Jagannatha — — The Eternal God
It was on the 28th of august 2017, when I found one facebook post from Mr. Santakar Chelapila, about some recent findings in Kutunipadar, Koraput, Odisha. (https://www.facebook.com/santakar/posts/10155587840812170?pnref=story). Later on I also get a newspaper article regarding this news.
I immediately shared all the photos in twitter on 29th August, 2017 and asked a roue map to go to that place.(https://twitter.com/ashishsarangi/status/902537312789078016)
I was very much excited and because of this, one of my twitter brother Mr.PRABIR KUMAR SAHOO went to that place and write a blog. The link of the blog is (https://odiapuo.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/%E2%80%8Bimmemorial-memory-kutunipadar/)
I was surprised to see two images, which are as follows:
As we all know that lord Jagannatha, is of tribal origin, and still lot of historians believe that in the beginning, Jagannatha was a non-aryan and non-vedic God locally worshipped by the aboriginal people in the eastern coast of modern day Odisha. Till now Sabaras, worship the wooden plate with face and eyes. They also called him Jagaboi or Jaganaelo or Jagant. It is widely beleived that the term Jagannatha is derived from these words. From this, it may be concluded that Jagannatha was first worshiped by the tribals or aboriginals of Odisha in 1200BC.(1)
According to Verrier Elwin, a Christian missionary and colonial era historian, Jagannatha in a local legend was a tribal deity who was coopted by a Brahmin priest. The original tribal deity, states Elwin, was Kittung which too is made from wood. According to the Polish Indologist Olgierd M. Starza, this is an interesting parallel but a flawed one because the Kittung deity is produced by burning a piece of wood and too different in its specifics to be the origin of Jagannath.(2)
There is a vedic hymn in RigVeda “Ado yaddaru plavate sindhohpare a purusam, Tada rabhasvadurhano tena gaccha parastaram” .(3) It was also researched that when aryans came in contact with the aboriginal tribals of Odisha, they also started worshiping these wooden logs in order to bring them to their fold and then the term DaruBrahma came in exist.They would have turned this into a Brahminical deity, worshiped in an altar described in the Vanaparva of mahabharat.(4) But what was the image look like, no concrete and solid proof is there.
Later on in the 7th century BC, after the arrival of Parshvanath in Odisha on the invitation of Karakanda, the then king of Kalinga, conversion of jagant word to Jagannatha appears more probable as out of 24 tirthankars in Jainism, the name of 18 ends with Natha.(5)
Also, later on, lots of pictures of antiquities related to Jainism posted by same Mr. PRABIR KUMAR SAHOO which he got in the same district of Koraput. This made me to think about the relation between Jains and Lord Jagannatha. https://twitter.com/Odiapuo/status/905896329477423104
Intrestingly, Koraput is known as Sabara Srikhetra….
Later on, near about 6th century BC, Buddhism came into existence into the holy land of Kalinga. And the aboriginals converted to Buddhism and started worshiping the Tri-Ratna symbols.
I wrote a long blog on the topic of Buddhist connection of Lord Jagannatha and therefore I do not want to go in much detils. Please refer my blog Lord Jagannath-The Buddhist Connection (6)
Meanwhile, the rituals of RathaJatra is attributed to Buddhism, which really give a strong connection with the Buddhism.
Later on, due to the emergence of Shankaracharya, there was an assumption that the triad was like something this, as shown in the below picture. This statue, which was recovered from the great Sun temple of Konarka, is now at national museum, Delhi. It may be assumed that, during that period there was an influence of Shaivism on Jagannatha culture. Sankarcacharya established Gobardhana Matha, in the holy city of Puri.
After that, during the time of Ramanujacharya or Ramanuja, the temple gain the dominance of Vaishnavism. Ramanuja convinced the then king, Chodganga Deba, who was an ardent Shaivite, to have Vaishnava rituals and traditions inside the temple, which the king also agreed. And our Jagannatha got a new connection with Vaishnavism.
Then came Chaitanya, who spent 24 years of his life in the city of Puri. He saw Krushna in the idol of lord Jagannatha and started a bhakti movement. He started Sankeertan gatherings and the then Gajapati king, Prataprudra Deba, started patronising and attending these gatherings. This one was a strange phase. People were attracted towards the Krushna form of Jagannatha as Chaitnaya danced madly in front of Jagannatha. And Jagannatha was completely mixed with Krushna….
Meanwhile, the tantric form of Lord Jagannatha was also grow during all phases. The Kalika Purana says:
udrakhyam prathama pitham dvitiyam jalasailajam tritiyam purnapithantu kamarupam chaturthakam
“Among the Tantric Pithas, the first and foremost is Udra or Uddiyana (Odisha), the second is Jalasaila, the third is Purnapitha and the fourth is Kamarupa.”
I tried to summarise the Tantric Aspects of Lord Jagannatha in a blog. (7)
Once Iread somewhere, not able to trace out now, that Jaganntha and Balabhadra both are the guards of Subhadra. It seems to be a strange concept but here you can imagine, Subhadra as the Eternal goddess of Energy, guarded by, Kala(Black) Bhairaba as Jagannatha and Gora(White) Bhairaba as Balabhadra. It can be.
Moreover, Jagannatha is Jagannatha. He is not related to any specific deity or any specific religion. We can imagine him in any form and formless also and therefore Achyutananda Das, a 16th-century poet seer and saint from Odisha, uses a classical concept of Sunya Purusha that uses both form, and formless aspects of god.
Jai Jagaboi…
Jai Jaganaelo…
Jai Jagant…
Jai Jagannatha…
Ref:
- Dr.H.K.Mehtab, The history of Orissa, PP:55
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagannath#Tribal_origins
- Rigveda Samhita, vol 4, Ch:x, 155.3 Sayana Bhasya, P:841, Vaidika Samsodhana Mandala, Vedic Research Institute, Pune
- Purusottama ksetra by Rama Ch. Mishra
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirthankara
- https://medium.com/@ashishsarangi/lord-jagannath-the-buddhist-connection-a53135a3dde3
- https://medium.com/@ashishsarangi/the-tantric-aspects-of-mahaprabhu-jagannatha-c7314e6f2c45
