Lord Jagannatha of Puri, one of the most famous Hindu deities, was the rashtra devata of Orissa in the medieval period and became a symbol of Oriya identity in modern times. The erstwhile imperial Gajapati Kings of Orissa and their successors, the Khurda Rajas, enjoyed special privileges in the cult as adyasevaka or ‘first servant’ of Jagannatha and even controlled it to a certain extent.
The present work consists of a comprehensive palm-leaf manuscript combining several originally separate Oriya texts of the fifteenth/sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, compiled by the Duela Karanas, the temple scribes of Puri, in the late eighteenth or the early nineteenth century. These texts provide first-hand and most authoritative information on land endowments to religious shrines throughout the medieval Orissan period, on rituals and duties of priests and temple servitors, and most importantly, on legendary and various historical and cultural events during the reign of the Gajapatis.
The present compendium is a unique source for the study of the cult of Jagannatha and the culture and history of pre-colonial Orissa. Coming to light for the first time, it may be regarded as the most important study of its genre after the publication of Puri’s temple chronicle, the Madala Panji, by A B Mohanty in 1940.
