GURU NANAK - Devotee of Lord JAGANNATH

Guru Nanak

Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh movement, was born on 23 November 1469 at Talwandi (now in Pakistan) in a Hindu family, but his life mission was to mediate between Hinduism and Islam. Since his childhood he made friends with Muslim children, studied Arabic and Persian, discussed philosophy both with Hindu and Muslim scholars, and at the age of 13 when he was expected to accept the sacred thread, he rejected it, stating that compassion, simplicity, austerity and truthfulness were much better than cotton thread and knots.

On the request of his parents he married Sulakhani (Sulakshana) and had two sons, Sri Chand and Lakshmi Chand, but he used all his free time before and after work to meditate and chant, together with his old friend Mardana, a Muslim musician. One morning he went with Mardana to take bath in the river, and while in the water he had a revelation, which is now at the beginning of the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs: “There is only one God, his name is Truth and he is the Creator. He fears none, he hates none, he never dies and is beyond the cycle of births and deaths, is self-effulgent and is realized through the kindness of the genuine Guru”.

After this revelation, he left his job and distributed all his possessions to the poor, saying, “There are no Hindus or Muslims. Let the grace of God be the mosque, devotion the prayer carpet; let the Koran be good behavior, modesty be compassion, fasting be kindness, Kaaba be your good acts and your Imam be truthfulness”. At the age of 30, in 1499, Guru Nanak started to walk around India, traveling over 50,000 miles on foot in 25 years, offering his teachings in the form of songs in the local languages and opening centers called manji, where his followers could gather to sing and meditate. This was the beginning of Sikhism.

On his way to Puri, he rested in the village of Sangat in Balasore district and set up a Guru ka Langar (community kitchen) and community prayer hall. In the village there is still a place called Nanak Diha, where Nanak built his cottage. Guru Nanak reached Cuttack and rested at Kaliaboda on the Mahanadi, was received by the Gajapati. Some envious opponents came to beat him with a Sahaba branch, but he used it as a datan (toothbrush) and planted it as a sapling, which still exists as a tree at the Gurudvara.

Guru Nanak arrived in Puri in 1506 (some say in 1508), accompanied by Mardana and Bala, and they camped on the beach. As they were thirsty, Nanak told them to dig a hole in the sand and they found fresh drinking water at a few feet from the sea, a very amazing and inexplicable feat. Baula is the Punjabi name for fresh water holes, and that’s how the Matha got its name. Still the Grantha Sahib is worshiped there, and there is a Guru ka Langar and Sangats (holy association). Guru Nanak sent his devotee Mardana to get some Mahaprasada, but the Sevakas did not allow him into the temple. Then, during the evening arati, in the presence of the King, a golden pot full of Mahaprasada miraculously flew away by itself towards the seashore to Nanak.

The King went to meet him and in the course of their discussion on Sri Jagannatha asked him if he was not feeling bad not being allowed into the temple. As a reply, Guru Nanak showed the palm of his hand to the King, who with great amazement saw there the forms of Jagannatha, Baladeva and Subhadra. Nanak also told the King that the real arati (worship) is the one performed within one’s heart. Very impressed, the King offered him the property of the land where he had camped, today called Bauli Matha. Guru Nanak also established the Mangu Matha, where his footprints are visible.

The Grantha Sahib is said to contain a song that Nanak is said to have composed for Jagannatha, comparing the Sun and Moon to arati lamps, the forests to the flower garlands, and the sandalwood scented breeze to incense. Some say that Guru Nanak met Sri Chaitanya in Puri, in 1518, and that they sang and danced together in Harinama Sankirtana.

Nanak died on 22 September 1539, leaving his foremost disciple Angad (a devotee of Durga namedLehna) to continue his mission. Hindus wanted to cremate his body while Muslims wanted to bury it, and when they went to lift the shroud they only found a heap of fresh flowers: the flowers were divided between the two groups, that respectively cremated and buried their share.

Guru Nanak’s son, Sri Chanji was born on Bhadra sukla Navami 1494 in a village named Talbandi (presently known as Nankana Sahib) close to Lahore. His Diksha guru was Abhinash Muni, and his Siksha guru was Purushottama Kol, a Kashmiri pandit.

