Place · Nagvanshi Jagannath temple · India
Jagannath Temple, Ranchi
The Jagannath temple on Jagannathpur hill in Ranchi was built in 1691 by Thakur Ani Nath Shahdeo, the second son of the Nagvanshi raja Thakur Ani Nath, as a miniature copy of the Puri Jagannath for a Chotanagpur royal house that could not easily make the eastern pilgrimage. It is the oldest temple in Ranchi city; its annual Rath Yatra in June-July — in which the three deities ride a wooden chariot pulled by Munda, Oraon and Nagvanshi devotees around the hill — is Chotanagpur's largest religious festival and a founding moment of modern Ranchi's urban identity. The adjacent fair is the city's oldest surviving market.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Nagvanshi dynasty
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.301, 85.295
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyHundru Falls
Hundru Falls on the Subarnarekha and the Jagannath temple at Ranchi are both landmarks of greater Ranchi's cultural geography, forty-five kilometres and three kilometres from the city centre respectively. The Jagannath temple's annual Rath Yatra each June-July — the largest religious festival of Chotanagpur — brings pilgrims from Munda, Oraon and migrant communities who then move out to the plateau waterfalls at Hundru, Jonha and Dassam for the picnic weekend that has become the city's shared ritual year.
- Modelled afterJagannātha Temple, Puri
The Jagannath temple at Ranchi, built in 1691 by the Nagvanshi prince Thakur Ani Nath Shahdeo on Jagannathpur hill, was consciously modelled on the Puri Jagannath — the three deities (Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra) are installed on a Puri-pattern ratnavedi, the annual Rath Yatra uses Puri-form wooden chariots, and the daily puja follows the Puri Chhatisa Nijog rituals as closely as a Chotanagpur household could afford. The Nagvanshi royal house could not easily make the Puri pilgrimage from the plateau, so Shahdeo built the Puri at home.
Sources
Standard reference.
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