Environment

Sea Erosion and Fading Folklore

By Aditya Anurag Nanda

Posted on February 21, 2026

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Fables and parables are an interesting medium for connecting with the children.

When I was growing up, my grandparents used these media to the fullest to make me aware of my surroundings beyond the home.

One such narrative was about the legend of the Konark Sun temple, built in the 13th century, and the story of the sacrifice of the child prodigy Dharmapada, whose father was Bishu Maharana, the principal architect of the Sun temple.

The completion of the Konark Sun temple along the side of the Chandrabhaga River estuary near the Bay of Bengal took almost twelve years.

In order to make the sculpture, a unique, magnificent artwork, the king summoned all the artists and architects to the work site, leaving behind their families in their villages.

When Bishu Maharana left the village for this project, Dharmapada was in his mother’s womb, and he didn’t get the chance to meet his father till he turned twelve years old.

He yearned to meet his father’s face and, with his mother’s permission, left the village to fetch him as the project neared its culmination.

Dharmapada arrived at the work site a day before the temple’s scheduled inauguration date and found his father and the other artisans in a deep, stressful state, struggling to fix the temple’s Kalash.

The artisans worked continuously for twelve years without a break or any family time, developing a blind spot that Dharmapada could identify instantly, and fixed the Kalash atop the temple.

This set off another tremor of fear among the artisans, that the king might punish them all, since these experts had failed to match what a young child prodigy could achieve.

This sense of restlessness and anxiety among twelve hundred artisans was felt by Dharmapada, and to relieve these senior experts of their worries, he chose to sacrifice his life by jumping into the nearby Chandrabhaga River.

The legend stops here with the ultimate sacrifice of Dharmapada, but my imagination always took me to the emotional agony of his mother! My young age, accompanied by my inability to articulate my emotions, constricted my questions each time I heard this story!

Visiting the famous Sun temple a couple of times and finding no trace of Dharmapada’s existence or of the nearby Chandrabhaga River, along with the development of my reasoning, slowly convinced me that the legend is fictional, with no supporting evidence!

However, recently, on the occasion of World Wetlands Day celebration on 2nd Feb, when I visited a famous estuary ecosystem of a significant river, called the Prachi, and stumbled upon a temple that the local villagers have preserved in the memory of Dharmapada’s mother, Maa Keluni, then once again the legend resurfaced in my imagination!
The idol is in a sitting posture of a lady on a pedestal sufficiently high above the ground, facing the sea as if eagerly waiting for her loved ones to return through the sea route! Historical records reveal that Odisha, in its ancient and medieval periods, had a rich maritime culture, with estuaries playing a prominent role. Probably Dharamapada had taken the sea route to reach his father, who was working near the Chandrabhaga River estuary, around twenty kilometers by sea from Prachi estuary, while his mother, Maa Keluni, was waiting for his return. The sentimental idol unearthed many buried questions in me that rarely got a chance to surface, related to the age-old legend.

Responding to my inquisitiveness, one elderly local answered in a tranquil voice, “Dear! All the stories that you grew up listening to were the same as ours.

However, in our case, we were shown the village that belonged to those legendary characters and was known as Tandahar, but it is currently under heavy sea ingress, and the villagers have shifted their habitation a couple of times, losing much evidence related to those celebrated artists of Odisha.

God forbid if the Konark Sun Temple and Maa Keluni Temple, the remaining evidence of the 13th-century story of sacrifice, become victims of continuous sea ingress, and the whole story will be seen as notoriously fabricated by future generations! But what can we do? The sea is a mighty entity, and if it progresses towards our land, we have no other alternative but to submit ourselves before its desire and surrender our land to it.”

The imperturbable voice of the elderly villager created a rumble in my mind related to sea ingression and coastal habitation safety.

In the context of climate change, the sea is becoming more powerful and advancing towards land. We need to act now to protect our cultural heritage and land from the magnanimous sea’s grasp, or else a day may come when future generations treat these accounts as fictional fabrications in the absence of evidence!