When from the capital we turn to Puri, we find a state of affairs more altered than might be expected from the short space of time that had elapsed between the building of the Black Pagoda and the celebrated one now found there. It is true the dynasty had changed. In 1131, the Kesari Vansa, with their Saiva worship, had been superseded by the Ganga Vansa, who were apparently as devoted followers of Vishnu; and they set to work at once to signalise their triumph by erecting the temple to Juganât, which has since acquired such a world-wide celebrity.
It is not, of course, to be supposed that the kings of the Ganga line were the first to introduce the worship of Vishnu to Orissa. The whole traditions, as recorded by Stirling, contradict such an assumption, and the first temple erected on this spot to the deity is said to have been built by Yayati, the founder of the Kesari line.[434] He it was who recovered the sacred image of Juganât from the place where it had been buried 150 years before, on the invasion of the Yavanas, and a “new temple was erected by him on the site of the old one, which was found to be much dilapidated and overwhelmed with sand.”[435] This, of course, was before the arrival of the Ayodhya Brahmans alluded to above, who, though they may have retained possession of the capital during the continuance of the dynasty, did not apparently interfere with the rival worship in the provinces.
It would indeed be contrary to all experience if, in a country where Buddhism once existed, those who were followers of that faith had not degenerated first into Jainism and then into Vishnuism. At Udayagiri we have absolute proof in the caves of the first transition, and that it continued there till the time when the Mahrattas erected the little temple on the southern peak. In like manner, there seems little doubt that the tooth relic was preserved at Puri till the invasion of the Yavanas, apparently, as before mentioned, to obtain possession of it. According to the Buddhist version, it was buried in the jungle, but dug up again shortly afterwards, and conveyed to Ceylon.[436] According to the Brahmanical account, it was the image of Juganât, and not the tooth, that was hidden and recovered on the departure of the Yavanas, and then was enshrined at Juganât in a new temple on the sands. The tradition of a bone of Krishna being contained in the image[437] is evidently only a Brahmanical form of Buddhist relic worship, and, as has been frequently suggested, the three images of Juganât, his brother Balbhadra, and the sister Subhadhra, are only the Buddhist trinity—Buddha, Dharma, Sanga—disguised to suit the altered condition of belief among the common people. The pilgrimage, the Rât Jutra, the suspension of caste prejudices, everything in fact at Puri, is redolent of Buddhism, but of Buddhism so degraded as hardly to be recognisable by those who know that faith only in its older and purer form.
The degradation of the faith, however, is hardly so remarkable as that of the style. Even Stirling, who was no captious critic, remarks that it seems unaccountable, in an age when the architects obviously possessed some taste and skill, and were in most cases particularly lavish in the use of sculptural ornament, so little pains should have been taken with the decoration and finishing of this sacred and stupendous edifice.[438] It is not, however, only in the detail, but the outline, the proportions, and every arrangement of the temple, show that the art in this province at least had received a fatal downward impetus from which it never recovered.
237. Plan of Temple of Juganât at Puri. (From a Plan by R. P. Mukerji.)
Scale 200 fᵗ. to the Inch
As will be seen from the annexed plan[439] ([Woodcut No. 237]), this temple has a double enclosure, a thing otherwise unknown in the north. Externally it measures 670 ft. by 640 ft., and is surrounded by a wall 20 ft. to 30 ft. high, with four gates. The inner enclosure measures 420 ft. by 315 ft., and is enclosed by a double wall with four openings. Within this last stands the Bara Dewul, A, measuring 80 ft. across the centre, or 5 ft. more than the great temple at Bhuvaneswar; with its porch or Jagamohan, B, it measures 155 ft. east and west, while the great tower rises to a height of 192 ft.[440] Beyond this two other porches were afterwards added, the Nat-mandir, C, and Bhog-mandir, D, making the whole length of the temple about 300 ft., or as nearly as may be the same as that at Bhuvaneswar. Besides this there are, as in all great Hindu temples, numberless smaller shrines within the two enclosures, but, as in all instances in the north, they are kept subordinate to the principal one, which here towers supreme over all.