The Glimpse of Shri Jagannātha Culture in 21st century.
Shri Jagannātha is wooden deity with complete sense organ. At the same time, he is Universal deity as called as ‘Lord of the Universe’. He is the Purusottam of the Veda and Darubrahmas of Brahmins. He is the Dakhinkali for the Saktas and Vairaba for the Saivites. He is Mahaganapati for the Ganapatyas and at the same time he is the Suryanarayan for the Sauryas.
His festivals are of Puranic origin and rituals are admixture of tribal rituals as well as Sakta’s Nyasa and Mudrus and many more. His majority of rituals are based on Uddiyan Tantras which are the refined versions of Mahayan Tantras as well as Shabari Tantras which are evolved from Tantrik Buddhism and tribal belief respectively. Of his mantras (incantation Oum is Vedic and Hlim, Slim, Klim are Tantrik. His Kaibalya (dried Mahaprasad of rice) is of Jaina origin and Nirmalya of Saivite origin.
His worship, attire, foods rites and rituals are nothing, but a synthesis of various cultures and beliefs. But, at the same time it is free from all types of regional separatism, scriptural exclusiveness and regional narrowness. By its wonderful power of assimilation it has effected the synthesis of all cultural communities, States and universe.
One of the major salient feature of culture of Lord Jagannath is tolerance which is an outstanding human value propagated by culture of Lord Jagannath which postulates with every way of life as its contribution in its specific way to the human welfare.
The culture of Lord Jagannath stands for religious tolerance, co-existence of all religions communal harmony and international integrations. This has led to the present day situation in which we see that Lord Jagannath is worshipped by all irrespective of castes, creed, colour and community. As a result, the entire universe and inhabitants of universe are part and parcel of the concept of culture of Lord Jagannath.
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