Lord’s worker, including the king. And as first servant, no menial task is too small for him.
Stories about Lord Jagannath flutter out like bands of colourful butterflies during the monsoon rath yatra.
According to one tale, Jagannath’s wife Mahalakshmi, discovered the greatest devotee of the Lord in an untouchable woman Sriya Chandaluni. The goddess not only visited her home, she also departed from the usual Hindu caste taboos regarding food and ate what Chandaluni offered her with pleasure.
Where caste divides vanish
Upon hearing of this, Balbhadra, Jagannath’s elder brother, is said to have compelled the Lord to ban her entry into the sanctum sanctorum. An enraged Lakshmi is then said to have stomped off with all her wealth, edibles and priests, and got another temple built for herself. Hungry and assetless within a temple abandoned by Lakshmi, the brothers first tried cooking and failed. Then, dressed as Brahmins, they went begging but no one would serve them food. They then arrived hungry and humbled at Lakshmi’s door and were told that this is the abode of a Chandal where food can be served only to those who vow not to practice untouchability. The promise was readily given. And to this day, during the rath yatra, before the sacred car moves, a member of the untouchable caste must offer a coconut to the Lord even as the descendants of the king sweeps the path of the chariot.
The Pandas inform you that the maha prasad of the Lord, consisting of rice, dal and vegetables, must as per orders of the Lord, always be eaten off leaf plates within the premises of the temple. And people from all castes must sit together on the ground and eat it together.
Only Lord Jagannath could have had a Muslim devotee like Salbeg. Legend has it, that Salbeg was the son of Lalbeg, a 17th century Mughal subedar at Cuttack and the Brahmin widow he had married.
As a Muslim, Salbeg could not enter the temple so he took to composing and singing songs for Lord Jagannath. At each rath yatra he would stand outside the temple and sing soulfully to his Lord. They say the chariot paused before him each time. Even after four centuries, all three chariots carrying Lord Jagannath, his sister Subhadra and brother Balraam, will still make a brief halt at the grave of the musical Murid.
Holiness at moments such as these, while the deity will pause at the grave of a true devotee, turns liquid, palpable. You can drink it, drown in it, bring it home in a little plastic bag for the children. At this sacred and chaotic waterhole, ideas and dreams must hover delusively over reason, and minds wearied by too much reason, may at last, like Job find absolution in simple faith.