The Dhām
One sacred Kṣetra. Many names. Each revealing another way of seeing the abode of Sri Jagannātha.
There are places whose names tell us where they are. And there are places whose names tell us something of what generations have found there.Purī belongs to the latter.Across Purāṇic accounts, Sanskrit literature, Odisha's historical record and the continuing traditions surrounding Sri Jagannātha, the sacred Kṣetra has been remembered through many names. Nīlācala. Nīlādri. Puruṣottama Kṣetra. Śaṅkha Kṣetra. Śrī Kṣetra. Jagannātha Kṣetra. They are not merely alternative labels for the same point on a map. In our reading, they offer different ways of approaching the sacred identity of the Dhām.Some speak of a Blue Mountain. Some identify the land through Puruṣottama. One sees the Kṣetra in the sacred form of a śaṅkha. Others speak simply of the Lord's own Kṣetra or Dhām. And still others reach toward something more difficult to express: Vaikuṇṭha encountered within the mortal world; heaven upon earth.This is what we have begun to learn about those names.
The Sacred Landscape
Nīlācala — the Blue Mountain
Among the most beautiful and enduring names associated with the sacred abode is Nīlācala: nīla, blue; acala, the unmoving one or mountain.The name reaches into the traditional sacred geography surrounding the manifestation of Sri Jagannātha. In its presentation of the Puruṣottama Kṣetra Māhātmya of the Skanda Purāṇa, Odisha Review describes Nīlācala—the Blue Hill—at the centre of Puruṣottama Kṣetra, near the sacred Rohiṇī Kuṇḍa and the ageless banyan associated with the traditional account.Thus Nīlācala is more than picturesque language for Purī. It takes us backwards into the sacred landscape upon which the traditions of the Kṣetra unfold—a landscape older than the streets and buildings through which today's pilgrim approaches Sri Mandir.
Nīlādri — the Blue Hill
Closely related is Nīlādri: nīla, blue, and adri, mountain or hill.Nīlādri has become deeply embedded in the vocabulary of Jagannātha tradition. Even today, the Lordships' return to Sri Mandir following Ratha Yātrā culminates in the celebrated Nīlādri Bije.The older literature and Odisha's own scholarship preserve Nīlādri alongside Nīlācala as a name associated with the sacred place. Rather than inventing a theological distinction between two closely related names, we prefer simply to notice what both preserve: the memory of the Lord's abode as the Blue Hill.
Nīlagiri and Nīlaśaila
The same remarkable vocabulary continues through Nīlagiri and Nīlaśaila—giri and śaila again carrying the sense of hill or mountain.Odisha sources preserve both among the traditional nomenclatures associated with Purī, alongside Nīlādri and Nīlācala.Four expressions therefore return us to essentially the same evocative image:Nīlācala · Nīlādri · Nīlagiri · NīlaśailaThe Blue Mountain. The Blue Hill. The sacred landscape of the Lord.Why this image became so enduring, how the traditional Nīlācala relates to the landscape of Purī that exists today, and the stories associated with that sacred geography take us considerably deeper than these few paragraphs can travel.And that is precisely where the journey begins.
The Kṣetra of Puruṣottama - Puruṣottama Kṣetra
Before the modern name Purī became dominant, one of the great names of the sacred place was Puruṣottama Kṣetra.Puruṣottama carries the sense of the Supreme or Highest Puruṣa; Kṣetra can denote a field, domain or sacred territory. Here the geography becomes inseparable from the Lord who inhabits it: the Kṣetra of Puruṣottama.This name has considerable documentary depth. The official history maintained by the Government of Odisha records Puruṣottama as a place-name in the Anargharāghava, attributed to around the ninth century, and notes that the Nāgarī plate of Anaṅgabhīma III, dated 1229–30 CE, explicitly calls the place Puruṣottama Kṣetra. The official history also records Puruṣottama in the Yoginī Tantra and Kālikā Purāṇa.The textual tradition goes deeper still. Odisha scholarship identifies the Puruṣottama Kṣetra Māhātmya of the Utkala Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa as an important repository of the traditional account of the sacred geography and manifestation of Sri Jagannātha.Here faith, literature and historical evidence meet in an unusually beautiful way: Puruṣottama Kṣetra is not a modern devotional invention. Its name has travelled through centuries.
