The Holy Sojourns of Jagannath

Rather than focusing on human pilgrims visiting sacred sites, this article inverts the typical approach to pilgrimage studies and considers the movement of Hindu deities as they travel throughout the world extending their sacrality in ever-new forms. As deities like Jagannath (the manifestation of Kṛṣṇa and/or Viṣṇu) leave their sanctuaries and become mobile, they engage with their devotees and the larger world around them. Such travels continue through various replications and reproductions so that the deities’ pilgrimages mirror those of their human devotees. This article emphasizes Jagannath’s material mobility in particular, to make a case not only for his status as a pilgrim, but for his ongoing expansions and transformations as he travels into diaspora. Relying on a number of fields—anthropology, art history, religious studies and theology—in addition to my own autoethnography, I argue that Jagannath’s descent (avatāra) from the heavens into the physical realm only continues as he takes on various forms and the very elements of the places, cultures and times through which he travels.