The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c18.26

v2.c18.26

The original plan of the Bhuvaneśvara and the Puri temples included only two buildings, a temple proper and a porch or audience hall, the Jagamohan or Mohan of the Uriyas. Two other buildings were subsequently, at different times, added to each so as to make a suite of four buildings standing in a file [150] and communicating with each other. The Koṇārak builder, in addition to the two principal ones, took in hand a third, and he placed it so that enough room was left between it and the second for a fourth. In other words he had the temple and porch abutting each other and the Bhoga Maṇḍapa or Hall of Offerings at a short distance, leaving space for the Dancing Hall to be afterwards built. From its position, detached from the temple, the third building could not have well served the purposes which its name would indicate. Originally it must have been intended either for a Dancing Hall, a place of entertainment and music, or a lecture-room where the people congregated to hear the Śāstras interpreted, as in the chaultries of Southern India and the Mukti Maṇḍapa of Puri, though it was not an open building such as chaultries and Mukti Maṇḍapas usually are. But whatever it was, it was dismantled during the last century and removed to Puri, where it has now been set up as the Hall of Offerings of the Lord of the world (p. [120]). Its site at Koṇārak is now indicated by a huge mass of rubbish overgrown with jungle.