ABSTRACT
Sometime in the early 12th century, the Eastern Ganga king of modern-day Odisha, Anantavarman Co?odagannga, appropriated a deity, perhaps of peasant proprietor origins, and built a new temple along the lines of the architecture that the Soomavanshi rulers had patronized in the 10th century. One of his successors, Anangabhiima III, dedicated the kingdom to the deity and ruled as his deputy. The Jagannatha temple of Puri was thus transformed into the de facto capital of the kingdom and the centre of a territory, investing it with a political meaning that was absent in pre-Anantavarman times. By the 16th century, the meaning of the temple underwent significant changes. The territory came to be visualized in ethical terms - in contrast to the political characterization of the Eastern Gannga times - with its basis in the idea of domesticity. The temple complex turned into a household space with extended kinship and dependency relations. The temple also began to forge relationships of service with numerous other temples and mathas, both within Puri and beyond, and with the peasant settlements, which transformed the whole town and its hinterlands into a sacred space over which the grace of Jagannatha extended. This process of integration had strong political and ritual content, as far as the royal and priestly classes were concerned, but from the lay devotee’s perspective, the relationships were primarily economic and almost invariably articulated in the language of domesticity as an ethically desirable principle. This chapterexplores these changing meanings of the Jagannatha temple and conclude with reflections on how these meanings have in modern times been besieged by newer ones.