Sri Chanji is credited to have written Bhasyas on Veda and Gita; some of them are known as Sri Chandra siddhanta sagar, Sri Chandra sabda sudhar, Sri Chandra siddhanta panchakam, Ratna panchakam, Mukti manjari, Sri Chandra siddhanta manjari, Sri Chandra panchadasi, Sri Chandra pancakam, Sri Chandra panchadevashtaka etc. 

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DEVOTEE KABIR DAS

Kabir Das

He was born on 1389 at Lahartalao, Varanasi from a Brahmin lady but he was abandoned at birth and raised by a Muslim couple, therefore he was sometimes considered a Muslim or an outcaste. Later he was adopted by Ramananda Swami and became his disciple, but then he continued with his own Sampradaya called Nirakari, meaning that his followers worshiped the “formless”.

When he visited Puri, Kabir was wearing a Muslim cap and so the Pandas refused him entry into the temple. Suddenly they saw that miraculously all the people going in and out the temple appeared to wear a similar Muslim cap. Also, during the night the Bada Panda had a dream where Jagannatha told him directly that Kabir is a great devotee and he should be allowed to enter the temple and have Darshan.

Once the sea had come up to the Simhadvara, the main gate of the temple, and Sri Jagannatha asked that Kabir Das should be brought there to stop the sea. The King, impressed, granted him some land, now called Kabir Chata or Kabir Chaura Matha. In his honour the special recipe of watery rice called tanka torani was introduced in the daily worship to Sri Jagannatha. According to the teachings of Kabir, God resides in the heart of the worshiper, and even takes the form of tortoise or boar, so nobody is really impure. Still today, at the Kabir Choura Matha pilgrims take a spoonful of water mixed with Mahaprasadam rice, called Torani.

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SHANKARA DEVA - A Devotee of lord Jagannath

DEVOTEE   SHANKARA   DEVA

Although Shankara Deva is not associated with the city of Puri specifically, he was a very sincere devotee of 

Sri Jagannatha and he introduced the celebration of Ratha Yatra in the village of Satrusala on the border 

between Bengala and Assam, where he lived.

Shankara Deva was born on Vijaya Dasami in 1449, at Baradua in Assam. His father was Kusumabare and his mother was Satyasandha. At the age of 31 he received the visit of Jagadisha Mishra from Varanasi, who asked him to teach him the Bhavartha Dipika by Sridhara Svami. He wrote Oresa Varnana, a collection of 21 songs in Assamese language. His preaching comprised the necessity of association with genuine devotees (satsanga), congregational chanting of the Holy Name (sankirtana) and the recitation of Srimad Bhagavata Purana (bhagavata patha). While in Assam, he initiated the king Nara Narayana as his disciple.

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DEVOTEE - DHANANJAYA MEHTA

Dhananjaya Mehta

In 1727 a wealthy and proud man from Hyderabad came to Puri to accompany his family in sacred pilgrimage. However, he lacked the faith and devotion manifested by his family, and remained sceptical about the actual position of Lord Jagannatha as the King of the Universe. In fact, he was convinced that his own great opulence was superior to the properties and lifestyle of Lord Jagannatha.

He decided to challenge Lord Jagannatha’s superiority by offering 100,000 rupees in donation if the temple priests were able to use the entire sum to prepare one single food offering. At that time 100 rupees were sufficient to pay for an entire offering. So the Sevakas held a prayer meeting in front of Jagannatha to ask Him what to do.

Lord Jagannatha appeared in a dream to the head priest, suggesting that there was not even need to prepare a full meal in order to spend that amount of money. In fact, He said, that amount could be demonstrated insufficient even for a single piece of pan – albeit a special one, worthy of the opulence of the Lord of the Universe. In that single piece of pan, the betel nut within the pan leaf should be smeared not with lime but with the powder of a rare pearl that is sometimes naturally growing within the forehead of a bull elephant. 

When the wealthy man was informed, he realized he had been outsmarted, as one single ordinary elephant cost 100,000 and such a rare elephant would cost much more. He was unable to pay even for one single piece of pan! His pride was shattered, and the only thing he could do now was to humbly offer his respect and devotion to the Lord.

