The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.29.2

v2.c16.s2.29.2

“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.