Jai Jagannath !Jagannath literally means "The Lord of the People" and rightly so because of the immense love and affection he draws from millions of Hindu devotees all across the globe. The grand Jagannath temple is a classic example of the Orissa architecture and is located in the seaside township of Puri, which is one of the sacred Chardhams of India. The other being Badrinath, Rameshwaram & Dwarka. It is appropriate to say that Jagannath is actually a religious cult which has influenced many other sects and movements like ISKCON and Chaitanya Mahaparbhu movement.
THE LEGEND
King Indrayumna was a great devotee of Vishnu and he dreamt of Nilamadhava and sent his emissaries across the country to trace the form of the lord. One of the messengerVidyapatiwho went to Savara region came across and stayed with King Vasu and eventually married his daughter. Thru them he could trace the lord Nilamadhava and informed his leader King Indrayumna accordingly who came rushing for the lords darshan. However, to everyone’s disbelief the lord assumed the form of DARU and advised thru akashvanito build a temple at Nialasaila where he can be worshipped by all. Hearing this, the king ordered the construction to begin and after completion, the king went to Brahmaloka to invite Brahma to consecrate the temple. However Brahma was in meditation and he had to wait for nine Yugas.
The temple thus got buried in sand in his absence. Almost after nine yugas the temple was detected by Galamadhava the king of Utkal when he tripped off by the temple pinacle. He ordered to unearth the temple only to find that the idols were missing. He was then countered by King Indrayumna who insisted on taking the responsibility of installing the idols but had no clue how to go about it. Later in the night he saw a dream where the Lord told him that he would be floating in the sea in the form of a log of wood. When a big tree, radiant with light was seen floating in the sea, sage Narada told the king to make three idols out of it and place<
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