The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.88.4

v1.c11.88.4

Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that the great body of the aboriginal races and the lower orders of the people, though not duly initiated in any Śakti *mantra*, pay their adoration principally to some form or other, mostly to all the different forms, of Durgā, with scarcely any, or but slender, regard for Viṣṇu and his images, and must be included among the Śāktas. In Orissa the case is otherwise. At present, Jagannātha engrosses the attention of the bulk of the people there, and the number of Śaivas and Śāktas is extremely limited. Even at Jājapur, which at one time was a great seat of Śāktaism, whence its name *Virājpīṭha*, [ 149 ] the followers of the feminine divinity constitute but a very small section of the community. Perhaps, formerly the case was not so, and there is no doubt that during the reign of the Keśarī dynasty, the Śaivas greatly preponderated; but the proselytizing zeal of Caitanya and his followers has long since brought the greater part of the people to follow their faith to the exclusion of all sexual forms of religion. As far as I have been able to ascertain Śāktas are now more common in Orissa than Śaivas, and the two together scarcely represent one-eight of the entire Hindu population of that province. Bābu Raṅgalāla Banerji, Deputy Magistrate of Cuttack, who has been in the district for a long time, and has made the subject of the different creeds prevailing there, his study, informs me that "there are scarcely any Śaivas in Orissa.