BHUVANESWAR
The Hari-Hara Kshetra

CONNOTATION AND REPUTATION

'Bhuvaneswar' means the Lord of the world, and it refers to Maheswar one of the Trimurthis of Hindu gods; and He is the Lord of Destruction, yet the most compassionate among them. It is applicable to places also; here it is the name of a place consecrated by the presence of Siva, and it is the metropolitan city of Orissa. It was and is the seat of government of one of the Indian states called Utkal then, and Orissa now. For centuries, it is called the cathedral city of India, on account of the infinite number of temples it has within its precincts. Legends credit it with having nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine temples, built by a single individual king-Yayati Kesari, a rare phenomenon, perhaps, second to none but to itself. It serves a royal banquet to the eyes of the devotees with numberless temples small and big, old and new, simple and grand, ruined and maintained and visited or neglected, all but in one place. Though there is predominance of Siva temples every where, one can also see Vaishnava temples here and there in addition, there are a good number of Jain and Bouddha shrines, either in adorable, or deplorable state reflecting the spirit of catholicity of the capital and its inimitable glory of tolerance to other religions. 

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