The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.302

v2.c17.s1.302

After this bath the images are removed to one of the side-rooms of the porch where they are kept for a fortnight. The room is called *Āndur Ghar*, or sick-chamber, and the divinities are said to be laid up with fever in consequence of their unusual bath. Then they can grant no audience to the public nor partake of their usual meals, so the outer doors of the temple are closed and all cooking stopped. The real object of the ceremony is to wash off the accumulated dust and soot of the year, for in a closed room with large oil lamps burning day and night, a great deal of soot settles on the images, notwithstanding the daily wiping, and also to re-paint them. These operations are accomplished during the fifteen days of the so-called fever and the obvious impropriety of allowing the public to see the figures devoid of their paint, suggests the necessity of closing [132] the doors. This is also the time when the images are renewed when occasion for it arises. On the fourteenth day the eyes of the images are painted and this is reckoned a distinct festival, that of Netrotsava.