Chhatia Bata

Chhatia Bata is a Jagannath temple and pilgrimage place at Chhatia in Jajpur district, roughly midway between Cuttack and Jajpur. It is the temple, and not a separate deity, that people mean by the name. It takes its name from the banyan tree, bata in Odia, at its centre. The images of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra are arranged in a different order from Puri. The place is linked with the 18th-century saint Hadidas and with the saint Achyutananda Das of the Panchasakha period. A popular prophecy attached to it says that Chhatia will stay above water at the end of the age and that Kalki will appear.

According to a verse attributed to Achyutananda Das, when the world is engulfed in a deluge, Chhatia alone will remain above the water, and fish will play on the twenty-two steps of the Puri temple. Some accounts say the same prophecy came from the saint Hadidas, who is described as a reincarnation...