The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.80

v2.c16.80

¹² Mr. Fergusson is of opinion that “the bas-relief on the Gaṇeśa Cave seems to represent quite different people, and another story altogether; and though the bas-relief in the Rāj Rānī is certainly continuous, it represents scenes of hunting, eating, drinking, dancing, and such other scenes, as we are already familiar with at Sāñchī, but which hardly aid us in ascertaining who the individual performers are.” (*Tree and Serpent Worship*, 2nd ed., p. 268). Mr. Fergusson evidently means the Rānī Naur, for the Rāj Rānī is a Hindu shrine six miles away from Udayagiri and it has no running frieze of the kind under notice. At the Rānī Naur, there is no scene of eating and drinking, and I cannot get out of what Mr. Fergusson has inferred it. There is nothing too to support the conjecture that the people represented in the two friezes are different. Leaving out of consideration such unimportant details as the dazed lamb and the like, the two scenes are as like each other as the same subject painted or sculptured by two independent artists, one not copying from the other, can well be. Mr. Fergusson himself in one place admits this, and says: “Among the sculptures one of the most remarkable is the left hand one of the two that adorn the Gaṇeśa Gumphā. The subject is purely historical, and represents the rape of some Orissan Helen, or rather some Hippolite, who is carried off on the right, in spite of the fighting prowess of her companion in arms, or the tardy succour of the sleeping hero on the left. This evidently is some favourite Orissan legend, for we have the same story repeated in the Rāj Rānī (? Rānī Naur) Cave without any variation except differences of costume and style. As will be observed, his wife sits watched by the sleeper on the left, this time, however in a hut or house instead of under a tree, as in the upper bas-relief,” (p. 267). It is difficult to reconcile this with the first statement that the Gaṇeśa frieze represents “quite different people, and another story altogether”: both can scarely be correct. As already pointed out in the text, the scene is, in either case, a spot in front of a cave, and not within a cave in one version, and under a tree in the other.