|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 34─PURI INSCRIPTIONS OF ANANGABHIMA III, SAKA 1147 AND 1158 (1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND More than twenty years ago, the late Dr. Hirananda Sastri, then Government Epigraphist for India, copied some inscriptions engraved on the walls in the celebrated Jagannātha temple at Puri, Orissa. While examining the impressions of these records, now preserved in the Office of the Government Epigraphist for India at Ootacanund, I noticed four interesting epigraphs of the time of the Gaṅga monarch Anaṅgabhīma III whose reign is usually assigned to circa 1211-38 A.D. The inscriptions were found on the walls of the second entrance of the Pātālēśvara (Śiva) shrine within the inner compound of the Jagannātha temple, one (No. 1) being on the right wall and the rest (Nos. 2-4) on the left. Of the three records on the left wall, No. 3 was found to occupy the space below the left half of No. 2. Some special importance attaches to these inscriptions owing to the fact that, according to a tradition recorded in the Mādalā Pāñjī, it was Gaṅga Anaṅgabhīma who was responsible for the construction of the temple of Jagannātha (Purushōttama) at Purī, although the records of the family attribute it to his great-grandfather Anantavarman Chōḍagaṅga (1078-1147 A.D.). Scholars now usually believe that the temple was begun by Anantavarman Chōḍagaṅga but completed by Anaṅgabhīma III. Unfortunately so long no inscription either of Anaṅgabhīma III or any of his ancestors including Anantavarman Chōḍagaṅga (who annexed the Purī region to the Gaṅga empire) was traced in the temple in question. An interesting problem raised by the existence of these inscriptions is whether the god Jagannātha (Purushōttama) or the deities Balarāma, Kṛishṇa and Subhadrā (mentioned in one of the four records) could have been originally housed in what is now it now called the Pātālēśvara shrine.[10] ________________________________________________ [10] Mr. P. Acharya informs me that the space inside the shrine is too small to accommodate three deities. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| > |
|
>
|
