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242
AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA
The statements of the inscriptions are, therefore, very frequently those of prejudiced witnesses and they must be weighed as such if we are to estimate rightly the value of these few scattered fragments of historical evidences which time has preserved.
But in tracing the historicity of Khāravela, the Hāthigumphā and other records in the Udayagiri-Khandagiri hills, have to be taken at their face value. If. Khāravela had really recorded falsehood in his record, there is no means of checking it. To raise the slightest suspicion as to the verocity of the Hāthigumphā inscription is, in the opinion of Barua, to be over-indulgent in unnecessary scepticism.
1. OBI, p. xi.
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