Puruṣottama Purī
And from Puruṣottama comes another name with a remarkable relationship to the one the world uses today:Puruṣottama Purī.The Government of Odisha's official history records that Puruṣottama Kṣetra also came to be known as Puruṣottama Purī, and that the latter was eventually expressed in its shortened form:Purī.That makes the familiar modern name rather more interesting.A visitor may arrive at a railway station or search a map simply for Purī. Behind those four letters, however, stands an older sacred vocabulary in which the place was remembered as Puruṣottama Purī—the Purī of Puruṣottama.
The Kṣetra of Jagannātha - Jagannātha Kṣetra
As the Lord became known throughout India and beyond as Jagannātha—the Lord of the Universe—the sacred place naturally carried His name as Jagannātha Kṣetra.Dr Bhaskar Mishra's study of the antiquity of Purī, published by Odisha Review, includes Jagannātha Kṣetra among the names by which the ancient sacred city has been known.There is something wonderfully direct about this name.After Nīlācala has shown us the sacred landscape and Puruṣottama Kṣetra has carried us into an ancient identity of the Lord, Jagannātha Kṣetra simply tells us whose place we have entered.This is the Kṣetra of Jagannātha.And across centuries, pilgrims approaching it from far beyond Odisha have also carried another beautifully simple expression:Jagannātha Dhām — the sacred abode of Jagannātha.Odisha's historical literature notes that to pilgrims from other parts of India, Purī became generally known by precisely this name.
The Sacred Geography - Śaṅkha Kṣetra — the Kṣetra of the Conch
Then comes a name that changes the way we look at the land itself.Śaṅkha Kṣetra.The Utkala Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa is identified in Odisha scholarship with the traditional description of Purī as Śaṅkha Kṣetra. The sacred tract is understood as resembling the form of a śaṅkha—a conch, one of the traditional āyudhas associated with Viṣṇu.This means Śaṅkha Kṣetra is not merely another poetic title.It introduces us to the idea of sacred geography: that the Dhām itself can be contemplated as a meaningful sacred form.And the tradition extends further. Odisha's account places Śaṅkha Kṣetra within a wider sacred geography in which Bhubaneswar, Jajpur and Konark are respectively associated with Cakra Kṣetra, Gadā Kṣetra and Padma Kṣetra—evoking the four āyudhas.But knowing that Purī is Śaṅkha Kṣetra immediately produces more questions than answers.Where are the boundaries of this śaṅkha? Where within it is Sri Mandir? What sacred tīrthas lie within its form? What temples, pathways and ritual traditions give that geography life?Those are not questions we intend to dispose of in a paragraph.They are future Śrī Kathā.
The Sacred Kṣetra and Dhām
Śrī Kṣetra
Perhaps no alternative name for Purī is heard more naturally within Odisha than Śrī Kṣetra.The word śrī carries a richness that a single English equivalent struggles to preserve: auspiciousness, splendour, sacredness and divine grace are all within its orbit. Kṣetra again gives us the sacred field or domain.Odisha's historical scholarship identifies Śrī Kṣetra and Puruṣottama among the most popular older names of Purī.There is therefore no need for us to force Śrī Kṣetra into an elaborate definition. Its endurance tells its own story.For generations, devotees have not merely encountered a coastal city.They have come to Śrī Kṣetra.
Śrī Dhām
Odisha sources also preserve Śrī Dhām among the sacred names associated with Purī.Dhām changes the emotional register slightly. A Kṣetra may invite us to contemplate sacred territory; Dhām invites us to think of abode.And perhaps that is why the expression feels so natural when speaking of Jagannātha.Sri Mandir does not stand in isolation from Purī, and Purī is not merely the municipality surrounding Sri Mandir. Temple, tīrtha, ritual, Lordships, Sevayats, festivals, sacred pathways, Mahodadhi and generations of memory together create something considerably more difficult to describe by geography alone.The Dhām is encountered as a sacred world.
