A NOTE ON MY POST ON JAGANNATH WORSHIP: HOW SARALA CONNECTED KRISHNA WITH JAGANNATH

I thought I should write a note to say why I posted a piece on Jaganath worship in this blog on Sarala Mahabharata.

Was Sarala the first to connect Krishna with Jagannath through a narrative? That might be the case, this post suggests.

The Musali Parva of Sarala Mahabharata connects Shri Krishna with Mahaprabhu Jagannath. Neither Srimad Bhagavata nor Harivansha nor Vyasa Mahabharata made this connection. Neither did Shreepurushottama-kshetra-mahatmyam of Skanda Purana, which deals with the origins of Jagannath and His worship in considerable detail. Neither did the twelfth-century poet Jayadeva. In his dasavatara (ten avataras) slokas, Keshava or Krishna is conceived as the Source and Matsya, Nrusingha, Vamana, Rama, etc. are his incarnations. Jagannath, who, some, but not Jayadeva, believe to be non-distinct from Buddha, is considered by them as the ninth avatara of Keshava. But Buddha was an avatara of Bhagawan Vishnu and that avatara shared with the Buddha of Buddhism only the name. To the best of my knowledge, the Gita Govinda says nothing that connects Krishna with Jagannath persuasively.

The celebrated Jagannathastakam, each stanza of which ends with “Jagannathah swami nayana pathagami bhabatu me”, relates Krishna with Jagannath. Aadi Shankaracharya is popularly believed to have composed this hymn but many argue, persuasively, that it was composed by Sri Chaitanya. In the sixth stanza, for instance, there is the mention of Radha but the special gopi (milkmaid) of Srimad Bhagavata came to be known as “Radha” in Brahmavaivarta Purana, composed centuries after Aadi Shankaracharya. If Sri Chaitanya composed this hymn, then it was after Sarala’s time.

So, was Sarala the first in the Jagannath narratives who created this connection between Krishna and Jaganath? I guess he was but am not sure; many puranas (Skanda Purana, Padma Purana, Narada Purana, Bhavishya Purana, among others) and at least one upapurana, namely Kalika Purana have mentioned Jagannath. There are other important texts dealing with Jagannath and His worship, such as Niladri Mahodaya and others composed in Odia, but these are post-Sarala, as far as I know. I haven’t read most of the puranas and the upapurana mentioned above. I will be grateful for help in this regard from friends who would care to read this post.

The barest essentials of the theme of the Krishna-Jagannath connection in Sarala Mahabharata is this: After Krishna departed from the mortal world, keeping his word to Angada, born as Jara, in the preceding yuga, Treta (in Musali Parva, the Divine Voice told Arjuna that Jara was Angada), Arjuna and Jara tried their best to cremate his body but did not succeed. Fire would not be able to consume the body, said the Divine Voice from the sky and directed them to float it in the sea, which they did. As Arjuna left for Dwaraka, he asked Jara to keep watch over the body.  Jara followed it. As far as I understand the narrative, this story effectively ends here; its continuation till the emergence of Jagannath is mediated by the Divine Voice from the sky, instructions from Krishna to king Indradyumna during dreams, etc. But this Krishna can only be a name of the Supreme god, Narayana, the avatara Krishna’s Source, because the avatara Krishna had merged into Him after he left the mortal world. In this part of the narrative, both “Narayana” and “Krishna” are used, but they have the same reference, to my mind, namely, the Avatari (the Source). Now, why did the poet use the word “Krishna” then? I surmise that he did so in order to suggest that Musali Parva was a continuation of his Mahabharata, although the Kurus had no presence in the narrative of the emergence of Jagannath. But there was Jara in Musali Parva, who figures both in the Mahabharata narrative and the one of the origins of Jagannath.

But is the Jara of the Mahabharata and the Jara of the Jagannath narrative in Musali Parva, the same person? As far as I m concerned, the answer is “no”. In Sarala Mahabharata, Jara is a name borne by different savaras in different times. Jara was another name of Ekalavya, Jara was the son of Kiratasena, the ruler of a forest kingdom, Jara was the one whose arrow had mortally wounded Krishna, Jara was the name of the savara who worshipped Neela Madhava and Jara was the one who was chosen by Krishna (Narayana, because Krishna had merged in Him) to play a crucial role in the making of Jagannath and later, His worship.

To me, Sarala uses “Krishna” and “Jara” as terms that connect the narrative of the Kurus and the narrative of the origins of Jagannath – these terms occur in both. This is a lexical strategy that the poet used. Had he used “Narayana” instead of “Krishna”, who, to repeat, had lost his identity after returning to his Source, and some other name for the particular savara to distinguish him from the other Jaras, the two narratives would not have been as unobtrusively blended as they are in Sarala Mahabharata.    

The savara’s involvement in Jagannath worship makes this worship unique. A savara is outside of the caste system and when he enters it in Jagannath worship as a daita or daitapati (name of a group of servitors in Jagannath worship), he does so as a non-brahmin. The daitas perform intimate seva (ritual service) of Jagannath (a cover term for Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana) during anasara (during which period, He is accessible only to two categories of servitors: daitapati and pati mahapatra, a brahmin but not a shotriya brahmin); they take care of the Murtis. Anasara ritual requires the seva of both daitapatis and pati mahapatras. Sarala is certainly not the first who articulated this inclusive form of worship, but I feel confident to assert that no one had assigned a more crucial role to the savara in the relevant narrative than him.

Mahastami, 2019