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Puri Town, 1908

Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.

Head-quarters of Puri District, Bengal, situated in 19° 48' N. and 85° 49' E., on the coast. It is celebrated as the site of the great temple of Jagannath, by which name it is commonly known. The population, which was 22,695 in 1872 and 22,095 in 1881, increased to 28,794 in 1891 and to 49,334 in 1901. During the great festivals the population is swollen by many thousands of pilgrims, and on the occasion of the Census of 1901 over 17,000 were present in the town. The ordinary resident population is therefore about 32,000, The number of houses in 1901 was 7,521. Puri was constituted a municipality in 1881. The income during the decade ending 1901-2 averaged Rs. 44,000, and the expenditure Rs. 36,000. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 61,000, of which Rs. 19,000 was derived from a tax on houses and lands (or property tax) and Rs. 12,000 from a conservanry rate; and the expenditure was Rs. 47,000.

Puri is a city of lodging-houses, being destitute alike of manufactures or commerce on any considerable scale. The streets are mean and narrow, with the exception of the principal avenue which leads from the temple to the country house of Jagannath. The houses are built of wattle covered with clay, raised on platforms of hard mud about 4 feet high, and many of them gaily painted with Hindu gods or with scenes from the Sanskrit epics. The intervening sandhills between the town and the beach intercept the drainage, and aggravate the diseases to which the overcrowding of the pilgrims gives rise. A number of measures have recently been taken for the improvement of the sani- tary condition of the town. To prevent overcrowding, iron sheds and resthouses have been erected for the accommodation of excess pilgrims ; arrangements are being made to shelter indigent lepers ; steps have been taken to clean the Swetganga tanfo by means of a pulsemeter pump, and the water is used to flush the drains along the Baradand ; and a complete drainage scheme for the town is in contemplation.

The opening of the railway has greatly mitigated the dangers of the journey. Formerly thousands of pilgrims used to die annually upon the road from exhaustion and want of food. But now pilgrims visit Puri at all times during the year, and this has affected the number that flock to the town during the two chief festivals. Moreover, many pilgrims now hasten away as soon as the gods have left the temple and the dragging of the cars has commenced. For the poorer pilgrims who have to make the journey on foot, pilgrim hospitals have been opened along the Main lines of road, and a medical patrol has been established in the vicinity of the holy city. The great difficulty has been to check the overcrowding in Puri town, but much good has resulted from the work- ing of the Puri Lodging-house Act (Bengal Act IV of 1871).

The Government offices stand on the beach, with a sandy ridge between them and the town. The Mte is salubrious, and the monsoon blows so fresh and cool from the sea that in former days the officials from Cuttack used regularly to come to Puri during the kot season. During the rains it is less healthy. The District jail has accommodation for 126 prisoners, who are employed on oil-pressing and the manufacture of coir yarn. The chief educational institutions are the District school, to which is attached a hostel for non-resident students, the Haras Chandi Sahi middle school for the sons of the pandas or priests of Jagannath, and the Puri Sanskrit school.

The shrine of Jagannath is the region of pilgrimage beloved of Vishnu, known to every hamlet throughout India as the abode of Jagannath, the ‘ Lord of the World’ According to tradition, Jagannath made his first historical appearance in the year A. D. 318, when the priests fled with the sacred image and left an empty city to Rakta Bahu and his buccaneers. For 1 1/2 centuries the idol reMained buried in the western jungles, till a pious prince drove out the foreigners and brought back the deity. Three times it has been buried in the Chilka Lake; and whether the invaders were pirates from the sea or the devouring cavalry of Afghanistan, the first thing that the people saved iyas their god. The true source of Jagannath's undying hold upon the Hindu race consists in the fact that he is the god of the people.

The poor outcast learns that there is a city on the far eastern shore, in which priest and peasant are equal in the presence of the ' Lord of the World.’ In the courts of Jagannath and outside the Lion Gate thousands of pilgrims every year join in the sacrament of eating the holy food, the sanctity of which overleaps all barriers of caste, for a Puri priest will receive food even from a low-caste Hindu. The worship of Jagannath aims at a Catholicism which embraces every form of Indian belief and every Indian conception of the deity. He is Vishnu under whatever form and by whatever title men call upon his name. The fetishism of the aboriginal races, the nature-worship of the Vedas, and the lofty spiritualism of the great Indian reformers, have alike found refuge here. Besides thus representing Vishnu in all his manifestations, the priests have superadded the worship of the other members of the Hindu trinity in their various shapes, and the disciple of every Hindu sect can find his beloved rites and some form of his chosen deity within the sacred precincts.

It has been supposed that the worship of Jagannath is an adaptation by the Brahmans of some Buddhist cult. Puri probably was the original place where the famous tooth relic of Buddha was worshipped ; and it is noticeable that the wooden image of Jagannath contains a certain article, about which the priests Maintain perfect silence, and which is never replaced by another new piece, whenever the image is renewed. The crude form of the images of Jagannath, his brother Balaram, and his sister Subhadra, with their round shapeless heads and their arms represented by stumps only, strangely resembles the Buddhist symbol of a wheel supported by a trisula or trident. The abolition of caste rules in regard to the mahaprasad, or the sacred food cooked in the temple, recalls the protest of Buddhism against caste prejudices. In some modem representations of the ten incarna- tions of Vishnu, the place of the ninth or Buddha incarnation (avatar) is occasionally occupied by the figure of Jagannath.

