The history of the Jagannatha temple in Mahesa is as follows. One devotee of the name Dhruvananda went to see Lord Jagannatha, Balarama and Subhadra at Jagannatha Puri, wanting to offer food to Jagannathaji that he had cooked with his own hands. This being his desire, one night Jagannathaji appeared to him in a dream and asked him to go to Mahesa on the bank of the Ganges and there start worship of Him in a temple. Thus Dhruvananda went to Mahesa, where he saw the three deities-Jagannatha, Balarama and Subhadra-floating in the Ganges. He picked up all those deities and installed them in a small cottage, and with great satisfaction he executed the worship of Lord Jagannatha. When he became old, he was very anxious to hand over the worship to the charge of someone reliable, and in a dream he got permission from Jagannatha Prabhu to hand it over to a person whom he would meet the next morning. The next morning he met Kamalakara Pippalai, who was formerly an inhabitant of the village Khalijuli in the Sundaravana Forest area of Bengal and was a pure Vaisnava, a great devotee of Lord Jagannatha; thus he immediately gave him charge of the worship. In this way, Kamalakara Pippalai became the worshiper of Lord Jagannatha, and since then his family members have been designated as Adhikari, which means "one who is empowered to worship the Lord." These Adhikaris belong to a respectable brahmana family. Five types of upper-class brahmanas are recognized by the surname Pippalai.