Jagannath was originally an autochtho-
nous (“of the land”) deitywho hap-
pened to be Puri’s local deity. Identifying
him with Krishna was a way to assimi-
late Jagannath into the Hindu pantheon.
For Jayadeva, Jagannath-Krishna is thus
the supreme deity, not an avatar, and the
place usually occupied by Krishna in
Jayadeva’s enumeration of the avatars is
taken by Krishna’s brother, Balarama.
For the text of the Dashavatara Stotra
and the Gitagovinda, see Barbara Stoller
Miller (ed. and trans.), The Love Song of
the Dark Lord, 1977.
Dasyu
(“slave”) The name used for non-Aryan
peoples in the Vedas, the earliest Hindu
sacred texts. The words Aryan and
Dasyu are an “us” and “them” opposi-
tion—in essence, the people who com-
posed the Vedas called themselves
Aryans, and referred to the “outsiders”
as Dasyus. Although one cannot be cer-
tain whether these names refer to a par-
ticular group of people, or any group of
all, one theory is that the Aryans were a
people who had migrated from outside
of India, and the Dasyus were the
indigenous people in northern India.
The Vedas describe the Dasyus as living
in fortified cities, some of which were
destroyed by the god Indra. Some read-
ers have interpreted this image as the
Aryans’ destruction of the Indus Valley
cities, but there is little historical record
for such spectacular conquests.
Other hymns in the Vedas describe
the Dasyus as dark-skinned and nose-
less, which is generally taken to mean
flat-nosed. This has led some to identify
the Dasyus with the Dravidianlanguage
speakers who now live in southern
India, since some of them share these
characteristics. According to this belief,
the Dravidian language speakers would
have been gradually displaced toward
the south as the Indo-Aryan language
speakers—in short, the Aryans—came
into India from the north. One piece of
linguistic evidence for this comes from
modern Pakistan, in which a small
group of people speak Brahui, which is a
member of the Dravidian language fam-
ily. This Brahui-speaking community is
entirely surrounded by people speaking
Indo-Aryan languages, and the simplest
theory for this anomaly is that these
Brahui speakers are an isolated linguis-
tic fragment of that earlier time. These
theories are intriguing, but it is naive to
read the Vedas as an objective historical
account, or even to assume that any of
its references correspond to events out-
side the sacred world to which they were
the key.Dattatreya
In the religious texts known as the
puranas, Dattatreya is a famous ascetic
and is considered to be a partial avatar
(incarnation) of the god Vishnu. Many
modern ascetics consider him a para-
digm for asceticism, and Dattatreya has
actually been installed as a deityin cer-
tain places associated with ascetics,
such as Mount Girnar. Dattatreya’s
mother is Anasuya, and he is born after
she has done a great favor to the gods.
According to the story, a faithful wife
named Silavati curses the sunnot to
rise, and in consequence the creatures
of the earth are greatly troubled.
Anasuya succeeds in persuading Silavati
to recall her curse, and in their grati-
tude, the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and
Shivainform her that she may ask for
whatever she wants. Anasuya requests
that each be born as one of her sons,
and this is granted: Vishnu is born as
Dattatreya, Shiva as Durvasas, and
Brahma as Chandra.Datura
(from Sanskritword dhattura) Name for
a genus of plants known as the thorn-
apple, which is a distant relative of the
potato. The datura plant contains poiso-
nous alkaloids, which when consumed
in small quantities produce intoxica-
tion, and in larger quantities, sickness
and death. Devotees (bhakta) of the god
Shiva eat the datura plant’s swollenDasyu