Subhadra

Subhadra is the sister of Jagannath and Balabhadra and the third member of the triad worshipped at Puri. Her image — the smallest of the three, yellow-faced, and placed between her brothers on the jewelled throne — gives the great Vaishnava shrine an arrangement found nowhere else in India: a goddess at the centre of the sanctum, flanked and framed by the gods.

Identity

In the epic and Puranic tradition Subhadra is the sister of Krishna, married to the Pandava hero Arjuna and mother of Abhimanyu. At Puri her position invites further readings: currents of Odia tradition identify her with Ekanamsha or Yogamaya, the goddess born alongside Krishna, while Shakta and tantric interpreters have seen in her the great goddess herself, sometimes named as Bhubaneshwari. Her central place on the throne has thus allowed goddess-worship to live inside the heart of the Jagannath cult.

Ritual

Subhadra shares fully in the ritual life of the temple. Her neem-wood image is renewed with her brothers' at the Nabakalebara ceremony, and at the Ratha Yatra she travels in her own chariot, Darpadalana, “crusher of pride”, which rolls between Balabhadra's ahead and Jagannath's behind — the sister guarded on both sides. The deified discus Sudarshana rides beside her on the journey to the Gundicha temple and back.