The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.125

v2.c18.125

According to the Temple Annals, Nṛpa Keśarī, anxious to immortalise himself by founding a new capital, selected Biḍānasī at the point where the Mahānadī throws out the Kāṭjurī to the west of the present town of Cuttack, as strategically the most secure, and having the advantage of two navigable rivers for commercial purposes. The site did not, however, prove the most convenient. It was subject to inundations from the two rivers ; and his son Makara Keśarī ( 955-961 A. D. ) found it necessary to protect the new capital by an extensive revetment along the left bank of the Kāṭjurī. The evil was not, however, entirely overcome, and Mādhva Keśarī, the grandson of the last, was obliged to fly from the capital and establish a new metropolis on the other side of the Kāṭjurī, away from the river bank. This he named Sāraṅgaḍ. A few [164] reigns after, when Anaṅgabhīma was once cruising in the Mahānadī, he saw in the village of Cauduār, a common crane ( vaka ) sitting over a large hawk ( syamala ) which it had killed. He took this to be a sign of the special goodness of the place and established his metropolis there. The word Biḍānasī is a corruption of Vārāṇasī, the sacred city on the Ganges, and the place was named Benares in accordance with the policy which made the Keśaris and the Gangetic kings reproduce in Orissa all the sacred places of the earth. Biḍānasī stretched along the Mahānadī as far as the present English Church ( Plate LX ). The present town is due to the Musulmans, who settled to the west of the old town, which was gradually forsaken, particularly as the Kāṭjurī threw up a large sand bank in front of the town, and rendered access to it by the river difficult.