Jajnagar

Jajnagar, known as Jajpur, stands by the Baitarani River in the old sacred country of Biraja. Its temples and images bear witness to a long history of worship, above all at the shrine of the goddess Biraja. Muslim chronicles used the name Jajnagar for the town and the kingdom of Odisha associated with it.

Jajpur had been a centre of royal and religious authority under earlier dynasties, and its sacred places endured as power shifted elsewhere. In the fourteenth century the forces of Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq entered Odisha and attacked Jajnagar during their campaign. The town’s surviving religious traditions remained bound to the Baitarani and to Biraja, whose sanctuary gave the area a place in the sacred geography of the region.