Karmabai Under the reign of king Virakisora, a saintly lady from Maharastra called Karmabai and her aged Guru Indra Swami came to pilgrimage to Puri and out of devotion they decided to remain to live there in a small Ashrama. Once Karmabai was visiting the temple while the priest was presenting the offering, but for some reason the food was declared unfit and discarded by the priest. Karmabai rushed to the altar, saying that maybe Jagannatha wanted to take food from her hand, and she tried to informally present Sri Jagannatha with a pot of rice personally cooked by her, but she was stopped by the temple servants. Shortly afterwards, the priests in the temple of Sri Jagannatha found that no food offerings were accepted by the Lord any more. Usually it is said that the food is accepted when the priest can see Sri Jagannatha’s image reflected into a drop of water he is holding in his hand. But the image of the Lord did not appear any more in the water: instead, the food immediately became rotten and had to be discarded. Jagannatha appeared to the King in a dream and told him that a very dear devotee, Karmabai, was suffering because of neglect and therefore He had decided not to accept any more food from the priests until Karmabai’s sufferings had been alleviated. The King sent men around to find Karmabai and one of them, called Badu, arrived at the Ashram and strongly felt the presence of Jagannatha there. He then saw Karmabai coming out of the kitchen, where she had just finished cooking. Badu took Karmabai to the King, who arranged for her maintenance from the royal treasure. Then Karmabai requested to be allowed to offer her khechadi directly to Lord Jagannatha as she had desired to do, and the King ordered that her desire would be granted. The priests took the pot to the altar and to their surprise they found that Jagannatha was gladly eating her offering! Still today one of the most popular items in the Mahaprasada is called Karmabai’s khechadi.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:03:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015