The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.29

Language: English

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²³ After discussing with which of the Orissan potentates Aira can be identified, Prinsep says: of the Orphean theogony, *Gilshāh* of the Persians, and *Ilus* of Homer, (*Asiatic Researches*, VIII, 255). He has, however, omitted what appears to me a much more rational analogy both philological and mythological; namely, that between the Hindu goddess IRĀ and the JUNO of the Greeks, ‘*Hpa*’ or Hera, (Keightley derives Hpa, from *hera*, the Latin for ‘mistress!’ Others deduce it from *aer* the air and *eras* to love, both equally unsatisfactory). The name is not only identical, but to both, though not precisely in the same manner, is applied, in western and eastern fable, the decision of the question which could not otherwise be solved of the comparative pleasure to male and female in the conjugal union. Again, the son of Zeus and Hera is Ares, or MARS; a name for which, Keightley asserts, no satisfactory derivation has yet been given. Now this word is almost identical with *Airas* or *Ailas* (the daughters of Juno are by Homer entitled the Eileithyiœ in which *r* is changed to *l*?) the direct patronymic of IRĀ or ILĀ, and the name constantly employed in the Purāṇas to designate PURURAVAS, the celebrated lover of the heavenly nymph URVAŚĪ, whose tale is told in the *Viṣṇu* and *Padma Purāṇas*, and more pathetically in Kālidāsa’s play of *Vikramorvaśī* lately translated by Professor Wilson.

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“PURARAVAS or AILAS was the first monarch of the seven-fold earth, and hence might be as well entitled to be called king of Kaliṅga as of every other country. We may therefore understand in the opening passage of the inscription,—‘these mountain caverns were excavated by AILAS, the great king, the cloud-supported, the lord of Kaliṅga,’—no more than an allusion to the same tradition of the origin of these caves as that which prevails at Ellore, coupled with the other local tradition, related by Stirling, that the whole of the rocky hills of Udaya and Khaṇḍagiri, were conveyed thither from the peaks of the Himalaya, the headquarters of PURARAVAS’ earthly dominion, so well pictured in the poetic fiction of his cloud-borne chariot. “Stripped of its mythological and poetical dress, we may understand by the passage that the caves were natural chasms worn in the mountains by the action of the winds and the waves; for *irā* signifies ‘water’ the ocean;” as *airāvata*, or *airāvana*, ‘the ocean-born’, is the elephant of Indra, the god of the heavens, the atmosphere, whose name is still preserved in the sculptures at Ellora.

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“Should this interpretation of the first line be admitted, though we shall be disappointed in finding the true mundane origin of these singular monuments, we shall nevertheless have abundant reason to admire the antiquity of the Indian mythos, when we thus find in a monument undoubtedly prior by some centuries to the Christian era the selfsame story which is now repeated by the faqirs, who shew visitors over the similar stupendous relics of ancient grandeur on the west of India. In this point of view above the restoration of the Khaṇḍgiri inscription, thanks to Mr. Kittoe, must be set down as a grand point gained to confute the arguments of the modernists, as they may be called, who would bring every thing Indian within the space of ten or twelve centuries. Thus we find Sir C. Malet wavering between the following accounts of Ellora derived from opposite sources:— "The Mahomedan says, 'the town of Ellora was built by Rājā Eel, who also excavated the temples, and being pleased with them, formed the fortress of Deogiri (Daulatābād) which is a curious compound of excavation, scarping and building, by which the mountain was converted into a fort resembling, as some say, the insulated temple in the area of the Indra Subhā.

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Eel Rājā was contemporary with SHAH MOMIN ARIF who lived 900 years ago.' "The Brahman on the other hand says—that the excavations of Ellora are 7894 years old, formed by EELOO Rājā, the son of PESHPONT OF *Ellichpore*, when 3000 years of the DVĀPAR YUG were accomplished. EELOO Rājā's body was afflicted with maggots, and in quest of cure he came to the purifying water named SEWALYE, or as it is commonly called SEWALLA, that had been curtailed by Viṣṇu to the size of a cow's hoof. He built a Kuṇḍ for it and bathing therein was purified.' (*Asiatic Researches*, V1, 385). "In these conflicting stories we can trace the selfsame tradition of ILA exteracted by Wilson from the Mackenzie records. "It would be well worth while to re-examine the particular manuscript (the number of which is not, however, mentioned), to ascertain what further is said of him, and whether it be possible to consider him in the light of a real monarch of *Deogiri*; whose son could by possibility have imitated his father's propensity for forming impregnable mountain fortresses in the rocks of *Kaliṅga*: or whether the name is not rather AILA then ILA, which will make the same personage at both places, mythological or real, the originator of the excavations. Should an actual monarch, named after this demigod, have ruled in central India in the fourth century before Christ, his synonyme PURUṚAVAS would bring him satisfactorily into the conditions required for the Grecian Porus!" (*Journal, As. Soc.*, VI, pp.

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1087 to 1089).