When Heaven Touches Earth - Martya Vaikuṇṭha
And then the vocabulary becomes extraordinary.Among the names preserved in Odisha's Jagannātha literature is Martya Vaikuṇṭha Kṣetra.Martya speaks of the mortal realm.Vaikuṇṭha invokes the divine abode.Placed together, the words hold an idea of immense devotional beauty: Vaikuṇṭha encountered within the world of mortals.We do not offer that as a proposition Jagannath Patrika asks anyone to accept on our authority. We offer it because this is one of the ways the tradition has learned to speak about this place.And perhaps some experiences are easier to approach through a name than through an explanation.Related Odisha writing also describes the profound sacred atmosphere of Puruṣottama Kṣetra as Nitya Vaikuṇṭha—the eternal Vaikuṇṭha, the abode of the Divine.The vocabulary itself tells us how far the understanding of the Dhām has travelled beyond ordinary geography.
Bhūsvarga — Heaven upon Earth
Then there is perhaps the most immediately understandable of these names:Bhūsvarga.Bhū—earth.Svarga—heaven.Heaven upon earth.Odisha Review preserves Bhūsvarga among the traditional names associated with Purī.One reader may be drawn toward the ancient mystery of Nīlācala.Another may find meaning in Puruṣottama Kṣetra.Another may become fascinated by the sacred geography of Śaṅkha Kṣetra.Someone else may simply feel at home in Śrī Dhām.And another may encounter in Martya Vaikuṇṭha or Bhūsvarga words for something they have felt but never quite known how to express.Perhaps that is why one sacred place can carry so many names.Each name reveals something. None exhausts the Dhām.
Twelve names. One Dhām. And only the beginning.
We began this page by saying that Purī's sacred names do more than identify a place.Having encountered them, perhaps we can now see why.Nīlācala · Nīlādri · Nīlagiri · Nīlaśaila invite us towards the sacred landscape.Puruṣottama Kṣetra · Puruṣottama Purī carry the memory of Puruṣottama through scripture, history and even into the modern name Purī.Jagannātha Kṣetra tells us whose Kṣetra we have entered.Śaṅkha Kṣetra begins to reveal an entire sacred geography.Śrī Kṣetra · Śrī Dhām speak of sanctity and abode.Martya Vaikuṇṭha · Bhūsvarga reach towards the possibility of heaven encountered upon earth.But each of these names opens a door that this page has deliberately left open.There are still the sacred tīrthas. The boundaries and mysteries of Śaṅkha Kṣetra. The stories of Nīlācala. Ancient temples and maṭhas. Sacred pathways. Mahodadhi. The journeys of the Lordships. The places where generations have worshipped, served, remembered and told their stories.Jagannath Patrika does not claim to have the final word on this extraordinary Dhām.We are simply sharing what we learn as we encounter it—and inviting you to come with us.Subscribe and journey through Jagannātha Dhām with us: one day at a time, one Śrī Kathā at a time.
Sources consulted include, but are not limited to: Government of Odisha, Puri District, “History — Puri”, including its discussion of Puruṣottama Kṣetra, Puruṣottama Purī, the Nāgarī plate of Anaṅgabhīma III (1229–30 CE), and the development of the name Purī; Dr Bhaskar Mishra, “Antiquity of Puri City,” Odisha Review (July 2013); Rajkishore Mishra, “The Temple Abode of Shri Jagannath,” Odisha Review (May–June 2015); Dr Dibyajyoti Moharana, “Shree Jagannath Consciousness and Culture,” Odisha Review (July 2016); Prof. Keshab Chandra Das, “Shri Jagannath Culture and Consciousness,” Odisha Review (June–July 2021); and Odisha Government publications drawing upon the Puruṣottama Kṣetra Māhātmya of the Utkala Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa in describing the sacred geography and traditional accounts of Puruṣottama Kṣetra.
