The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.126

v2.c17.s1.126

**[101] Purushottama Mahatmya.** Of the three treatises aforesaid, the most elaborate and best digested is the one which professes to be a part of that book of the *Skanda Purāṇa* which is devoted to Orissa,—Utkala Khaṇḍa. In the edition of it printed at the Ganapat Krishnaji Press, Bombay, ten years ago, the work extends to 46 chapters, but in a manuscript in my family library the number is 51. The work opens, in the usual Puranic style, with an enquiry from the sages assembled at the great srcrifice in the Naimiṣa forest, as to the reasons which induced Bhagavān, the great lord who was manifest in light, Nārāyaṇa himself, the noblest of beings, to assume the form of a log to abide in this plaee, and the saint Jaimini responds to the call by reciting what he had heard, at an assembly of the gods, from Skanda who had narrated the story on the authority of his father Śambhu.