The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.130

v2.c18.130

To me the description appeared on the face of it to be incorrect. I could not well believe that any sensible person—one who would build a nine-storeyed palace—would locate his artillery and guards in the second storey of residence, or his kitchen just under his public reception rooms, and his artificers below his kitchen. The retinue of the Rājā including all his grooms, camel-drivers, elephant-keepers, guards, attendants, porters, watchmen, artificers and domestics, must have numbered by thousands and it was difficult to believe that they were all accommodated in the several storeys of one building. I referred, therefore, to the original text of the *Ain*, and it at once solved the difficulty. The words used in it are ‘Raja Mukund Deo built a palace of nine *ashianahs*’. (Blochmann’s Text, p. 392). Now, *ashianah* in Arabic means a nest, an abode, as in the word ‘the abode of felicity’, (a title of the Porte,) a suit of rooms, a layer, and the sense in which it has been used in the passage is that of dwellings ranged side by side, and not in storeys, i.e. the nests or layers were lateral and not perpendicular. The word in common use for a courtyard in India is *Mahal*, and ordinary respectable houses include two such, one forming the outer apartments for men and the other the inner apartments for the ladies of the house. Houses of rich men include four, five, or more such courtyards, and the Kaisarbagh palace of Oudh comprised eighteen. In the *Toy Cart*, written nearly two thousand years ago, a description is given of a rich courtesan’s house which comprised seven such yards. Indian works on architecture recommend this arrangement as the best for rich houses, and it is obvious that the palace of Mukuenda Deva had nine such courtyards. Mr. Gladwin mistook the purport of the word *ashianah*, and by using the English word storey produced the confusion, and Mr. Fergusson, by appealing to dubious analogies, has given it an air of *vraisemblance*. No vestige of the palace is, however, traceable, and no conclusive evidence can be collected on the subject.