Fact Check: This Varaha statue is not thousand years old, viral claim is misleading

New Delhi (Vishvas News): Vishvas News came across a post being widely shared. The image shared is that of Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu. It is claimed in the post that the statue is thousand years old. However, Vishvas News in its investigation found that the viral image of stuate is not thousand years old but, is a part of temple that was built in the year 2009.

Claim:

Facebook user, पंडित अजय शर्मा प्रदेश अध्यक्ष ब्राह्मण सुरक्षा प्रकोष्ठ मध्यप्रदेश posted the viral picture and wrote in Hindi, स्वयं को पहचानो

इस मूर्ति को ध्यान से देखिए, यह भगवान विष्णु के वराह अवतार की है जिसमे वह पृथ्वी को रसातल से निकालते हुए दिखाए गए है।
अब सबसे बड़ा आश्चर्य यह होता है की इसमें पृथ्वी का आकार गोल दिखाया गया,
और दुनिया को पृथ्वी के गोल होने का ज्ञान आज से 500 – 600 साल पहले मिला, जबकि यह मूर्ति जगन्नाथ मंदिर में सहस्त्रों वर्ष पूर्व से ही है।
सनातन का गौरवपूर्ण इतिहास अपनी चीख चीख कर अभिसाक्ष्य दे रहा है।
यही निहितार्थ है कि हमारे पाठ्यक्रम इस विषय को भूगोल के नाम से वर्गीकृत किया, क्योंकि हमारे पूर्वजो को ज्ञान था कि पृथ्वी का आकार वृत्ताकार है।
वाम हस्त से इतिहास लिखने वालों तुम क्या हमारा इतिहास मिटाओगे, हमारा इतिहास तो पत्थरो पर लिखा हुआ है।
सौन्दर्य देखना हो तो यूरोप जाओ किन्तु सौन्दर्य के साथ आश्चर्य और यथार्थ भी देखना हो तो हमारे मंदिर आओ!!

Translation: Know yourself

Look carefully at this idol, it is of Lord Vishnu’s Varaha avatar in which he is shown pulling the earth out of the abyss.
Now the biggest surprise is that in this the shape of the earth was shown to be round.
And the world got the knowledge of the earth being round 500-600 years ago, while this idol is in the Jagannath temple since thousands of years ago.
The glorious history of Sanatan is giving its testimony by screaming.
This is the implication that our syllabus classified this subject under the name of Geography, because our forefathers knew that the shape of the earth is circular.
Those who write history with left hand, will you erase our history, our history is written on stones.
If you want to see beauty then go to Europe but if you want to see wonder and reality along with beauty then come to our temple!!

Check the post and its archive version here.

Investigation:

Vishvas News started the investigation of the viral picture with a simple Google reverse image search.

We came across a website called aminoapps.com which is community based social media network. On a blog on the same website, ‘Mythology & Cultures’, we found the image shared by a user, ‘Brokenstronger’ on 27th May, 2019. The blog was titled, ‘Varah avatar statue mounted on the wall of Emami Jagannath Mandir (temple). The user also shared in the comments, “Again sorry if the picture is not that good…I had clicked it with my cell phone…And ny next post will be on story on Varah Avatar.”

It was hence confirmed that the statue belonged to Emami Jagannath Mandir. We then searched for this temple online.

We found out that the temple is in Balasore, Odisha. We also found the website of the temple.

In the about us section, we found out, “Planning begin to construct temple and its boundary over 3.5 Acre of land. To make the dream true, in the later part of 2009, Sri Ragunatha Mohapatra started work at Bhubaneswar with 30 skilled architects.” It was hence cleaar that the construction began in 2009.

We also find an image uploaded on Google Maps for the location that showed the same statue at Emami Jagannath temple.

In the next step of investigation we spoke to Nikhil Samatray from Emami Jagannath temple, Balasore. He informed us that the Varaha statue sculpted on the walls of the temple was made in 2015, along with the construction of the temple. It is not thousand years old.

This hence confirmed that the statue was made recently along with temple’s construction.

We also checked whether there are any references to Hindu scriptures about round Earth. We could not find any solid evidence to the same. Though there were many debates surrounding the flat Earth and round Earth theory.

In the last step of investigation we did a social background check of the user who shared the viral image and the post. We found out that पंडित अजय शर्मा प्रदेश अध्यक्ष ब्राह्मण सुरक्षा प्रकोष्ठ मध्यप्रदेश has been liked by 1.5K people and followed by 1.6K people.

Conclusion: The viral image of the Varaha avatar of lord Vishnu going viral as a statue that is thousands of years old was sculpted recently in the year 2015. The temple construction began in 2009.

Tags

• Balasore
• Earth
• Fact Check
• fake news
• Orissa
• Varaha statue