In Odisha, faith is not kept to the temple. Jagannath is in the calendar, the kitchen, the songs and the cloth, and the tribal communities of the hills keep gods and festivals of their own, some of them tied to Jagannath's own story.
- Puri
- One of the Char Dham
- Hindu (Census 2011)
- 93.63%
- Scheduled Tribes
- 62, of them 13 PVTGs
- Koraput's temple
- Sabara Srikhetra
Jagannath, the Lord of the Universe
Jagannath is worshipped with his elder brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra, and with the Sudarshana. The three deities are carved from wood, with large round eyes, and they are unlike the stone images of most Hindu temples. They are renewed in a ceremony called Nabakalebara, when new images are carved from chosen neem trees.
The Jagannath temple in Puri is one of the four Char Dham, the great pilgrim seats of India, with Badrinath, Dwarka and Rameswaram. For many Odia families, Jagannath is less a distant god than a member of the household: he falls ill, he goes on holiday, he eats what the family eats.
Ratha Yatra
Once a year, in the month of Ashadha, the three deities leave the temple on three huge wooden chariots, built new every year, and are pulled through the streets to the Gundicha temple. They stay there a week and return in the Bahuda Yatra. The idea behind it is simple: on this one day the god comes out to everyone, whoever they are.
Koraput holds its own Ratha Yatra at Sabara Srikhetra on the same day as Puri's, and there the sweeping of the chariot, done by the king in Puri, is done by a tribal village head. Dates for this year are on the Odia calendar.
Mahaprasad
Food at the Puri temple is cooked in earthen pots over wood fires, offered to Jagannath, and then becomes Mahaprasad. It is sold and shared in the Ananda Bazar inside the temple, and people of every caste eat it together. Sharing Mahaprasad is a way of sealing friendships and family bonds in Odisha.
Many faiths
By the 2011 Census, 93.63% of Odisha's people were Hindu, 2.77% Christian and 2.17% Muslim. Smaller communities of Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains live in the state too, and many tribal people follow their own traditions.
Buddhism and Jainism have deep roots here. The rock-cut caves at Udayagiri and Khandagiri near Bhubaneswar were made for Jain monks, and the Buddhist sites at Ratnagiri, Udayagiri and Lalitgiri lie north-east of Cuttack. Close to Koraput, the Subai Jain temple carries the same history.
The tribal communities
Odisha has 62 Scheduled Tribes, and 13 of them are recognised as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). Each has its own language or dialect, its own village gods, and festivals tied to sowing and harvest.
- In the Koraput hills: Paraja, Gadaba, Kondh, Bonda and others. Village deities and the earth goddess are honoured at the village shrine, and festivals such as Chaitra Parba mark the seasons.
- Jagannath's tribal roots: tradition holds that the Sabara people worshipped the deity in the forest before he came to Puri. Koraput's temple is named Sabara Srikhetra for that reason.
- The Tribal Museum: the Tribal Museum in Koraput shows the dress, tools and instruments of the district's communities, a good stop before you drive through their villages.
