'Lord of the Universe'; formerly English: Juggernaut) is a deity worshipped in regional Hindu traditions in India as part of a triad along with his (Krishna's) brother Balabhadra, and sister, Subhadra.

In some exceptional medieval and modern era paintings in museums outside India, such as in Berlin states Starza, Jagannath is shown "fully anthropomorphised" but with the traditional abstract mask face.

Lalita helped her husband devise a plan:[62] Vidyapati brought a bag of mustard seeds with him, scattering them all along the path to the shrine present in a cave, bearing witness to the deep blue image of Nilamadhava.

Receiving guidance in the form of a divine dream, a great tree floating in the sea was felled and used to create the three wooden images of the temple, those of Jagannatha, Balarama, and Subhadra.

[17] According to Bijoy Misra, Puri natives do call Jagannatha as Purushottama, consider driftwood a savior symbol, and later Hindu texts of the region describe the Supreme Being as ever present in everything, pervasive in all animate and inanimate things.

This assimilation and the consequent disingenuous interpretation or rationale for his inclusion aptly articulate the considerable ambivalence characteristic of Hindu attitudes towards Buddhism, undermining his historicity, to make him an appendage of the Vaisnava mythic hierarchy.

[85][86][87][88][89] But in the opening chapter of his Gita Govinda, the poet Jayadeva claims that Vishnu reincarnated as the Buddha to condemn the animal sacrifices prevalent in Vedic times.

Padmasambhava and Tārā, along with other deities are invoked in an inscription of 25 lines incised in nail-headed characters of the late 8th-9th century on the back of an image of Lokeśvara/Mahākaruṇā at Udaygiri not far from Jajpur, which states that a stupa with a relic inside and dwelt in by the Tathāgata was set up on that very spot.

According to Nabin Kumar Sahu, this mass of evidence, supports the belief that Indrabhuti was the king of Odisha which is same as Oddiyana or Odra-pitha, of which the main deities are Jagganath and Viraja.

According to the Polish Indologist Olgierd M. Starza, this is an interesting parallel but a flawed one because the Kittung deity is produced by burning a piece of wood and too different in its specifics to be the origin of Jagannath.

[33] According to another proposal by Stella Kramrisch, log as a symbol of Anga pen deity is found in central Indian tribes and they have used it to represent features of the Hindu goddess Kali with it.

However, states Starza, this theory is weak because the Anga pen features a bird or snake like attached head along with other details that make the tribal deity unlike the Jagannath.

[125] The Dasgoba copper plated inscription dating to 1198 also mentions only Purushottama Jagannath in the context that the Puri temple had been originally built by Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga (1078–1147) for Vishnu and Lakshmi.

Such state of affairs has led to arguments that Purushottama was the original deity and Balabhadra and Subhadra were subsequently drawn in as additions to a unitary figure and formed a triad.

For example, the 17th-century Odia classic Rasa kallola by Dina Krushna opens with a praise to Jagannath, then recites the story of Krishna with an embedded theology urging the pursuit of knowledge, love and devotion to realize the divine in everything.

[130] The medieval era Odia scholars such as Ananta, Achyutananda and Chaitanya described the theology of Jagannath as the "personification of the Shunya, or the void", but not entirely in the form of Shunyata of Buddhism.

[132] According to the second legend, associated with the Vaishnavas, when Krishna ended the purpose of his Avatar with the illusionary death by Jara and his "mortal" remains were left to decay, some pious people saw the body, collected the bones and preserved them in a box.

They remained in the box till it was brought to the attention of Indradyumna by Lord Vishnu himself who directed him to create the image or a murti of Jagannath from a log and consecrate the bones of Krishna in its belly.

Then King Indradyumna appointed Vishwakarma, the architect of gods and a divine carpenter, to carve the murti of the deity from a log that would eventually wash up on the shore at Puri.

[134] Some believe that the mythical place where King Janak performed a yajna and tilled land to obtain Sita is the same as the area in which the Gundicha temple is situated in Puri, according to Suryanarayan Das.

The legend has such a powerful impact on the Oriya culture that the simple mention of white horse-black horse evokes the imagery of Kanchi conquest of the God in devotees minds.

At Adipur near Chilika lake, the milkmaid Manika halted the King pleading for the unpaid cost of yogurt consumed by His army's two leading soldiers riding on black and white horses.

As per historical records, Gajapati Purushottam Deva's expedition towards Virupaksha Raya II's Kanchi (Vijayanagar) Kingdom started during 1476 with Govinda Bhanjha as commander-in-chief.

"Gaudiya" refers to the Gauda region (present day Bengal/Bangladesh) with Vaishnavism meaning "the worship of the monotheistic Deity or Supreme Personality of Godhead, often addressed as Krishna, Narayana or Vishnu".

He called hymns in language he did not know nor could read as "obscene stanzas", art works on temple walls as "indecent emblems", and described "Juggernaut" and Hinduism to his American readers as the religion of disgusting Moloch and false gods.

Several European authors, such as W.W. Hunter and James Fergusson went to great lengths to revise Buchanan's perception and presented a more humane version of Jagannatha to British and American audience.

[186] The British government initially took over the control and management of major Jagannath temples, to collect fees and Pilgrim Tax from Hindu who arrived from all over the Indian subcontinent to visit.

[190][191] To colonial era Hindu nationalists in the late 19th-century and 20th-century, Jagannath became a unifying symbol which combined their religion, social and cultural heritage into a political cause of self-rule and freedom movement.

As per another ritual, when the deities are taken out from the Shri Mandir to the chariots in Pahandi vijay, disgruntled devotees hold a right to offer kicks, slaps and make derogatory remarks to the images, and Jagannath behaves like a commoner.

On the way back, the three chariots stop at the Mausi Maa Temple and the deities are offered poda pitha, a kind of baked cake which are generally consumed by the poor sections only.