Jagannath Temple, Puri, Orissa was a Budhist temple according to Swami Vivekananda.
RSS gang and other sections of the Hindu brigade have been demanding conversion of mosques into Hindu temples without proofs, so sites must be excavated.
But there are creditable proofs that many Budhist viharas were forcibly converted into Hindu temples. One such temples happens to be Jagannath temple at Puri, Orissa.
And it is no other person who makes it public but Swami Vivekananda who while intervening in a debate if Jesus Christ ever visited Jagannath temple says:
“There was a book written a year or two ago by a Russian gentleman, who claimed to have found out a very curious life of Jesus Christ, and in one part of the book he says that Christ went to the temple of Jaganath to study with the Brahmins, but became disgusted with their exclusiveness and their idols and so he went to the Lamas of Tibet instead, became prefect, and went home.
To any man who knows anything about Indian history, that very statement proves that the whole thing was fraud, because the temple of Jaganath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that. That is Jagannath, and there was not one Brahmin there then, and yet we are told that Jesus Christ came to study with the Brahmins there.
So says our great Russian archaeologist. [Swami Vivekananda in The Sages of India in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 3, p264, published by Advaita Ashram, Calcutta].
The Hindu brigade must tell us when they are going to return this Budhist temple to the Budhists?
