Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · East India

The ring and the milkmaid (Kanchi Kaveri)

Refused a bride because he sweeps before Jagannath's chariot, the Gajapati Purushottama Deva marches on Kanchi; Jagannath and Balabhadra ride ahead of his army as two soldiers, stop for curd with a milkmaid by Chilika and pay with a ring; the king wins, and the princess is married to him as he sweeps the chariot.

Who is in it

Places: Puri

The story, beat by beat

  1. The king of Kanchi refuses his daughter to a king who sweeps.
  2. Purushottama swears to marry her to a sweeper.
  3. Defeated once, he prays; the two gods ride ahead of his second army.
  4. They buy curd from Manika and leave a ring; the king pays her and gives her a village.
  5. He wins; the princess is given to him while he sweeps the chariot.

pride service war love

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

As Odisha tells it (Manika and the ring)

East India · Chilika lake and Kanchi Vaishnava

The king of Kanchi will not give his daughter to Purushottama, because the kings of Puri sweep the road before Jagannath's chariot like servants. Purushottama vows to take her and give her to a sweeper. His first war fails. He prays, and on the second march two riders go ahead of the army, one on a black horse and one on a white. By Chilika lake they ask a milkmaid, Manika, for curd, and having no money give her a jewelled ring and tell her the king will pay. When the army comes she shows the ring, and the king knows it is Jagannath's and that the gods ride with him. He gives her a village, Manikpatna. He wins at Kanchi.

Manika Gauduni (Wikipedia); R. Subrahmanyam, The Suryavamsi Gajapatis of Orissa (1957), appendix 3

Scholarly

As the chronicles tell it (Madala Panji and Kanchi Kaveri)

East India Vaishnava

The temple chronicle and the poem Kanchi Kaveri add the ending: the princess, brought back to be married to a sweeper, is offered to the king himself as he sweeps before the chariot, and so the vow is kept. The image of Sakshi Gopala is brought from the south. Historians doubt the marriage; R. D. Banerji called it a romance, and Subrahmanyam dates any real raid to 1476 to 77.

R. Subrahmanyam, The Suryavamsi Gajapatis of Orissa (1957), appendix 3

Sources: Manika Gauduni (Wikipedia); R. Subrahmanyam, The Suryavamsi Gajapatis of Orissa (1957), appendix 3

More stories with the same people

Local story

The chariot that waited for Salabega

Salabega, son of a Mughal officer and a Brahmin widow, became one of Jagannath's poets but was never allowed into the temple; falling ill on his way to the chariot festival, he prayed for the god to wait, and the chariot would not move until he came; it still pauses at his grave on the Grand Road.
Local story

The sister at the door

In a Gaudiya Vaishnava telling, Subhadra guards the door while Rohini tells Krishna's queens about Vrindavan; she and her brothers are so absorbed that all three take the round-eyed, handless forms of Puri, and Krishna promises Narada to show them there. At Puri she rides between her brothers on her chariot Darpadalana, with Arjuna as its charioteer.
Festival story

The woman Lakshmi visited: Charumati's dream and Shriya the Chandaluni

Lakshmi comes to one woman's house. In the south she comes in a dream to Charumati and names a Friday; in Puri she walks into the clean hut of Shriya the outcaste, is shut out of the temple for it, and lets the two brothers go hungry until they eat from that hut.
Origin

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Temple legend

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How a tradition frames it

Chaitanya, the golden Krishna

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Festival story

The chariot festival of Puri

Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra ride three chariots to the Gundicha temple, stay seven days and return in the Bahuda Yatra.
Temple legend

The carving of the images at Puri

An old carpenter carves the images of Jagannath from the log behind a closed door; in Puri's tradition the door is opened early and the images stay unfinished.