The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.15

v2.c16.15

When I was at the place in the winter of 1868, the Government bungalow was in a dilapitated condition, with a part of the thatch blown away, and altogether utterly unfit for use. It was in charge of a *pāyik* who acted the cicerone to me, taking particular care to treat me and my party with interminable stories of the innumerable bears and tigers which, according to him, infested the place. He had a huge flaming brand in his hand, which he turned about a good deal in front of every cave before he would permit us to enter it, and never ventured to name the tiger except in the most respectful form of "the mighty one" (*mahābali*). The wood-cutters of Sunderban are equally mindful of the respect due to this fell monarch of Indian forests, and not only address him, with the title of *banadevatā*, "the forest god," but invariably offer his spirit worship in the forms of Kālurāya and Dakṣiṇarāya before entering the forest. Elsewhere the same respect is shown by never naming him except by a periphrasis, though the term used is not always, the same.⁴ Nor is this system of circumlocutory courtesy for a redoubtable enemy peculiar to India. The Norwegian peasant is careful not to offend the big brown bear, to him the most dreaded enemy, by calling him after his ordinary name. No, he is there "the old gentleman with the fur coat." In like manner do the hunters of Oregon and Colorado speak of the dreaded grizzly bear by the euphemistic title of "uncle Ephraim." In India, such names rapidly pass from the concrete to the abstract, and become the symbols of the presiding divinities of particular objects of dread, such as *Mā-śitalā*, “Mother Soother” (small-pox), *Olā-bibi*, “Madam Cholera,” and the like. What with the cultivated field on the west side, and a few scattered huts on the east, with little children walking about in front of them, and the far from imposing physique of our decrepit guide, the stories failed to produce in us the effect they were intended [3] to do, but the worthy man had the satisfaction of affording us at least one proof in support of his veracity by calling our attention to the fresh footprints of the “mightly one” on a retired sport in the north of Udayagiri. And on the whole the place is to a certain extent bearish-looking and porcupines abound everywhere.