The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.349

v2.c17.s1.349

The history of the place, according to the local legends, dated from the time of Indradyumna. Here it was that he pitched his camp when he arrived at Puri. Here he established an image of Nṛsiṃha when he was disappointed in the great object of his journey, that of seeing the Blue God, Nīlamādhava, of the fowler Viśvavasu. Here he performed the great horse-sacrifice a hundred times over. It was in the neighbourhood of this place that the sacred log from the White Island, Śvetadvīpa, stranded on the sandy shore; and here again, the divine carver produced the *chef d'œuvre* of his art in the fourfold images. Many circumstances are appealed to in corroboration of these statements. An image of Nṛsiṃha, still existing, is alleged to be the same which Indradyumna had consecrated; but the small temple in which it is located is of modern date. The memory of the horse-sacrifice is still preserved in the name of the place, which is called Aśvamedha Kṣetra, and that of the fabrication of the images in the same way. Up-country people call the visit to the garden Janakapura Yātrā or procession to the father's house, Indradyumna standing *in loco parentis* from the circumstance of his having got the images made. The Urīyas call the place Mausi-ghar or the house of the mother's sister, and its equivalent in Bengali, very extensively used, is Māsīvāḍi, a word of the same meaning. The application of the word is justified by the statement that Guṇḍicā was the name of the principal queen of Indradyumna,—a daughter of a king of the name of of Sāmrājyarāja,—and she stood in the relation of a mother's sister to the god. This statement, however, is not borne out by any of the local legends, though the locality is repeatedly described by them as the birthplace of Jagannātha—(janma-pradāyinī). Professor Wilson does not, in his *Sanskrit Dictionary*, give the derivation of the word Guṇḍicā, nor have I found it in any Sanskrit lexicon; but a friend of mine, Babu Kshirodachandra Raya, Head-master of the Puri School, suggests the idea that it is derived from the local vernacular. In Bengali the word for a thick log is Guṇḍi and it is also used in Uriya. In the latter Guṇḍicā is also used in the same sense in compound words, as in the word Guṇḍicā-mūsā, or wood-rat, which is the name of the squirrel. Guṇḍicā, therefore, is the sacred log which was stranded here. All this, however, is intended to give a vari-semblance to a story which is entirely mythical and the enquiry therefore is of no importance.