It is said that an ascetic of Mahesh named Dhrubananda Brahmachari had gone on a pilgrimage to Puri. Tradition ascribes to him a dream that Lord Jagannath asked him to return to Mahesh. The Lord promised he would appear at Mahesh. After his return Dhrubananda found an image of Jagannath partly buried in the sands of the river Ganga. A few days later the ascetic found the images of Subhadra and Baladeb in the same place. The three images were made over to his disciple Kamalakar Piplai and worship began. Some years afterwards a Nawab of Murshidabad was given shelter during a storm by the Sebaits of the shrine. The Nawab rewarded them with a piece of revenue-free at Mahesh. The Mahesh temple quickly grew in importance. The shebaits came to be known as the Adhikaris. The village of Jagannathpur was given to the Adhikaris as debottar land. The Shebaits started observing the jatras in great pomp.

There is another legend, which mentions that the god Jagannath had stopped and bathed at Mahesh on his way to Puri. The place becoming sacred and the Jagannath worship started followed this. The princely house of the Calcutta Malliks built the present temple.

During the Rath-jatra festival the image is placed on the car, and the crowd draws the car to the God's garden-house to the north of Mahesh. After eight days, on the Ulta-rath day, the car with the image is drawn back to its old place, when the image is carried to the temple.

Mahesh is an old place mentioned in the poem of Bipra Das (1495 A.D.) and in the poem on the legend of Satyanarayana (18th century). But the cult of Jagannath is easily older. The Oriya kings once had ruled this part of the country and it is quite obvious that the cult of Jagannath was introduced then. Thousands of pilgrims from Calcutta side used to walk by the pilgrim Road to Puri for a darshan of Jagannath there and the receptivity for adopting Jagannath cult was easily created in Bengal. The same festivals observed in the Jagannath temple at Puri are celebrated at Mahesh.

Guptipara is a large village in thana Balagarh of the Hooghly subdivision, in the extreme north-east of the district, situated about 1 and half miles west of the Right Bank of Hooghly.

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