Purna Chandra Mishra is a historian with a deep and broad knowledge of his native place, Odisha. He was born on 26 March 1947, on the auspicious full moon day of Dola Purnami, in Ganjam district, southern Orissa, as the eldest child of Chakradhara and Kamala Mishra. His family are Sasan Brahmins, and his great-grandfather and grandfather served as royal preceptors (rajaguru) to the Gajapati king of Khurdha. His father, however, pursued an English medium education and became a civil servant. Chakradhara moved his family to Puri for the sake of his young son’s education. Purna studied science at S.C.S. College, Puri, before receiving his BA (1967) and MA (1970) in philosophy from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. He briefly became a lecturer in philosophy, first at Government College Phulbani, then at Government College Berhampur. 

The direction of his life changed, however, when his MA Sanskrit professor, Prahallad Pradhan, who had just been appointed an advisor to the Orissa Research Project, sent Purna to meet with the ORP director, Prof. Ulrich Schneider. Purna joined the project in Bhubaneswar on 11 November 1970, and his ongoing involvement until 1976 would give him many opportunities to expand his knowledge of the history and culture of Orissa. At a meeting of all the project members that same day, he presented an impromptu talk on the Jagannath Temple chronicle Madala Panji, which he had studied at S.C.S. College. That same evening Prof. Hermann Kulke invited Purna to assist with his project on a critical history of the Khurdha  kingdom and its feudatory states in Orissa. The foundational text for the project was the Khurdha Itihasa, written by Kedarnath Mahapatra, historian, retired supervisor of the Orissa State Museum, and temple servant of the Lingaraj temple, with whom Purna came to work closely. 

Shortly thereafter, Purna also met Dr. Anncharlotte Eschmann (1941–1977), who requested Purna’s assistance for her research on the Mahima Dharma cult. Purna focused first on Kulke’s project, then on Eschmann’s. He used the ORP vehicles and drivers to make extensive field trips throughout the state. Sunday afternoons were devoted to discussing the progress on the projects. As soon as both projects were complete, Prof. Kulke requested Purna to move to Calcutta to conduct research in the National Library in order to prepare a bibliography of publications and manuscripts on Orissa. During nine months in Calcutta, Purna also made a point of becoming familiar with Bengali villages in order to compare them with village culture in Orissa.

Meanwhile, on 7 December, 1970, Purna married Sureswari in the Jagannath Temple, Puri. They spent the first year of their married life in Bhubaneswar before moving to Puri. Sureswari had completed her MA in Sanskrit and later taught Sanskrit in Puri Government Women’s College. Their son Bapi was born on 26 September 1971.

Returning from Calcutta, Purna completed a project with R. Geib on the legendary ruler Indradyumna. Meanwhile, the ORP opened a branch in Puri, and Purna was assigned to supervise people working there to transcribe palm leaf manuscripts newly discovered in Puri. Then Jacob Rōsel arrived to begin his study of the pilgrims and the pilgrim pandas (published as Der Palast des Herrn der Welt. Entstehungsgeschichte und Organisation der indischen Tempel- und Pilgerstadt Puri [München, London: Weltforum-Verlag, 1980]). Because of his deep knowledge of the traditions, social networks, and politics of the temple and the city, Purna was assigned to work closely with Rōsel (as described in Purna’s memoir, chapter 26 ff) to facilitate the sensitive relationships with the pilgrim pandas. He arranged for Rōsel to stay in a traditional pilgrim hostel overlooking the main temple gate, managed by a cultured man, K. N. Simhari, whom Purna considered as his guru. Through this intensive project, Purna deepened his understanding and familiarity with the complex daily operations of the Jagannath Temple and came to know many servants well.

Purna’s next ORP project was to document socio-religious reforms in Orissa from 1919 to 1970, and it involved numerous visits to coastal villages. He participated in a research project for the University of Leiden on Sasan Brahmins knowledgeable in the Atharba vedas. He carried out this work in 1974-75. Dr. Anncharlotte Eschmann returned to Orissa to begin her next project, on the tribal origins of Jagannath, and sought Purna’s collaboration. This work introduced him to the tribal areas of interior Orissa. Sadly, as he was preparing a translation of the related document, Bisnukesari Purana, Dr. Eschmann passed away in Delhi. 

The Orissa Research Project concluded with the publication of The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. But shortly before her death, Dr. Eschmann had met the American anthropologist Frederique Marglin, who wanted to study the devadasis of Jagannath Temple. Aware that Purna already knew these women well, having participated in a University of London project to record their music, she sent Frederique to meet him, which led to Purna’s next extended study and, as he described it, the start a new chapter in his life as an independent scholar.

In the course of a year of research on the devadasis, Purna translated many Tantric texts and, through his investigation of rituals and customs within the royal palace, became well acquainted with various scholars of traditional Orissa, including Krusna Chandra Rajguru, Keshaba Rajguru, S. N. Rajguru, and Balaram Dash. The research was published as Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri (Oxford University Press, 1985). Subsequently, Purna collaborated for two more years with Frederique and her husband, Stephen Marglin, on a study of the weavers’ community in Nuapatana under the auspices of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER). 

In October 1979, Louise Cort came to Puri with the explicit goal of collaborating with Purna on a study of the potter servants. Their collaboration continued through April, 1981. During that time, Purna began supporting Heidelberg University graduate student Elisabeth Schömbucher (now Schömbucher-Kusterer) with her research project on the Telugu fishermen living and working in Puri. Her 1984 dissertation was "The Vadabalija in Andhra Pradesh and in Orissa. Aspects of the Economic and Social Organization of a Maritime Society." 

Purna collaborated on Dr. Joanna Williams’ art historical and ethnographic research on painting traditions in Orissa and representations of the Ramayana. She published The Two-Headed Deer: Illustrations of the Ramayana in Orissa (University of California Press, 1996). Over several years, Purna guided the Portuguese anthropologist José Carlos Gomes da Silva in studying classic Oriya texts. His research appeared as The Cult of Jagannatha:  Myths and Rituals (Motilal Banarsidass, 2010).