Person · Eastern Ganga king · India
Anantavarman Choḍaganga
The Eastern Ganga ruler who took Kalinga from the Somavamshis, held a territory from the Ganges to the Godavari for seventy years, and began the Jagannatha temple at Puri about 1135 — which converted a local tribal and Vaishnava cult into an imperial state temple.
- Date
- 1078–1150
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 19.805, 85.818
Worth knowing
His dynasty's revenue was recorded in the temple's own accounts, and the Jagannatha establishment outlived the state that founded it by six hundred years — it is still the largest landholder and employer in Puri. The Gajapati title his successors used is still borne by the family, who remain the temple's first servant.
About the place
Placed at the Jagannatha temple at Puri, which he began and which is the surviving centre of his dynasty's project. His capital moved between Kalinganagara and Cuttack.
Connections (2)
- CampaignPolonnaruwa
Chodaganga's dynasty came from the Ganga line that had ruled Kalinga from Kalinganagara and had married into the Cholas — his own name records it, and his mother was a Chola princess. He then fought the Cholas over Vengi and the Godavari delta for decades. Sri Lanka's Polonnaruwa, which the Cholas had held as a province a century earlier, and the Kalinga coast were the two edges of the same Chola maritime reach, and the Gangas are the power that pushed one of them back.
- Patronage networkPaṭṭachitra, Raghurajpur
The Jagannatha temple needs painted substitutes: when the wooden images are withdrawn for the anasara fortnight after the bathing festival, pattachitra painted by the chitrakara families of Raghurajpur stand in their place and receive worship. The craft is therefore an office of the establishment Chodaganga founded, inherited along with the obligation to perform it, and the village is a service settlement of the temple rather than an artists' colony that happens to be nearby.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Anantavarman Chodaganga”. The Madala Panji temple chronicle of Puri; Debala Mitra and K.C. Panigrahi on Odishan temple architecture; Archaeological Survey of India records.
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