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 320

292
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
16. THE CAVES, SHRINES AND PILLARS
Kharavela's hard-earned fame as a builder was not confined to the repairing of the city of Kalinga and the improvement of the same by the rebuilding of embankments of the deep and cool tanks, the restoration of all the gardens, the extension of the Nandaraja canal, the erection of Mahavijaya-pāsāda as a new two-storeyed and beryl-set palace, and the addition of new roads, squares, gate-bars, gate-houses, and towers. And we may note that his religious endowments were not exhausted by the repairing of Hindu temples and the occasional feasting of the Brahmins and Jain recluses.
The Hathi-Gumpha and other old Brahmi inscriptional records go to prove that he showed his royal munificence to the professors of his own faith, namely, the Jain saints and recluses who resided on the Kumari hill, in causing one hundred and seventeen caves (satadasa-lena-salam) to be made as joint excavations of himself, his queens, his sons, his relatives, his brothers, and his officers, sharing the merit and fame with the rest of the pious donors and glorifying the tradition of Jainism with the most ancient known landmarks of its art and architecture. All of these 117 caves were intended to serve as resting places of the resident Jain saints and recluses (Arahato parinivasato hi kāya-nisīdīyāya).
Apart from what he accomplished jointly with other excavators of the Jain cave-dwellings on the Kumari hill, the Hathi-Gumpha inscription clearly shows (I. 15) that he caused to be excavated under his own auspices and as the crowning glory of the recorded last year of his reign, one cave for the accommodation of the venerated (Jain) recluses and the (Hindu) yatis, hermits and sages visiting the place from a hundred directions. His last recorded munificence, amounting to seventy-five hundred thousand pieces of Indian money current at that time in his Kalinga kingdom, sufficed to enable him to make, along with the excavation of the last-mentioned spacious cave, a number of stone-pillars and shrines on a slope in the neighbourhood of cave-dwellings of the Jain saints and recluses and by means of some hundred thousand slabs of stone, quarried out of excellent quarries extending over several leagues (Arahato nisidiyasamipe pahhare varakara-samthapitāhi aneka-yojana-āhitahi silahi silathambhani ca cetiyāni kārāpayati).
The same amount just sufficed also to cover the cost of erecting an edifice, providing it with a canopied court-yard adorned with a pillared