The central thesis of the book questions the observations of Alexander McDonald (1975) that “the religious culture of the Jagannath worship at the city of Puri is par excellence a meeting place between the Aryan and non-Aryan elements of the population”, and of Charles Fabri that “the temple of Jagannath along with all others built during the 7th-14th centuries bear the marks of non-Aryan beliefs.” He also questions the existing researches on the subject that discover the prominence of heterodox philosophical ideas as well as the religious rites in the system of Jagannath worship. (p. XV). Instead, the author argues that both the temple and the rituals cohere with the Brahmanic orthodoxy reflected in other places of India including the groups of temples of Khajuraho of Madhya Pradesh and some others in Rajasthan. “How to interpret”, the author writes, “the iconographic specificity of Puri deities?”
What status should be attributed to the Sudra ritualists of the great temple? The present book provides new answers to these old questions. Puzzling as it may appear, the “strangeness” of Orissa ethnography is a particular — yet extremely coherent — expression of Indian traditions”. (p. XVI)
The standing problem related to the issue in question is its historicity — what probable time could be attributed to the beginning of this Vaisnavite shrine leaving the mythologisation of the whole phenomenon, that fixes it to the beginning of the Drapara aeon, altogether? One can confidently propose that historically, the shrine never dates earlier than the 9th century, because it does not appear on the list of the pilgrimage of the South Indian Vaisnava saints called Alvars who were active during the 6th-9th centuries enlisting the Tirumala hills (installed in the 5th C), Dwaraka, Vrindavan and Naimisyaranya as their regular pilgrim spots. During the visit of Hueng Tsang (7th century), the whole of coastal Orissa was pervaded by the Vajrayan Buddhist tantric system of religious practices. Some scholars, therefore, observe reasonably that the Puri shrine was originally a Buddhist stupa/ caitya, a mound converted to the temple, the place being identified with a “blue mountain” (nila giri/ adri/ parvata etc). If so, then this conversion must be much later than Hueng Tsang’s visit. The Sanskrit texts that mythologise the shrine are some portions of the Skanda Purana, Brahma Purana and Matsya Purana that cannot be dated earlier than the 11th-12th century. Portions of the Madala documents that deal with the early history of the shrine are surreptitious.
It appears, quite reasonably, keeping the issue of conversion aside, that the shrine was founded some time between the 10th-11th centuries most probably by Yayati I (of the Soma dynasty 922-955) who was a great patron of Brahmanism admired by the historians for uniting Kosala with Odra and Kangoda, the western and the coastal regions of the modern Orissa.
The temple was subsequently renovated and enlarged by the Ganga kings during the early part of the 12th century (1110 AD onwards), although the rulers of both the dynasties were Saivites as well.
But the point that remains yet to be clarified is what exactly was the nature of the deities and their worship. Unfortunately, the records available mystify and mythologise this pivotal issue so notoriously that it seems ever irrecoverable.
As it stands now, the four distorted anthropomorphic images — represent the Bhagavata cult, non-Aryan in its character.
Krishna Vasudeva, his elder brother Balarama and sister Ekanamsa commonly known as Subhadra (Brihatsamhita, 57 of Varaha 5th century) with Sudarsana the wheel-weapon of Krishna. The accessibility of the deities to the common people of all the castes and not only to the brahmins and rice-offering to be shared among all the castes, are the features of the shrine that oppose the brahmin-dominated rituals of the orthodox Aryan culture. It is not yet clear whether such tradition prevails from the very beginning or is introduced later.
The suggestions that an original Buddhist shrine is converted into the Vaisnava one is not also untenable because of the orthodoxy of the Soma ruler Yayati. Again, the king Indradyumna of the legends and myths etymologically meaning one who is capable of strength, power and fame (dyumna) like Indra, the king of the gods of heaven, might be identified with this Soma ruler who actually performed Asvamedha sacrifice, and as coming from the western region might be also identified as the king of Malava, a kingdom west to the coastal Orissa.
Coincidentally, Yayati had a strong cultural tie with Kanauja as evident from his inviting brahmins of high order from that country.
All these crucial features of the whole phenomenon are simply ignored by the author da Silva, his sole effort centering around legitimating the myths and legends available in the Sanskrit and vernacular texts into a systematic Aryan structural order. His scholarship is admirable so far as he applies the structural theory of myth pioneered by Claude Levi-Strauss in studying the whole range of myths that are actually, possibly and probably related to the myth and rituals of the Jagannath worship.
Thus, the mythical isomorphism that he discovers is extremely enlightening, insightful and informative although unfortunately, the whole discovery appears irrelevant in shedding any new light on the core point of the issue concerned. The reader wants to know the core points: At what point of history the shrine was founded? Who was the founder? What was the course of this foundation? Whether the initial features of the worship including iconology and worship rituals are still the same or has undergone changes? If so, then why? And finally, What are the courses of these changes?
The legends say that there was a sapphire image of Vishnu originally worshipped by an aboriginal. What was the kind of that image — iconic or aniconic? An iconic image should be worshipped by the pancaratric tantric method which must be unknown to the aboriginal worshipper, its being known only to a trained and educated brahmin. If aniconic, then how to identify it with Vishnu?
The author’s discovery that the “blue mountain” is simply a symbol of the cosmic pole (meru) substitutable by the cosmic tree (banyan) is acceptable, but only conditionally.
The other alternative that there was a Buddhist mound caitya (tree)/ stupa later converted to a stone temple is equally acceptable. But a historically plausible argument is preferred to a fictionally probable argument. The Indradyumna legend is not merely an archetypal event.
It has also a historical reference that a historian must trace out.
It seems that the fame of the shrine as Sri-kshetra is not properly understood by the author who stresses the name Purusottama a kshetra, thus tracing its Vedic/ Aryan significance. Sri-kshetra might be referring to the influences of Ramanuja, the south Indian Vaishnava of the Sri school who came to the shrine during the Ganga rule (11th century) and founded his monastery just in front of the main temple. Ramanuja exercised significant influences on the whole system of rituals as he was emphasising the Vyuha-worship of the Bhagavata cult (See Sukla, 2010). If, according to the author, a non-Aryan system has not been Aryanized, the other pole of the truth cannot be denied. In fact, as it stands, there is positively a compromise between both the systems — the orthodox and the heterodox without any domination of the either — it is a syncretism.
This is precisely what the legend in both its versions — Sanskrit and vernacular — concludes. Indradyumna, his brahmin emissary Vidyapati and the aboriginal worshipper Visvavasu all bow to the final decision of the divinity. Vishnu as Jagannatha is therefore radically different from Visnu as Venkatesa (Tirumala) who is not accessible to all — is touched only by the brahmin priests. The latter is Vedic but the former is non-Vedic (obviously because Krishna is not a Vedic god), if not certainly anti-Vedic.
The rituals of Jagannath is therefore not ordained strictly according to the Vedic principles.
The vital issues of the whole phenomenon need a thorough investigation that have remained mystified so far, although at the same time the present author must be admired for his insight into the structural arrangement of the myths and rituals relating to the issues concerned in a codified manner.

The author is a former professor of English of Sambalpur University, Orissa, and an eminent philosopher of art,
religion and language