PURI or JAGANNATH, a town and district of British India, in the Orissa division of Bihar and Orissa. The town is on the seacoast, and has a railway station. Pop. (1931) 37,568. As containing the world-famous shrine of Jagannath (see JUGGER NAUT), Puri is perhaps the most frequented of all Hindu places of pilgrimage; of recent years also it has won some popularity as a seaside health resort. The great temple of Jagannath was built in the I2th century by Choda Ganga, the greatest of the Eastern Ganga kings of Kalinganagara (Ganjam).
The DISTRICT OF PURI has an area of 2,492 sq.m. and a popu lation (I931) of 1,035,154. Most of the country is flat. The middle and eastern divisions of the district, forming the south western part of the Mahanadi delta, consist entirely of alluvial plains, watered by a network of channels through which the most southerly branch of that river, the Koyakhai, finds its way into the sea. The other rivers are the Bhargavi, the Daya and the Nun, all of which flow into the Chilka lake. During the rainy season the rivers come down in floods, sometimes bursting their banks and carrying everything before them. The Chilka lake is one of the largest in India ; its length is 44 m., and its mean breadth 13 m. in the north and 5 m. in the south. It is separated from the sea only by a narrow strip of sand. The lake is saline and everywhere very shallow, its mean depth ranging from 3 to 5 feet.
Puri first came under the British in 1803. Later events were
the rebellion of the maharaja of Khurda in 1804 and the rising of the paiks or peasant militia in 1817-18. In the Orissa famine of 1866 more than one-third of the population is said to have per ished. The district is served by the Bengal Nagpur railway which was opened throughout from Calcutta to Madras in 1891, with a branch to Puri town.
Puri district is rich in historical remains, from rock-hewn caves to the magnificent mediaeval shrines at Bhubaneswar and Konarak. On a hill at Dhauli, 4 m. S.W. of Bhubaneswar, are rocks with edicts inscribed by Asoka in the 3rd century B.C. and an elephant carved out of the solid rock, the oldest carving of an elephant known in India. In the hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri are Jaina caves hewn out of the rock, and some (such as the Rani Gumpha or queen's palace) profusely carved, between the 3rd and 1st centuries B.C. The greatest architectural glory of the district is its collection of temples built between the 8th and 13th cen turies A.D. Bhubaneswar is crowded with Saiva shrines of which the largest is the Lingaraj, while the Raja Rani temple has been described by Fergusson as one of the gems of Orissa art. More magnificent, even in its ruin, is the sun-god's temple of Konarak, of which Sir John Marshall writes : "There is no monument of Hinduism I think, that is at once so stupendous and so perfectly proportioned."