Old Bramhi Inscriptions In Udaygiri And Khandagiri

SR No.: 020516
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Benimadhab Barua
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1929
Total Pages: 354
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 318

290
OLD BRAHMİ INSCRIPTIONS
0
gods," not taking it to denote all kinds of shrines and temples : those in which there were images and those in which there were no images.
If it can thus be proved that the Häthi-Gumpbā text clearly refers, in its concluding paragraph, to the existence of “Deva-temples," we may be justified in thinking, first, that the terms gopura and sihara in its twelfth year's record were intended to be interpreted as well in connection with nivesana and pārāda preceding them as with devayatana following them; and secondly, that the worship of idols in the Hindu temples and shrines had come into existence in Kalinga before the reign of Khāravela, and long before the Buddhists made the Buddha-images for worship during the Kuşāna rule,
With regard to the part played by Kbāravela in the building up of the city of Kalinga, we read in the Hātbi-Gumphā text (I.2) that imme. diately after his consecration, in the very first year of his reign, he spent 35,00,000 (pieces of money) in thoroughly repairing the gate-houses, walls and residential buildings damaged by stormy wind in his capital, in raising up embankments of the deep and cool tanks, and in restoring all the gardens. From this it is clear that his first year's work was just a work of reparation and restoration. This record clearly proves that the royal city of Kalinga was bedecked with many gardens and many kinds of gardens ; that it shone forth with its high walls, gate-towers and buildings; and that it abounded in the deep and cool tanks serving as reservoirs of good drinking water and as bathing places. So far as these tanks go, we may say that the kingdom of Kalóga is remarkable in its modern identity precisely as it was two thousand years ago.
King Khāravela did not, however, stop at the work of reparation and restoration. The extension of Nanda-king's canal from the Tanasuliya or Tanasuli road into the heart of the city was a costly work, which was accomplished by him in his fifth regnal year as a meaus of facilitating communication and irrigation, among other advantages. The two-storeyed new royal residence known by the imposing name of “Great-victory palace" and decked with beryl work, for which he is said to have spent 38,00,000 (pieces of money), was, undoubtedly, a very costly addition made by him to the city architecture. But even this was not all. The
1. The architectural significance of the expression veduriya-Mahā-vijaya-pasāda may be understood in the light of veluriya.phala-santhata pasāda in Fausboll's Jātaka, Vol VI, p. 279.