Page:The Imperial Gazetteer of India - Volume 10 (2nd edition).pdf/449



ORISSA. 437 principally belong to the different Baptist Missions stationed in each District, and for the most part consist of persons rescued from starvation when children, during the great famine of 1866. THE SHRINE OF JAGANNATH.-—The following paragraphs, descriptive of the shrine of Jagannath at l'uri, are condensed from the present author's Orissa (vol. i. chapters 3 and 4), to which the reader may be referred for a further and more detailed disquisition on the position occupied by this worship among the religions of India : For two thousand years Orissa has been the Holy Land of the Hindus. The Province is divided into four great regions of pilgrimage. From the moment the pilgrim passes the Baitaraní river, on the high road forty miles north-east of Cuttack, he treads on holy ground. Behind him lies the secular world, with its cares for the things of this life; before him is the promised land, which he has been taught to regard as a place of preparation for heaven. On the bank of the river rises shrine after shrine to Siva, the All-Destroyer. On leaving the stream, he enters Jájpur, literally, the City of Sacrifice, the headquarters of the region of pilgrimage (Vijayı or Párvati kshetra) sacred to Parvati, the wife of Siva. To the south-east is the region of pilgrimage sacred to the sun (Hara kshetra), now rarely visited, with its matchless ruins looking down in desolate beauty across the Bay of Bengal. To the south-west is the region of pilgrimage dedicated to Siva (Arka or Padma kshetra), with its city of temples, which once clustered, according to native tradition, to the number of seven thousand around the sacred lake. Beyond this, nearly due south, is the region of pilgrimage beloved of Vishnu, known to every hainlet throughout India as the abode of Jagannath, the Lord of the World (Vishnu or Purushottama kshetra). As the outlying position of Orissa long saved it from conquest and from that dilapidation of ancient Hindu shrines and rites which marks the Muhanımadan line of march through India, so Purí, built upon its extreme south-eastern shore, and protected on the one side by the surf and on the other by swamps and inundations, is the corner of Orissa that has been most left to itself. On these inhospitable sands Hindu religion and Hindu superstition have stood at bay for eighteen centuries against the world. Here is the national temple, whither the people flock to worship from every Province of India. Here is the Swarga - dwára, the Gate of Heaven, whither thousands of pilgrims come to die, lulled to their last sleep by the roar of the eternal ocean. Twenty generations of devout Hindus have gone through life, haunted with a perpetual yearning to visit these fever - stricken sandhills. They are Purí, the City of their religious aspirations on earth; they are Purushottama, the dwelling of Vishnu, the Best of Men;' they are the symbolical Blue Mountain ; they are the mystic navel of the