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CHAPTER VIII
(SECTION A)
MAURYA ART IN KALINGA
THE DHAULI ELEPHANT-ARTISTIC VALUATION OF
On the metelled road from Cuttack to Puri, a little distance from river Prachi, near Bhuvanesvar, Aśoka's Edicts are engraved on a low hill known by the name of Dhauli. It has been variously described in Sanskrit works' as Suvarnṇādri, Hemadri, Suvarnakūta or Hemakūta-all meaning 'the Golden Hill or Mount'. The hillock has continued to be a place of importance for long as is attested by the fact that in 699 A.D. a monastry was built here in the reign of Śrī Santikaradeva of the Bhauma dynasty." An inscription incised on the wall of an artificial cave, not far from the Aśokan inscriptions, records the erection of the monastry of which no trace can however be found at present. At the top of the hill is to be found the basement of a temple, which too, in all probability, was constructed during the Bhauma period. Down below, at the foot of the hillock, are found some later temples, which still serve as living shrines. The low lying mounds in the close vicinity are probably remains of the Aśokan age, but they represent the ruins of modest establishment and not of a city or a fort.
1. The Ekamra Purana, Suvarṇuadri Mahodaya, Ekamra Chanḍikā, Kapila Samhita. Qtd. K. C. Fanigrahi, Orissa Review, Monumental Special, 1949, pp. 33f.
2. B. Misra, Orissa Under the Bhauma Kings, p. 11.
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