Hands Of Jagannath

AT THE JAGANNATH TEMPLE, EVERY 12 YEARS THE OLD IMAGE ‘DIES’ AND IS ‘CREMATED’ AND A NEW IMAGE IS CARVED FROM A NEW LOG OF WOOD – AND THE DIVINITY PASSES ON FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW IN AN ELABORATE CEREMONY

- Devdutt Pattanaik

Imagine a crowded sanctum sanctorum of a thousand-year-old temple filled with the light of lamps and the smell of camphor, and three gigantic brightly painted wooden idols staring down at you from a platform. That is what you experience in the temple of Jagannath in Puri, Orissa. Nowhere else is Krishna enshrined with his elder brother, Balaram, and his younger sister, Subhadra. He is black as soot and has circular eyes; Balaram is white and Subhadra is turmeric yellow. The images seem malformed. Nowhere else does one find Krishna depicted in such a totemic, almost tribal, form. Some say this was originally a tribal shrine, appropriated by Brahmins. And that is attested by legend.

The story goes that thirty-six years after the Mahabharata war, Krishna was fatally wounded by the arrow of a hunter called Jara. Arjuna rushed from Hastinapur to save his dear friend and cousin, but it was too late. By the time he arrived, Krishna had left his mortal body and ascended to Vaikuntha, his heavenly abode. His beautiful body lay in the shade of a Banyan tree, surrounded by birds and animals and termites spellbound by his beauty. What was left behind, despite its beauty, was with great reluctance cremated. Fire consumed everything except Krishna’s heart that was cast into the sea. It floated and transformed into a beautiful image called Nilamadhava that was found by a tribe in Orissa who enshrined it in a cave.