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India 1951, Showing off the Lingaraja Temple to Shiva

In the early days of independence there must have been a competition of what to show first on the stamps and thereby tell the world about the new, large but yet ancient country. The Lingaraja Temple in Bhubaneswar made the cut. Rightly it should as it tells the story of the conversion of eastern ancient India from Buddhism to Hinduism. Another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This was a harder stamp to research than I would have guessed when I picked it out. The period English spelling of the place yields nothing now and Google close matches send you to “hot” pictures of some Bollywood actress. I will leave for the day when a stamp featuring her arrives in my collection to add my opinion as to her hotness. Meanwhile the stamp featuring the Lingaraja Temple just labels it as a place with many old temples of a similar style including an identical but smaller one to Krishna rather than Shiva. Very confusing but the kind of far off rabbit hole that must have fascinated the old time stamp collectors.

Todays stamp is issue A94, a 4 Anna stamp issued by independent India on April 30th, 1951. It was a later printing revision of a 16 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used. The stamp being unused would have raised the value to $11. The printing quality of stamps took a big turn for the worse post independence so much more can be seen on unused versions.

The Lingaraja Temple in Bhubaneswar was built in the 11th century AD when the area was under the rule of the Somavamshi Dynasty. This era saw the conversion of the area from Buddhist to an early form of Hinduism. The temple was built on the site of an earlier one to a different religion dating from the sixth century AD. The Scottish Historian James Fergusson refers to the Lingaraja Temple as one of the best purely Hindu Temples in all of India. The tower is 150 feet high and the stone walls are over seven feet thick.  The Temple is today open to both tourists and Worshipers receiving 6000 visits a day.

Somavamshi King Yahati I initiated construction of the temple and assigned the Brahmin Caste to serve as the priests and defenders of the Temple wich also served as a fortification defending the faith. The Lingaraja name refers to Shiva as King and the Temple contains an icon of such. King Yahati was correct to think in terms of defense in the design of the Temple. In 1114 AD, the area was conquered by the Gangas Empire but the Hindu worship in the Temple was allowed to continue.  This remained true through many subsequent changes through the continueing work of the Brahmans.

Today the old temple area of Bhubaneswar faces one of it’s biggest challenges in the form of the exploding population and urban sprawl of Bhubaneswar. From a 15,000 population at the time of the stamp to over 800,000 now. Bhubaneswar became the provincial capital as the previous colonial one flooded a lot. Colonialism now takes the form of multinational software corporations such as Infosys and IBM availing themselves if India’s low cost of labour.

Well my drink is empty and I am left to wait till tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.