The Jagannatha Temple at Puri Its Architecture, Art and Cult

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Dr. OM Starza-Majewski honours me by his request to write a foreword to his excellent work. This may be due to my long attachment to the study of the Jagannatha cult since 1939 when I first succeeded in reading the expression Furusetiama-sambhra(mrajya in an in- scription of Ganga Anangabhima III (Ind Cult, VI. 71-3) and possibly also because my approach to the question is akin to his own ideas. Recently there was a joint German-Oriya attempt at a serious investigation to the problem and its results have been published (The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orusa, ed. A. Eschmann, H. Kulke and G.C. Tripathi, 1978). In a note appearing in JRAS, 1981, pp. 26-39, Dr. Kulke tried of late to prove (with the academic help of Oriya friends) that the Puri temple had been originally built by Ganga Anantavarman Codaganga (1078-1147 A.D.) for Visnu (Krsna) and Laksmi and that Balarama was introduced there about 1230 A.D. during the reign of Anangabhima III (1211-39 A.D.) after Laksmi's transformation into Subhadra. This is because there is believed to be an Oriya convention, according to which the younger brother's wife (ie. Krina's wife Laksmi) could not have lived in the same house with her husband's older brother (ie. Balarama). However in a discussion on the question at the Asiatic Society's monthly meeting in Calcutta (cf. the Society's Bulletin, April, 1982, pp. 7-8), I pointed out that, according to a stanza occurring in three later Sena records, the Senas claimed to have raised pillars of victory at the abode of Balarama and Krsna on the shore of the Southern Sea (i.e. at Puri) and that this referred to a time considerably before king Laksmanasona (c. 1179-1206 A.D.) had lost the western half of his dominions to the Turkish Muslims. In Journ. Orissa Res. Soc., II (1982), pp. 17-18, I further drew attention to H. von Stietencron's description of a sculpture in a temple of the seventeenth or eighteenth century at Janla (Puri District) as representing Laksmi-Narasimha (Jagannatha) and Ananta (Balarama) together (ibid., I, 1981, pp. 3-7) since this goes against the so-called convention.

Under the circumstances, it was a pleasant surprise to me to note that Dr. Starza Majewski dealt with the importance of the Sena claim, so far as Dr. Kulke's theory is concerned, in a paper read at the conference at Brussels in July 1983 without any knowledge of what I had written on the question in India.

I congratulate Dr. Starza-Majewski for his valuable volume which must be regarded as a welcome addition to the literature on the Jagannatha cult with its fresh approach offering materials for serious consideration.

Indian art history contains many problems, but few can present such difficulties for the historian as the temple of Jagannatha at Puri. Many factors have made it difficult to establish a convincing interpretation of its iconography. First, non Hindus are not admitted within its gairs, which has allowed speculation to take the place of direct observation Secondly, the temple tower has until recently been encased in a coarse and massive plaster shroud, concealing the grace and charm of its structure and sculptures Thirdly, the cult of Purusottama has evolved over the centuries into a form rather different from its origin, guarded by a priesthood who are Vaisnava enthusiasts, not urbane syncretists. Fourthly, and famously, the form of its divine images is apparently unorthodox and has been taken by recent Western scholarship to be essentially non-Hindu. There has been a tendency to interpret the history of the period in terms of contemporary European parallels, to see the area as one dominated by the rise of tribal chiefs to royal status. It is easy to forget that when the temple was built the region had been settled by Aryans since before the pre- Asokan period. In the 1st century BC. King Kharavela's capital was located in this area. Eleven hundred years later in the great age of Indian temple building the Telugu conqueror of Orissa, Anantavarman Colaganga, founded the greatest shrine in India in the delta of the Mahanadi to outdo the splendid Cola monument at Tanjavur.

The study of this important and once magnificent temple therefore presented itself as an intriguing challenge. However, it has taken much persistence to find or obtain the evidence and to interpret it convincingly. The present volume starts from the premise that all theories, past and present, about the cult of Jagannatha are open to question. Like the great sikhara of the temple itself, the real nature of the god worshipped beneath it has remained for the outsider, and probably for the believer, encased in an obscuring layer. It is this over- lay or accretion of popular belief and imagery which has, it turns out, so altered the appearance and to some degree the practices of the cult. All the evidence needed to establish a convincing and incidentally orthodox origin for the triad existed, but like the original sur face of the tower, it needed to be sought out and carefully reassembled. Certain discoveries, like some of the India Office Library photographs published here for the first time, were particularly exciting. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Mildred Archer for kindly allowing me to make the reproductions. Other fragments lay scattered in a great variety of publications. As time has gone by it has been very satisfying to find new evidence emerging to confirm the interpretation which so appealed to the eminent epigraphist and historian, D.C. Sircar in 1983. The text which follows has been altered to include my subsequent research. 1 would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. James Harle for introducing me to the study of Indian art, and for suggesting the origin of the iconography and the style of the Puri triad as a subject for a B. Litt. thesis at Oxford. The present work is based mainly on my Ph.D. thesis on the Jagannatha temple and its deities made under the guidance of the late Professor Joanna van Lohuizen-de Leeuw at Amsterdam. My chief examiner was Dr. Raymond Allchin of Cambridge University. I have visited the compounds of the Lingajara and Jagannatha temples but not the sanctums.