The temple appears to have been built by king Choda Ganga in the second half of the twelfth century, not, as tradition has it, by Ananga Bhlma. It soon became famous, and the devotion of centuries has made Jagannath a very wealthy god ; the income was estimated in 1877 at more than 7 lakhs, though the temple authorities deny that it reaches anything like so high a figure and allege that it is only a little over one lakh. The immediate attendants on the god are divided into 36 orders and 97 classes, at the head of whom is the Raja of Khurda, the representative of the ancient royal house of Orissa, who takes upon himself the lowly office of sweeper to Jagannath. Decora- tors of the idol, priests of the wardrobe, cooks, dancing-girls, grooms, and artisans of every sort follow. A special department keeps up the tempie records, and affords a literary asylum to a few learned men.

The sacred enctoswe is ready in the form of a square, 652 feet long by 630 broad. The interior is protected from profone eyes- by a massive stone wall 20 feet high. Within rise about 120 temples dedicated to the various forms in which the Hindu mind has imagined its god. But the great pagoda is the one dedicated to Jagannath. Its conical tower rises like an elaborately carved sugar-loaf, 192 feet high and surmounted by the mystic wheel and flag of Vishnu. Outside the principal entrance, or Lion Gate, in the square where the pilgrims chiefly throng, is an exquisite monolithic pillar, which stood for centuries before the temple of the Sun at Konarak. The temple of Jagannath consists of four chambers, communicating with each other : namely, the hall of offerings ; the pillared hall for the musicians and dancing-girls; the hall of audience; and lastly the sanctuary itself, containing rude images of Jagannath, his brother Balaam, and his sister Subhadra. The service of the temple consists partly in a daily round of oblations, and partly in sumptuous ceremonials at stated periods throughout the year. The offerings are bloodless ; but, never- theless, within the sacred enclosure is a shrine to Bimala, the stainless queen of the Ail-Destroyer, who is annually adored with bloody sacrifices.

Twenty-four festivals are held, consisting chiefly of Vaishnavite commemorations, but freely adinitting the ceremonials of other sects. The car festival, which takes place in June or July, is the chief event of the year. The great car is 45 feet in height and 35 feet square, and is supported on 16 wheels of 7 feet diameter. The brother and sister of Jagannath have separate cars a few feet smaller. When the sacred images are at length brought forth and placed upon their chariots, thousands fall on their knees and bow their foreheads in the dust. The vast multitude shouts with one throat, and surging back- wards and forwards, drags the wheeled edifices down the broad street towards the country house of the god. Music strikes up before and behind, drums beat, cymbals clash, the priests harangue from the cars, and singers engaged for the purpose chant coarse songs to induce the crowd to pull vigorously. The distance from the temple to the country house is about a mile ; but as the heavy structures have no contrivance to guide them and the wheels sink into the sand which in some places covers the road, the journey sometimes takes several days.

The cars are dragged from the temple to the country house by the assembled pilgrims and by some of the townspeople who hold revenue- free lands granted to them as remuneration for the work ; when the pilgrims are insufficient to drag the cars back, coolies are engaged from the neighbouring villages. In 1904 the pilgrims alone pulled the cars to the country house in four hours and brought them back again to the temple without such assistance. In a closely packed eager throng of 100,000 men and women, many of them unaccus- tomed to exposure or labour, and all of them tugging and straining at the cars to the utmost under a blazing sun, deaths must occa- sionally happen. At one time several people were killed or injured every year, but these were almost invariably the result of accidental trampling. The few cases of suicide that did occur were for the most part those of diseased and miserable objects, who took this means to put themselves out of pain. The official returns place this beyond doubf. Nothing, indeed, <?ould be more opposed to the spirit of Vishnu-worship than self-immolation. Accidental death within the temple renders the whole place unclean,

The pandas or temple priests employ a body of emissaries, number- ing about 3,000 men, who wander from village to village within their allotted beats, preaching pilgrimage as the liberation from sin; they travel through India in this way, enlisting pilgrims and receiving a commission for so doing. Nothing can exceed the liberality of the pilgrims to their spiritual guides; but it is to be feared that this liberality is preyed upon, and that many pilgrims are in a state of destitution before the time comes for them to turn their backs upon the holy city and set their faces once more homewards. In 1902 a fund was started for the relief of destitute pilgrims, It has now been placed on a permanent basis, and is managed by a committee of five non-official and three official members. The District Magistrate is the president of the committee ; Government makes an annual grant equal to the amount that is raised by subscriptions and donations, subject to a maximum of Rs, 1,000 a year. The object of the fund is to afford relief to destitute pilgrims, especially in the shape of travelling and diet expenses, and thus enable them to return to their homes.

The town contains several ancient tanks, which are regarded as tirthas or sacred places and in which the pilgrims bathe from religious motives. On its wesstern outskirts, at a distance of about 2 miles from the Great Temple, stands the sacred temple of Loknath, or ' Lord of Regions’ The divinity is held in very great esteem by the people of the District, and the place is largely visited.

[Sir W. W. Hunter, Orissa, vol. i, pp. 81-167.]

See also

International Puri Beach Festival

Jagannath culture/ cult

Jagannath Puri: temple cuisine

Puri, the pilgrimage (main page)

Puri District, 1908

Puri Subdivision, 1908

Puri Town

Puri, Dasnami Sannyasis