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Re: The religious meaning of ``Jagannatha''
Forgot to mention a details
In article <4dueqn$gj1@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
Vijay Sadananda Pai <vijaypai@mandolin.rice.edu> wrote:
>Indradyumna was quite surprised to see the Deities in these forms;
>he had expected to see the Lord reclining on Ananta with Laksmi
>at His feet. Lord Brahmaa and Naarada Muni appeared on the scene
>and told Indradyumna that this was the Lord's will, to thus confirm
>the statements of the Shvetaashvatara and other Upanishads that
>say that though He has no material arms, He accepts all offerings.
So, Lord Brahmaa installed the Deities in the temple & then asked
Indradyumna if he would like a boon, since he was such an exalted
devotee. Indradyumna responded -- this temple should be open for all
but 3 hours of the day (*), and in exchange we will offer the Lord
some huge number of preparations per day. The boon was granted.
Brahmaa then asked Indradyumna to take some boon for himself -- so
Indradyumna responded "ok, let me never have any offspring so that way
nobody can ever claim this temple as their own". The boon was granted,
and so Jagannatha Himself is recognized as the proprietor of the temple,
from Whom (when there was a king in Orissa) even the king drew his
power.
Yours,
Vijay
* That schedule is not followed today; the temple is supposed to be
closed only from 11PM - 2AM every day, but in the past two hundred years
or so, the only time it followed that schedule was when Bhaktivinoda
Thakur was the chief administrator there for some years. Nowadays the
first offering *might* happen at around 7 or 8 AM.
