The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.101

v2.c18.101

**Udayagiri.** Udayagiri or ‘the sunrise hill’ is so called because it is the point in all Orissa, on which the sunlight first becomes visible in the morning. It is a well-wooded conical mound with three spurs and forms the most eastern peak of the range. Beyond it, to the east, is the River Kāliyā, and thence a flat, sandy plain stretches as far as sea. The Uriyas believe that the sea formerly laved the foot of the hill³⁶. The foot is now a sloping, bare, laterite plain, and on its edge, says Chandrasekhara Banurji, ‘it is caught by a colossal image of Buddha half covered in jungle and a portion buried under the earth. It is fully nine feet in height, the length from the knee to the head being seven feet’. The figure is cut in high relief on a single slab of rough chlorite, holding a large lotus in the left hand : the nose and right hand are mutilated. The ears, arms, wrists and breast are decorated with ornaments and the clothe round the waist is fastened with three chains answering to the *goṭe* of the present day, worn tight like a belt’³⁷. Mr. Beames also calls this image ‘a statue of Buddha upwards of 8 feet high’. He adds a profile of its bust, which has been reproduced in Plate LIX. On this profile there is a small figure of a Buddha on the head of the image, which neither of my authorities has noticed. From it and from the ornaments and the lotus in the left hand it is obvious that the image is of Padmapānī, the renowned Bodhisattva, and not of Buddha himself.