The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.12

v2.c17.12

merchants, traders, artizans and labourers from distant parts of India come for purposes of gain by ministering to the pleasures of a luxurious court. Its streets are deserted. Its ancient palaces and lordly mansions [58] are roofless, and reduced to shapeless ruins buried under tangled veils of impervious vegetation. Its temples, once resonant with the hum of thousands of zealous and devout worshippers, now stand concealed by trees whose roots are struggling not unsuccessfully to displace the stones of their massive walls, and knock them down into amorphous heaps. Its squares and markets, once the resort of merchants and traders from all the leading seats of Indian commerce, and perhaps from distant countries beyond India, are now deserted, and form the abode of jackals, wolves, and noxious reptiles. Its very soil, once covered by many a magnificent dwelling, is now buried amidst ruins and rubble-stones, or forced by the plough of a poverty-stricken community to yield a scanty return of corn. In short, the whole place has a cheerless. woe-begone, lifeless look about it, which loudly proclaims that the sun of its glory has long since set. The only exception to this remark is afforded by that portion of the town which is knowm by the name of Kapileśvara. It stands in remarkable contrast to Bhuvaneśvara proper. With an area of scarce three hundred acres, and a population of 1717 souls, its houses, 249 in number, are fresh-plastered, well-thatched, closely set along a well-kept good street, and on the whole cheerful-looking and lively. To sum up, while the one appears the abode of living man, the other is a smouldering monument of extinguished grandeur.