Under the reign of king Virakisora, a saintly lady from Maharastra called Karmabai and her aged Guru Indra Swami came to pilgrimage to Puri and out of devotion they decided to remain to live there in a small Ashrama.
Once
Karmabai was visiting the temple while the priest was presenting the offering,
but for some reason the food was declared unfit and discarded by the priest.
Karmabai rushed to the altar, saying that may be Jagannatha wanted to take food
from her hand, and she tried to informally present Sri Jagannatha with a pot of
rice personally cooked by her, but she was stopped by the temple servants.
Shortly afterwards, the priests in the temple of Sri Jagannatha found that no
food offerings were accepted by the Lord any more. Usually it is said that the
food is accepted when the priest can see Sri Jagannatha’s image reflected into
a drop of water he is holding in his hand. But the image of the Lord did not
appear any more in the water, instead, the food immediately became rotten and
had to be discarded.
Lord Jagannatha
appeared to the King in a dream and told him that a very dear devotee, Karmabai,
was suffering because of neglect and therefore, HE had decided not to accept
any more food from the priests until Karmabai’s sufferings had been alleviated.
The King sent men around to find Karmabai and one of them, called Badu, arrived
at the Ashram and strongly felt the presence of Jagannatha there.
He then saw
Karmabai coming out of the kitchen, where she had just finished cooking. Badu
took Karmabai to the King, who arranged for her maintenance from the royal
treasure. Then Karmabai requested to be allowed to offer her khechadi directly
to Lord Jagannatha as she had desired to do, and the King ordered that her
desire would be granted. The priests took the pot to the altar and to their
surprise they found that Lord Jagannatha was gladly eating her offering! Still
today one of the most popular items in the Mahaprasada is called Karmabai’s
khechadi.
Source : http://indiaconmassimotaddei.com
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armabai(20 January 1615 – 1634) was aJatknown as-Bhakt Shiromani Karmabai. She was born on 20 January 1615 in the family of JiwanjiDudiin the villageKalwasituated inNagaurdistrict. She was a devotee ofKrishna. The story goes.like this- karmabai's father was a devotee of Krishna. Once upon a time he had some work outstation, so he instructed her to offer the food(bhog) to the lord and then only she should eat. Karma was very youngand she took this instruction literally. Next morning she woke up early and made khichda for offering the Lord. But when shesaw that lord is not eating, sincere towardsher father's instructions innocent karmabaidid not eat anything at all and waited for lord to come and eat first. Lord Krishna was very impressed by her determination and showed mercy on her. He himself appeared before her and ate her khichda. He followed the same routine till her fatherdidn't returned. When her father returned she told him everything, her father was shocked in disbelief and thus karma pleaded lord to appear once again to proveher true. And very merciful lord Krishna didappeared once again to keep his devotee's respect.is common belief that she had offered 'khichada' to Krishna in his presence. Afolk song tells like this -Thali bhar'r lyayi khichado upar ghee ki batki !Jeemo mhara syam dhani jeemavai beti Jat ki !!Karmabai took a livingsamādhion 25 July 1634
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