unusual in Krishna devotion, as is the
form of these images, which clearly
come from a folk or tribal tradition. All
three deities are made from logs so
roughly cut that the facial features are
almost indistinguishable, their arms are
unnaturally short and stubby, and the
images are brightly painted. Each of
these peculiar elements is seen as fur-
ther evidence of Jagannath’s indigenous
roots. A final piece of evidence for his
local origins is seen in his connection
with his hereditary servants, the daitas,
a tribal people who are considered
virtually untouchable. Despite their
marginalstatus in conventional society,
the daitas are responsible for sculpting
new images of the trio when they are
periodically replaced. The daitas also
consider Jagannath their blood relative,
further pointing to his ambiguous roots.
The myth explaining these images is
based on the virtuous King
Indradyumna. Indradyumna has a
vision of Vishnu in a dream, in which
Vishnu directs the king to make an
image of Jagannath from an enormous
log that he has found. While the king is
wondering how to do this, a mysterious
man appears, who is actually
Vishvakarma, the architect of the gods.
The mysterious man offers to carve the
statues, on the condition that he will not
be disturbed until he is finished. He then
disappears into his workroom for two
weeks, but the people are mystified by
what he is doing, since they hear no
sounds of carving. This seeming inactiv-
ity piques the people’s curiosity, and
finally one of the queens prevails on the
king to look inside. When the king opens
the door, he finds no one there, and the
statues only half-finished. In another
dream that night, the king is ordered to
paint and consecrate the statues as they
are, and this form has reportedly
remained the same ever since. For fur-
ther information on the history and
influence of Jagannath, by far the best
source is Anncharlott Eschmann,
Hermann Kulke, and Gaya Charan
Tripathi, The Cult of Jagannath and the
Regional Tradition of Orissa, 1978.
Jageshvar
Temple complex and sacred site (tirtha)
in the village with the same name, locat-
ed in the Kumaon foothills of the
Himalayasin the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The Jageshvar temple complex contains
124 different temples, concentrated in an
area about the size of a football field.
Virtually all of these temples are dedicated
to some form of the god Shiva, and the
few that house other deitiesare either
temples to the Goddess—considered to
be Shiva’s wife—or in one case to the god
Hanuman, who is sometimes considered
an avataror incarnation of Shiva. Most of
these temples are extremely small—
either an open image of Shiva’s aniconic
symbol, the linga, or a temple building
no larger than a telephone booth. The
three largest most important temples are
to Shiva in his forms as Kedarnath, as
Mrtyunjaya(“Conqueror of Death”), and
as Jageshvar, from which the site gets its
name. The name Jageshvar means “The
Wakeful Lord” and signifies that this par-
ticular form of Shiva is always alert to the
needs of his devotees (bhakta) and will
quickly fulfill any request.
Local tradition claims that Jageshvar
is one of the twelve jyotirlingas, a net-
work of sites deemed especially sacred to
Shiva, and at which Shiva is uniquely pre-
sent. This claim is not supported by the
traditional list of the jyotirlingas, but
Jageshvar has been a pilgrimage site for
more than a thousand years. The
Mrtyunjaya temple has been dated to the
eighth century C.E., while the Jageshvar
temple was built about two centuries
later. Since that time, further building at
the Jageshvar complex has come through
patronage by several different groups of
hill kings, most recently those of the
Chand dynasty, who ruled the region
between the fifteenth and eighteenth
centuries. The temple complex’s indis-
putable antiquity, its association with
royal power, and its identity as a place
where Shiva readily grants one’s wishes,
have all combined to make it the most
important pilgrimage place in the
Kumaon region.Jageshvar