The Carpenter Behind the Door

King Indradyumna had a log and no one to carve it.

It was no ordinary log. It had come floating in on the sea at Puri, fragrant and bright, marked with the conch and the discus of Vishnu. The king had searched for the blue image of the god that was once worshipped in the forest, and had lost it under the sand. This wood was what he had been given in its place. From it the images of the Lord were to be made.

Then an old man arrived at the court. He was thin and bent, and he carried a carpenter's tools.

"I can carve your images," he said.

The king looked at him doubtfully. "You are an old man, and this is no common wood."

"I have one condition," said the old man. "I will work inside the hall, alone, behind a closed door. I need twenty-one days. In that time nobody is to open the door and nobody is to look in. If the door is opened before I am finished, I stop, and the work stays as it is."

Indradyumna agreed. The old man went in with the log, and the door was shut and barred.

The king and his queen, Gundicha, waited outside. They listened for the knock of a mallet or the scrape of a chisel, and heard nothing.

A week went by in silence, and then another. On the fifteenth day the queen could bear it no longer.

"He is an old man," she said to the king. "He took no food in with him, and no water. Nobody has gone in for two weeks. What if he is lying dead in there?"

"He told us not to open the door," said the king. "I gave my word."

"And if you keep your word and he dies of it?"

Indradyumna held out for as long as he could. But the silence went on, and the queen asked again, and at last he gave the order. The bar was lifted and the door was pushed open.

The old carpenter was gone. Nobody had seen him leave, and there was no other way out.

On the floor of the hall stood three figures. They had broad faces and great round eyes. Their arms were short stumps that ended without hands. They had no feet at all. The work had stopped just where the carver had reached on the day the door opened.

The king was stricken. He understood now who the old man had been. Odisha says he was Vishvakarma, the craftsman of the gods, come down in the shape of a village carpenter. Some say it was Vishnu himself who took that shape. And the king had broken his promise to him.

Then a voice spoke out of the air.

"Do not grieve. Install them as they are. This is the form in which I shall be worshipped here."

So the images were not finished and not thrown away. They were painted and set on the throne: Jagannath, dark, his brother Balabhadra, white, and their sister Subhadra, golden, between them. People say of Jagannath that he has no hands and still holds the whole world in his care.

Once a year the three still ride out of the temple on their great chariots. The house they travel to, a short way up the road, is called the Gundicha temple, after the queen who could not bear the silence.

The Skanda Purana tells of the same king and the same wood, and tells it differently.

Indradyumna was finishing a great horse sacrifice by the sea when his servants came running.

"Lord, there is a tree in the surf. Its top is down in the waves and its roots are floating. It is red as madder, it carries the marks of the conch and the discus, and the whole shore smells sweet with it."

The sage Narada was beside the king, and he laughed with pleasure.

"Your good fortune has come," he said. "A hair fallen from the body of Vishnu has become that tree. Bring it in."

It was brought to the great altar with drums and conches, and the king worshipped it. Then he asked what any king would ask.

"What should the images look like? And who is to carve them?"

Before Narada could answer, a voice spoke from the sky, and everyone present heard it.

"The Lord will take shape on the altar by himself. Keep it covered for fifteen days. There is an old carpenter standing here with his tools: let him go in, and shut the doors behind him. Let music be played outside for as long as the work lasts, so that no one hears the chisel. No one is to enter. No one is to look."

The old carpenter was there, as the voice had said. He told the king that he would make from the wood what the king had seen in his dream, and he went in behind the altar. The Purana says plainly who he was: Narayana, the Lord himself, in a carpenter's shape.

The king obeyed. The doors stayed shut. Day after day a sweet scent came from the place, flowers fell from the sky, and music was heard that no one on earth was playing.

On the fifteenth day the work was complete. The voice spoke again and told the king how the figures were to be painted: Vishnu dark as a rain cloud, Balabhadra white as a conch, Subhadra the colour of saffron, the discus Sudarshana red. Then the altar was uncovered, and the king saw the four of them seated on a jewelled throne, finished and adorned. He stood like a post with his palms joined, and could only weep.