The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.83.4

v2.c16.83.4

All the circumstances were explained to the husband in a dream, who acknowledged gratefully the honor conferred on him, and declared the child thus mysteriously born his successor in the Rāj."¹⁵ This is stated in the temple records of Puri to have happened at about the close of the 15th century, and, as the fact was written down at the time of the occurrence, there is no doubt as to the historical character of the first part of the princess's story; and knowing how readily the gods have in all ages and everywhere intervened to explain away, or cast a halo, over awkward incidents of birth in high life, we easily overlook the second. Orme takes the story back to a much earlier period, but not sufficiently early to make it anterior to the era when the caves were excavated; and there are so many discrepanices between the story of the frieze and that of the temple records and of Orme, that it is impossible to accept them as the same. The only circumstance common to the three versions is the abduction of a woman; and this, in the annals of the human race, has been so common in all ages and in every clime, that it cannot be accepted as a reliable datum for any historical inference. The case is different as regards the hero of the Hāthi Gumphā inscription to be noticed further on. The cave shown on the second tableau of the Queen's Palace frieze (Plate VII) is, as already stated, most probably a carved representation of the Hāthi Gumphā cave;