Page:Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purānic.djvu/279

 to be, and common belief accepts him as, an appearance of Vishnu himself, and not the incarnation of a portion of his essence. There is, however, considerable reason for doubting whether originally Jagannāth--the Lord of the World-had any connection with Vishnu. It is possible that he was the local divinity of some now unknown tribe, whose worship was engrafted into Hinduism ; and the new god, when admitted into the Pantheon, was regarded as another manifestation of Vishnu; or what is more probable, as Puri was a head centre of Buddhism, when that system was placed under a ban and its followers persecuted, the temple

was utilized for Hinduism, and Jagannāth, nominally a Hindu deity, was really Buddhistic ; the strange, unfinished image being nothing else than a disguised form of the symbols of the central doctrine of the Buddhist faith. Possibly, in order to be free from