Puri. The Ratna Bhandar of the Jagannath temple located in the religious city of Puri in Odisha has been opened. A 16-member committee headed by former High Court Justice Biswanath Rath will now count the items in Lord Jagannath’s Ratna Bhandar and make a list. The Ratna Bhandar has two chambers, outer and inner. After opening the Ratna Bhandar, items offered to the Lord have been found here. These also include crowns and weapons of kings.
Quoting Biswanath Rath, the chairman of the committee that inspected the items in the Ratna Bhandar, Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran has reported that crowns of kings, gold and silver ornaments, swords, spears, shields, armour etc. have also been found in the offerings to Lord Jagannath. Biswanath Rath told the newspaper that all the things have been sealed and kept in a temporary storage. Many kings including the king of Puri have been making offerings to the temple of Lord Jagannath every year. The newspaper has reported on the basis of historical documents that whenever Gajapati Maharaj of Puri used to win a war from any state, he used to bring the crown of the king of that state and dedicate it to Lord Jagannath. All these crowns have been found here. Quoting Biswanath Rath, the newspaper has reported that earlier there was a discussion that there is a secret treasure and tunnel in the Ratna Bhandar of Lord Jagannath, but nothing like this has been found till now.
The Ratna Bhandar of Lord Jagannath’s temple in Puri was opened 46 years ago and a list of all the items was made for 70 days. At that time, 747 types of jewellery were found there. Out of these, 454 were gold. According to the newspaper, according to the documents of the Jagannath temple, the second Maharaja of the Ganga dynasty, Anand Bhim Dev, had gifted 14500 kg of gold to Lord Jagannath. The ornaments for the idols of Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Devi Subhadra were made from this gold. Now when the list of the things found in the Ratna Bhandar will be made, it will be clear whether all the things have been found according to the documents of Lord Jagannath’s temple or not. This may take a few more days.