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PRINCESS VISHNUPRIYA - A DEVOTEE OF LORD JAGANNATHA

Princess Vishnupriya

Queen Candravati, the wife of king Jayasinha of Kora in Rajasthan (near the border with Kashmir) was very ill, and the remedies and pujas prescribed by the court astrologers had given no good result. Princess Visnupriya sat her mother’s bedside and kept praying God for help. One day she heard a beggar singing outside in the street and she send out a servant to find out who he was and what he was singing about.

The servant reported that the beggar was a yogi from SriKshetra singing songs to Lord Jagannatha, and that after being informed of the predicament of the royal family, he had given a small piece of Mahaprasada for the Queen; if she ate the morsel of sanctified food, her past karma would be purified and she would be cured.

Princess Vishnupriya gave the single bit of Mahaprasada to her dying mother, who immediately felt a great relief and happiness, and a new strength that revived her body. Then during the night the Queen remembered that once she had visited Puri for some days with her husband, and that on that occasion she had prayed for a daughter that resembled Jagannatha, promising that she would be dedicated to Him as His wife. At the same time that night the princess had a dream: she saw Lord Jagannatha standing with open arms, waiting to be garlanded by her. After this incident the princess developed a great devotion for Lord Jagannatha, and the entire royal family became more and more devoted to Him.

Once the Talucha Mahapatra of the Sri Jagannatha temple visited Kota to distribute Mahaprasada in that region, and having heard of the devotion of the princess, he visited the royal palace. After meeting Jagannatha’s servant and hearing the glories of the Lord, Visnupriya’s love for Jagannatha increased even more, and after another vivid dream she actually started to feel Jagannatha kissing and embracing her. At the end of his visit the Mahapatra received many gifts from the Queen, then he turned to the princess and asked her if she wanted to send anything to Lord Jagannatha. The princess sat down to write a letter to her beloved Jagannatha, but she composed one single Sanskrit verse: “He is all-pervading like space and His outstretched arms can embrace everyone at the same time, so one does not need to go anywhere to be near Him.”

While traveling back to the temple, the Mahapatra felt increasingly curious about what the princess had written, so he opened the letter and read it. As the princess was a very educated woman, the priest was expecting a long and complicated poem, and he was very perplexed to find that single strange verse, that made no sense to his eyes. So he decided it was just some useless blabbering, and he threw it away by the roadside.

Finally he reached back to his house in Puri, and he went to take some rest. Jagannatha appeared to him in a dream and rebuked him for failing in his duty to deliver the letter. He said that the letter was more valuable to Him than all the gold and valuables the Mahapatra had carried back. In fact, Jagannatha said, He Himself had picked up the discarded letter and He was holding it to His heart on His altar. After getting up, the Mahapatra went to the temple and actually found the letter on Jagannatha’s chest.

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BHIL PRITHU - Devotee of Lord JAGANNATH

BHIL PRITHU   -   A Devotee of Lord   JAGANNATH


It is actually very difficult to place the story of Bhil Prithu within a specific time frame, as it refers to a period when the temple of Sri Jagannatha in Puri was deserted and in disrepair, and has been transmitted by oral tradition only. The Bhils are a tribal population in Orissa who live in a very simple and natural way, depending on the forest products and without observing the complex Vedic ceremonies or practices.

Padma purana mentions the Bhils among the non-Vedic populations who attained the highest spiritual realization by worshiping Sri Jagannatha.

It is said that one young man of the Bhil tribe once wandered around the temple of Sri Jagannatha and climbed on a tree to collect fruits. From that vantage position, he was able to see the wonderful form of the Lord. Inspired by spontaneous devotion, he entered the dilapidated temple and offered some fruits to the Lord; a piece of the offered fruits fell to the ground and the man automatically picked it and ate it, thus attaining immediate spiritual realization to the point of liberation from all material conditionings. It is said that after this incident the entire Bhil tribe started to repair the temple and re-established a simple form of worship for the Lord.

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DEVOTEE OF LORD JAGANNATH - KARMABAI

DEVOTEE   KARMABAI


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.

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