The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.125

v2.c17.s1.125

**Early Hindu period.** The legendary accounts are preserved in three separate treatises which profess to be parts of the leading 18 Purāṇas and in casual notices in other Purāṇas. The three treatises bear the common name of *Puruṣottama Māhātmya*, and belong respectively to the *Skanda Purāṇa*, the *Kūrma Purāṇa* and the *Nārada Purāṇa*. They are obviously founded on one original, and treat of the subject in very much the same way—in many places in the very same words; nevertheless there are in them many material differences which suggest the idea of their having only borrowed the outlines of the stories, and filled them up and shaded them according to individual predilections. The details and descriptions given in these works clearly show that they are of a much later date than that of the revival of Yayāti Keśari. Thus they narrate the history of occurrances which happend more than fifteen hundred years before them, and their authority, therefore, is of smallest moment. The occurrences, moreover, are obviously fictitious, designed solely to cast a halo of antiquity on a locality which had been, as I shall show lower down, taken from a hostile sect, and it is immaterial, therefore, to enquire about the value of the testimony brone by them in the case. The legends are of interest, however, as they portray the belief of the people, and I shall notice a few of them to point out the relation they bear to some of the antiquities of the place.