A large number postings on the Bhagabat Janma in the social media Twitter on Monday has proved all blames of the new generation forgetting Odia roots wrong.
The Bhagabat Janma is a sacred day which is observed in Bhagabat Tungis in almost all villages of the State to mark birthday of the Odia Bhagabat written by legendary poet Jagannath Das.
On Monday, most of computer savvy Odias took their Twitter accounts as a platform to pay homage to the Holy Scripture and its legendary writer. They posted photos and twitted one-liner byte, Bhagabat (in Oida) in the social account. It became the most discussed topic (top twitter trend) all over India for some time.
As twitter statistics shows, the hashtag #Bhagabat existed for some time. Twitting Pavitra Bhagabat remained the topmost trend in the country. Out of over 7,000 tweets on the hashtag, about 3,500 tweets were tweeted on the sacred book and the writter.
leading Odia tweeple were @shrijagannathBhagabata statsa @Mallick1962 @ssgapu22 @OdiaCulture @the_jitu47 @rahulrajsrkfan @pandapritam0 @subhapa @nidhi_budha.
Apart from the larger cause of bringing Bhagabata back to discussion, the trend certainly was a show of strength by Odia Twitterati after getting #RasagolaDibasa trending at number two nationwide on July 29.
The Bhagabata, the most well-known piece of Odia literature ever, needs no introduction. Even after hundreds of years, the book retains its popularity and gets worshipped in houses of Hindu families across the State.
The Bhagabata Tungis have been the nerve centre of early-modern and colonial period of Odisha, which essentially served as the village school, library, court and place for religious discourse.
The work includes 12 volumes and each volume has 10-30 chapters. Each chapter has 50 to 300 stanzas. All volumes of The Bhagabata have been digitised by the Odisha Government.
Born to Bhagabana Das and Padmabati Debi in Kapileswarpur Sasana on Radhastami in 1491, Jagannath Das was one of the five pioneers of the Bhakti Movement (Pancha Sakha) in the State during the late medieval period.
A contemporary of Chaitanya, both were fond of each other and Chaitanya had bestowed the title of ‘Atibadi’ on him.
