________________
No. 40) NAGARI PLATES OF ANANGABHIMA III ; SAKA 1151 AND 1152
247
It is not known why the grants made in favour of different donees were entered into a single record, especially when the lands were situated in two separate vishayas. The above details of the seven grants, three of which are mentioned together, are followed by the imprecatory and benedictory verses, eight in number (verses 81-88). The record ends with vorge 89 which says that Nappana composed the slokas of the prasasti. As indicated above, this man appears to have copied the verses relating to the predecessors of Anangabhima III from an earlier record and composed only the verses describing the reign of Anangabhima III himself.
The details of the seven grants show that six of them were made when the king was staying at Abhinava-Vārāṇasi or Abhinava-Vārāṇasi-kataka, which is no other than the present Cuttack (Kataka), chief city of Orissa. As the contraction of the name Satyabhāmā was both Satya and Bhimā, so was the contraction of Purushottama-puri both Purushottama and Purī and of Varinasi. kataka both Vārānasi and Kataka (Cuttack). One of the grants was made when the king was at Purushottama-kshētra or Puri on the shores of the southern ocean, ie, the Indian Ocean. Very interesting is the reference to the king making a grant while standing before the god Purushottama at Vārāṇasi-kataka, i.e., modern Cuttack, on the 5th January 1231 A.C. and to the installation of the said Purushottama apparently during the Saka year 1152 (1230-31 A.C.) by king Anangabhima III. We know that the temple of the god Purushottama-Jagannātha of Puri was constructed by Anantavarman Chödaganga and the god was being worshipped there for a long time before the days of Anangabhima III. There is thus no question of Anangabhima III installing the god Purushottama at Puri. The god Purushottama installed by Anangabhima III must therefore be the god of the same name at Vārāṇasi-kataka or Cuttack before whom the king was standing to make a grant of land on the 5th January 1231 A.C. There is little doubt that the temple for this deity at Cuttack was completed and its installation took place in Saka 1152 (1230-31) shortly before the 5th January, 1231 A.C. We know that the Madali Pāñji or the chronicle of the Purushottama-Jagannatha temple at Puri attributes the construction of the Puri temple to Anangabhima III and not to its actual founder Anantavarman Chödaganga. This confusion may be due to the fact that Anangabhima III, as is now known, actually built a temple for a god of the same name at Cuttack. That Anangabhima III is represented as the most important Ganga monarch in the same chronicle may be due to the fact that it was this king who dedicated the empire to the god and became famous as the most ardent royal devotee of PurushottamaJagannatha. The idea underlying the installation of a substitute of the god PurushottamaJagannātha of Puri at Cuttack is apparently the same that inspired Sivāji to install a substitute of his patron deity, the goddess Bhavani of Tuljapur near Osmanabad in the present Hyderabad State, in his newly built fort at Pratapgarh near Javli. Apparently the Ganga king wanted to live constantly in the company of his patron-deity at his residence at Cuttack. It is to be noticed that, during the time of Anangabhima III or sometime before his accession, the Ganga monarchs, who had been originally ruling from Kalinganagara (modern Mukhalingam in the Chicacole District), transferred their headquarters to Cuttack.
An interesting reference to the god Jagannātha (i.e., Purushottama-Jagannātha) worshipped by the kings of Jājnagar (i.e., the imperial Ganga rulers of Orissa) in their fort at Banarasi (..., Vārāṇasi-kataka or the present Cuttack) is found in the Ta'rikh-i-Firüz Shahi by Shams-i-Sirij." According to this work, Sultan Firüz Shāh of Delhi led an expedition against the kingdom of
1J. N. Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. IV, p. 32.
* See Elliot, The History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. III, pp. 312-15. There is soother account of the Jājnagar expedition of Sultan Firuz in the Siral-s-Firiz-Shahi (of. J. R. 4. 8. B., L., Vol. VIII, 1944 DP. 57-77). The author of this work, although he does not explicitly mention Purt, seems to have confused the Jagannatha of Cuttack with his namesake at Purl.
