The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c7.343

v1.c7.343

At a still earlier age the authors of the *Ṛgveda* hymns appear not to have been ignorant of stone forts, walled cities, stone houses, carved stone, and brick edifices. Cities (*pura*), as distinct from villages (*grāna*), were well-known, and chiefs have been described as owning a hundred cities.²⁷ Agni is invoked in one place to be a means of “protection for the posterity of his worshippers like unto the vast, spacious iron-walled cities of the Asuras.”²⁸ In several other places he is called “the destroyer of cities.” Indra is likewise “a destroyer of cities.”²⁹ He is said to have “quickly demolished the strongholds and seven-walled cities of Srukts and other Asuras.”³⁰ He overthrew ninety and nine cities of some Dasyu, and “occupied the hundredth as a place of abode”. In one place he has ascribed to him the credit of demolishing “a hundred cities of stone for the pious Divodāsa.”³¹ Elsewhere he ‘demolished 90 cities for the same person”,³² and again “99 cities”³³. He destroyed the “perennial cities” of the Asuras, and “humiliated their defenders”³⁴; he “humbled the people, suing for pardon, and destroyed their seven new cities”,³⁵ as also “the hostile and undivine cities of the Asuras”, and broke down their “artificial defences”.³⁶ Again he possessed “all the cities of the Asuras as a husband his wives.”³⁷ Sarasvatī is described “as firm as a city made of iron”.³⁸ Mitra and Varuṇa are invoked to grant “an unassailable dwelling that may be a secure shelter.”³⁹ Iron cities are also mentioned in several other places,⁴⁰ figuratively, no doubt, to express great strength, but not without conveying an idea of the writer’s knowledge of some-thing more substantial than wattle and mud. In the first *Maṇḍala* (*Sūkta CXII*.7) Atri is described to have been “thrown into a machine room with a hundred doors where he was roasted.”⁴¹ Vasiṣṭha, in a hymn to Parjanya, longs to have “a three-storied dwelling” (*tṛdhātu saraṇam*).⁴² Dr. Muir notices the mention of cities which had a hundred enclosures or fortifications (*śatabhuji*), and is of opinion that, “although they are alluded to as figurative expressions of the means of protection afforded by the gods, they no doubt suggest the idea of forts, consisting apparently of a series of concentric walls, as actually existing in the country at the time.”⁴³ In the second Maṇḍala, sovereigns are described “who, exercising no oppression, sit down in this substantial and elegant hall built with a thousand columns.”⁴⁴ and dwellings with such halls are said to be “vast, comprehensive and thousand-doored.”⁴⁵ Commenting on these passages, Dr. Muir justly observes that “these are but exaggerated descriptions of a royal residence, such as the poets had seen”.⁴⁶ Pillars, spacious doors, and windows, though frequently mentioned, are not decisive intimations of the existence of masonry buildings; but bricks could not possibly have originated unless required for such structures; for it would be absurd to suppose that bricks were known and made, and yet they were never used in the construction of houses. Commenting on the state of civilization among the Hindus at the Vedic period, as apparent in the third volume of his translation of the *Ṛg Saṃhitā*, the late Professor Wilson remarked:—